Is Early Intervention needed?
Let us step back and ask ourselves how did we get here? Has it began with Suspicion and Alarm! Did you rush to diagnose the child? Have you been strongly advised to begin early intervention?
Here is an excerpt by Transforming Autism initiative in UK – “When a child has autism, they become very sensitive not only to certain sensory inputs (and different ones for each child), but much more importantly to their emotional environment.” We highlighted the second part of the quote because child’s sensitivity to emotional environment is very real and creation of the positive emotional environment is critical.
Transforming Autism is anchored around these notions, promoting the idea of non-aggressive sensible intervention, a kind of cultural assimilation. We recommend visiting their site for some important insight, while keeping in mind that their push for intervention is not without influence of ulterior motif of their own engagement and success as an intervention provider. [See our summary and review of their approach].
The current Climate in our country [in regard to autism] is permeated by stigma, and the official arrangements beginning with the diagnosis, to early intervention, pre-K to Special ed. are discriminatory, segregating, and traumatic to the child – commonly leading autistic children on a path to a life in institution [see Project 2019 for inside outlook]. With a critical mindset acquired we also suggest a review of related wiki pages to get a dry view of what it involves, how it evolved, and how all of it ties together to its ugly beginnings. Most of what you’ll find there is factual, but it has not escaped some perpetrated falsehoods – wiki: Early childhood intervention, Alternative therapies for developmental and learning disabilities. When it comes to autism it is especially important not to underestimate the importance of unbiased thinking and an educated independent judgement.
Suspicion and Alarm are alone enough for your child to curl up. First you must make sure to intervene with yourself and let go of anxiety and suspicion about what you may perceive as child’s deficiencies; to understand what is it about the child that bothers you – because this they will sense and it would trigger a reciprocal anxiety and suspicion that would lead to withdrawal and loss of trust in you. Above all else you must do everything to keep the trust of the child. It is equally important to gain an understanding into the developmental markers of autistic children and their ways of learning, and to undertake a critical review of what in their atypical behavior is delayed, what is benign and what is not, and why they do what they do, and how it may be essential to their development.
Intervention should begin with your internal transformation where Suspicion and Alarm are replaced by Recognition and Celebration. You should recognize that your child is different and celebrate their uniqueness and diversity. This is the recognition of who your child is, their unique strengths and weaknesses, their gifts and misgivings. This is the celebration of their being, step by step, when they fail and when they succeed. It reconfirms their trust in you and yours in them. When you fail they fail.
We do not recommend to rush to diagnose your child. In the current climate regulated by so called “CARES Act” – their diagnosis will be used to channel them into the hands of venues who would make it next to impossible for you and your child to disengage. You yourself would be as well subjected to corrupting influences of suppression that would be ruinous not only to your autistic child but to all the members of your family, yourself included. The danger that your child would become a captive in your own home with you as incidental jail guard is real and many families succumb to it.
When is Early Intervention helpful? The developmental markers of autistic children in early age are different from typical in some very important way – the motor function development of autistic child including speech may be delayed. These and some other untypical behaviors like “repetitions” are nevertheless a normal way of learning for most autistic children. Can some of it be helped and should it be helped? Absolutely, but not by direct interference.
Intervention should not be based on a master-subordinate relationship, it is not based on correcting the behavior. It should be based on finding the causes and finding together how to deal with it. It is based on exploration that you do together, learning from each other.
Below we quote from Better Way:
The Modus Operandi
Surround the child with love, and care. Create a “TRIBE” of relatives, teachers, friends of all ages, and animals too. Do not diminish their affections; cherish who they cherish. Make their HOME as Large as possible.
Bring them into NATURE – the best places you can find, and establish them as SANCTUARIES – a great deal of the learning and the movement therapy should be done there, and these sanctuaries (hangouts) will become the starting points of exploration of a larger world. Let the Child Lead You, while you should be smart enough to lead them.
Bring them into the WORLD AT LARGE, as wide and diverse as possible; different places, different people; real situations. Create sanctuaries everywhere, in each place you come; you start from that – there are ways to do that – learn them. Once they find comfort, entice and challenge them to explore and interact on their own. Do not restrain them when they want to move; see where it leads to, try to understand what they do, and why they do what they do; capitalize on it.
Everywhere you go, find the environments that are most beneficial – most of the successful teaching will be done there. Teach as you would teach your equal in abilities – do not drill; there’ll be another day, another place for repeating a lesson, as there’ll be time when this will naturally come to a test. You should learn to be patient and to trust the child. Always regard the child as your equal, yet remember that they are different. Their sensory input may differ from yours, and their perception of the world may be different as well. They may see what you don’t see and hear what you don’t hear, and vice versa. You do not know the difficulties they are facing.
Nature as Teacher and Healer
To foster this development, to elicit this learning in autistic children we need to provide varied environments that are beneficial for developing the efficient motor function their physical bodies are capable of; the environments that provide both the stimulus and the challenge by never being exactly the same. “Like, what you’ve done climbing this little hill last time is similar but not the same, and you need to find a new exciting way”. These environments would be next to impossible to create in a room, or even in a sophisticated gym.
Yet these environments exist all around us in Nature, where it elicits the proper movement naturally and effectively. Nature is the best teacher and healer – it provides the stimulus, and the challenge, as well as the punishment and the reward. It is also a sanctuary with unlimited sensory modulations. That is why we should teach in the natural world, especially at a young age, when the motor function circuitry is developing. These children will never grow to their potential in a flower pot.
The World of God (you may call it “World at Large”) is outside us and is inside us. And what is inside is the world that we have experienced already; it is a fraction of the World of God – poor in comparison; it lacks its challenge; it lacks danger. You can’t harness the big world by staying inside. You can only learn by going out into it. This (how to go into it) we learn in our childhood. It is done not by just seeing, or hearing, or touching – but through the motion of your entire body – by immersing yourself in it, by merging with a bigger world, as you move from challenge to challenge, from one unknown to another. This is the most important thing that we learn as children. There are no substitutes, nor other time for learning this.
There are many a practical advice that can be given about the right way to Raise the Child. We have chosen this article by Jan Hunt, a co-founder of The Natural Child Project. It is about a child – every child. Everything in this article applies and is true for autistic children. It is universal. Here we present “Nurturing Children’s Natural Love of Learning” .
