Autism and Learning
Being autistic, a mentor, trainer and consultant I have done more work outside than
anywhere else.
This is one of my “offices”. It is on the Phoenix Trail headint towards Thame in
Oxfordshire. The bicycle is a well used and essential work aid. In the sensorily
fragmented world of autism being outside in sunlight is most often the place we find
comfort, space, sensory and personal integration. Outside noise can dissipate, there
is space to move and do what I call ranging, and moving freely around to enable
peace, adrenaline to be burned, thoughts and senses can integrate.
Play it is unlikely that anyone with autism has played as a child. They may have
wanted to but will find play with their peers impossible. Play can be too confusing
and complex especially the social side of play. They may have sought to join in play
through a technical knowledge of the activity and have no understanding of how to
socialise. They will have had little success at play and not have learned about
people, socialising and group dynamics. Their social development will be years or
decades behind people of the same age. Often we will use observations of people
and TV dramas to build up approximations of social interactions and use these in the
hope we can join in. Autistic girls do this more than boys and to greater effect. Doing
this uses a lot of energy as we are acting and constantly anxious about being found
out or caught out in a social situation we do not have the skills for. At that point
things go wrong and we are normally ostracised, in childhood or adulthood.
Play helps form our identities and build bonds of friendship between us. Autistic
people will have little or no opportunity for this so we can be very lonely especially in
childhood and more so in our teens. We can get to adulthood with no friends, we
want friends and like people but this is normally too complex and frightening for us.
We have to guess at what we should do in life due to not having learned it through
play as others have.
Being bullied is a universal feature of the autistic life. I have yet to know anyone
who is autistic who has not been bullied throughout their lives at many points. We
can become resigned to being bullied, it can be a choice between that and going
mad with all the bullying. Any child you work with will have recent and ongoing
experience of bullying. It may be happening on the outdoor learning you are running.
Mot autistic people go very quiet and act dead when being bullied and the bullies are
near. The bullies have enough social skills to hide their activities. The autistic person
is socially naive and under developed. The first sign you may see is of the autistic
person loosing it and having a meltdown, for which they normally get told off. The
bullies will be nearby observing and staying quiet. The meltdown is a fight or flight
behaviour caused by extreme stress and adrenaline, not naughtiness. The autistic
child will be fighting for life, the bullies standing quiet. Please treat a meltdown as an
emergency in which the child or adult in severe distress and in constant fear. They
will usually not be able to tell you what is going on for a long time, they cannot
process it all enough to give an account. Meanwhile the bullies have got their stories
ready and are intent on causing the autistic person more grief though the aftermath
of the meltdown. An autistic person and especially a child will not be able to hide
anything or manipulate any situation or people, these instincts are missing in autism.
On the other hand the autistic child may be very quiet and seem placid and relaxed,
a model pupil. This is the play dead response to a predator. They will be in fear of
their lives and be trying not to catch the bullies’ attention by playing dead. It is not
normal for an autistic person to be this still and quiet, we have active minds. If you
see this please take it seriously the autistic person is in great trouble, and like with
the meltdown they may not be able to tell you what is going on. Eyes in the back of
your head are needed to spot the bullying behaviours. Certain children or adults will
be near the autistic person in pattern that looks and feels wrong. They are seeking
times of quiet and low observation where they can bully, in between times they will
be keeping up the psychological pressure silently and constantly throughout the day
and night. Autistic people are socially naive and do not normally have any defences
against bullying and are totally and terrifyingly out of their depth when bullies are
working on them. The bully can be anyone. Often they just want to go home to their
mum and dad.
Bullying can drive some autistic people to all manner of delinquency even crime. The
bullies often manipulate an autistic person into committing crime with the false
promise of friendship if the crimes are committed to please the bullies. There are a
lot of young autistic people who are in the criminal justice system via this route. A lot
of my work is with the police, youth justice teams, probation services and in prison
helping people understand autism.
Learning socially Children and adults you work with will be out of their depth
socially. They will pretend they can learn socially and this will normally use up all
their energy and concentratation. They will be learning little or nothing and
pretending they can cope at the same time. Autistic people like to concentrate on
learning and do it in a passionate single focused way. We will not want to learn
socially. I recall training as an adult teacher and learning about social models of
learning and collaborative learning. We were taught in this way and guess what? I
learned nothing in class. I did all my learning 1-1 with my tutor or reading at home on
my own. We will need quiet and space to learn. Some of us can participate in the
social experiences in learning with difficulty, most will not be able. Learning socially
is an effective way for non autistic people to learn, however our brains are wired to
learn diffenrlty and socialising at the same time as learning is not possible for us. If
we need to be in a group it may help to give us a special role that uses our interest,
passion and existing skills. We will not integrate into a group although we may
pretend we have, we pretend as we have learned the hard way that this leads to less
bullying and pain.
Engage with the autistic person's passion so they can learn. Wendy Lawson in
her book The Passionate Mind describes and explores the way autistic people will
learn through specific passionate interests. Outside of these interests we struggle to
give attention to anything. However we can learn well in most subjects if our interest
is engaged in the teaching of that subject. For example an interest of mine is cycling
so if I am being taught map reading my interest can be engaged by linking map use
to cycling. The result being I am interested and will learn. This technique is useful for
any autistic pupils you have, find their passionate interest and engage the subject
through it.
Our attention is like an on off switch we will be interested or not. We will pay
attention on not. We are passionately interested or not interested at all. This is not a
behaviour that can be changed by getting us to persevere. Our brains are wired to
give specific attention to things, this is one of the main defining features of autism
and it will not go away or change. As before engage our passionate interest then we
will switch on to what is being taught. We do no generalise in our thought, this is
called monotropism, mono thinking and is integral to autism. This is why we make
good specialist in our areas of passionate interest. Many innovators, engineers,
writers’ researchers and scientists are autistic.
Our sensory world is nothing like most people. Our senses are processed quite
unlike most people. We can be hyper, over, sensitive and or hypo, under sensitive
on all or some of our senses in any combination. This is caused by our brain's
particular ways of processing the senses. These profiles will be different for each
person but be sure that any autistic person will have a very spiky and particular
sensory profile. Olga Bogdashina, in the resources list, has written very well on
autism and our sensory worlds. The sensory world of an autistic person is normally
the most important thing affecting our behaviours, aversions and sensory seeking.
We often hide this because people mostly do not understand how important our
sensory profiles are and criticise us and call us all sot of rude things when we make
them known. We may be reticent about to something and may feign illness or melt
down, run off or refuse to participate and a lot of times this is because we have a
sensory difficulty with what is happening.
Our senses can cause us pain which is intense and real, please do not make light of
it even though no injury is visible. If we cannot tolerate something then we cannot
tolerate it. Touch is difficult for us. This will affect our clothes choices and what we
will do. Unexpected touch is often very frightening as we have not braced for it, as a
rule do not seek contact with an autistic person unless you know it is ok. If touch is
unavoidable approach an autistic person as if we were a horse learning to get used
to a saddle or bridle and help us get used to it.
Our sense of hearing is normally hypersensitive, sudden and high pitched noises
give us most difficulty. We may need to avoid certain environments because of noise
for example being near a road where commercial viercles use air brakes. Most of us
do no filter noise and our hearing can b like an open microphone picking up
everything. Because of this we find listening to people difficult if any other noises are
present. We can appear deaf because we hear too much and are not able to decode
your voice. We may have to watch your mouth move for instance to be able wo get
what you are saying. Sometimes it helps to be non verbal, point, show, direct,
demonstrate something these things help lots. Pictures and flow charts can be of use
as well.
Our sense of sight is often fragmented
and we are not decoding our vision effectively. People are hard to decode as they
move lots especially the faces. Sometimes we may not know how to react or have a
proper sense of your presence unless you are still in our company for a while so we
can build up enough awareness of you. Certain colours can cause us difficulty as
can patterns. I can be rendered almost blind by certain carpets and wall coverings,
being outside often helps as natural forms under daylight are usually better for us to
decode. We sometimes wear coloured glasses, these cut down the spectrum and
light intensity we see and this helps us integrate and decode our vision. These
glasses are frequently used for dyslexia as well. We often see too much and every
detail is clear and present. We are natural detail spotters and too many details can
overload us quickly and catastrophically. We often miss things because we see too
much and are unable to filter and process it. However if you want a detail spotted in
anything be it equipment or in the landscape ask an autistic person, we have
normally spotted every detail before you even think to ask.
We often do not recognise faces and we will use something like hairstyles to
recognise people. We often do not know who we are addressing until we hear you
speak and this extra information gives us enough to recognise you.
We have restricted diets and special food likes. This is sensory again mostly down to
food texture in our mouths. We also do not like to mix foods and some of us cannot
eat anything if it has touched another food on a plate or in a bowl. This is purely
sensory and not being picky. I do not know how to describe the pain and revulsion
caused by the wrong food textures; it grips the whole body and can stay for a long
time after. We also do not eat well in noisy environments close to other people. We
like to eat quietly often on our own. This again is mostly due to sensory needs and
being able to concentrate on the food. We are monotropic and will deal with one
thing at a time, eating in company is multi sensory and requires multi tasking.
Our sense of balance is usually not good or extremely good. Most of us struggle with
balance and we hate being off the ground. I mean really hate being off the ground
that is terrifying. We have to be planted and grounded to begin feeling confident. If
our balance is extremely good we will go to terrifying heights without a thought.
Or sense of our bodies, propriorproception, is often missing or incomplete. We do
not process well the thousands of signals coming from our bodies. The result being
that we do not know the sizes of our bodies well or where our limbs are in space. We
often have an inefficient gate because of this. W e will brace round our pelvis and
shoulders and hold our backs in rigid postures. We do this to get set datum points
from our limbs to work from as we do not normally have any sense of where they are
otherwise. This affects how we move and hat we will do, it cause lots of us to
struggle when outdoors even though we like being there we cannot often move freely
outdoors. Some people simply will not go outside as any irregularity of surface can
be too much to process. In my experience most of us love being outside because of
the 360 degree freedom, natural light and head space there is to think and feel under
the sky. I am definitely an outdoor person and will be outdoors as much as possible.
I work with many people like me outdoors because they too need the same things. In
my work I rarely encounter any stress behaviour form autistic people outdoors; I
mostly see peace and comfort. Most people I now find being inside in rooms shared
with other people and having little daylight hard and they want to range outdoors.
I feel free and alive in a special way outdoors. Those of us who like being outdoors
will learn very well there. My sweetest and most beneficial learning experiences have
been outdoors on field trips or just talking things over with someone on a walk or
cycle ride. Other people may be the polar opposite of me we autistic people are
normally one thing or another.
Communication is important when working with autism. We communicate in a
different culture and with different means from most people. We are literal thinkers
and like to communicate literally. We will receive your communication literally, this
means we struggle with incomplete and non literal uses of communication. We
spend a lot of energy and concentration on interpreting what is said and done. In our
culture what is said and indicated is what is meant. Rules are rules and we have to
learn that they are guidelines to most people. This causes us a lot of trouble with
communication and social interaction. The results being pain and social isolation for
us, we try hard but can never quite get it right when communicating.
Our levels of receptive and expressive communication are normally very different.
For example we may be mute or use very few words but understand everything, or
we may be very verbal but receive very little from other people. None of this is
connected to intelligence, this is a processing issue. Someone may be able to repeat
what you have dais and understood none of it. We learn to pretend our receptive and
expressive communication is consistent as we have been told of, hurt and bullied a
lot when we let it be known there is an inconsistency. Because most people do not
do this they believe we are being difficult or if we just worked harder we would be ok.
We get punished a lot for this and any otter expression of autism so we are very
good at hiding what is happening.
Be concise when communicating with us and give us a lot of time peace and quiet to
reply. We may need minutes, hours or days to reply sometimes, all this is down to
our need to process what has been communicated to us and prepare a response.
When we are pressured we have pre prepared responses that we have learned get
us out of trouble and relieve pressure on us. However these responses are nothing
to do with what we really think or feel, that would come later if you have enough time
and can be still enough to listen to us.
We do not read faces and body language; we cannot process all that we just go on
the words. We process one thing at a time. Then imagine that if our senses are
screaming at us because there is something in our sensory world we cannot deal
with; how much can we take in of that you are communicating to us? Peace, time,
sensory comfort and low levels of anxiety are needed before communication can
really happen. In most learning situations we do not have this so...how much do we
really learn? Answer not much. Outdoor learning has a head start on indoor leaning
for us in that there is more peace, space and fewer sensory irritants that we must
deal with. And lots of lovely daylight to se and think in. Even under a full moon, that
is pure sunlight reflected and attenuated by the moon. For someone like me with
hypersensitive eyesight moonlight is pure sensory heaven. I can see for miles and at
comfortable levels of detail. I can hear better in moonlight as other senses are not
overworked.
Please make learning environments and cultures that sooth the senses and give
space to process and think, we will learn and communicate to levels that had
previously been un guessed at, by you or us.
Anxiety this is ever present in autism and often to a debilitating level. Anxiety is our
constant companion and emotion, we do not relax, we are always on the lookout for
trouble, adrenaline filled, twitchy, nervous and prepared to fight or run at any
moment. We are like flight animals, those with eyes on the sides of their heads to
have a 360 degree view, ready to spot a predator at any time. The dissonant part of
this is that humans are fight animals with eyes in the front of our heads, ready to
close in on a prey animal. This incongruity leads us into a lot of difficulty with bullies
and even calm social situations can be frightening for us. We are like horses living
with lions and tigers, constantly twitchy and ready to bolt. We need a lot of peace
and understanding and reassurance before we can become even near to calm. The
closest analogy I can think of is the way horses are treated; everything is aimed at
helping them relax and not take fright and bolt. In contrast a fight animal can take a
lot of stressors; lion keepers do things quiet differently to horse riders. Lion keepers
become prey animals in the lion enclosures and they become like autistic people.
A top tip would be to find out how horses are cared for, interacted with and ridden,
from that you will learn a lot about how to teach autistic people. Both Deborah Lipsky
and Temple Grandin have written about the flight animal nature of autistic people;
see the sources t the back of this handout.
Have a think on the stresses, bullying and fears we face and our flight nature is quite
understandable. We are mostly frightened of people around us, even our families.
When going out with a group of people learning we can get even more frightened as
we are away form home, our familiar place s and routines and a place of safety. Like
a newly transported horse needs time to cam and adjust before doing anything, we
need this too, but will the bullies or anyone else with us let us do this? Normally the
answer is no. So we will get more anxious and melt down. All that is avoidable if our
anxiety and need for quiet, space and peace is accommodated, when an autistic
person, or anyone else, totally melts down into fight or flight they are in fear of their
lives and fighting to stay alive. It is not uncommon for us to melt down several times
a day such is the stress and anxiety we live with.
Learn from equestrian people how they work and you will have good understandings
and working frameworks for work with us. Do you recall the Olympics when everyone
in the dressage arena went silent when the horses were performing. That was to
avoid the horses being distracted. Autistic people need the same quiet and respect
to perform at our best. We are very easily distracted and spooked.
We will only learn and cope with being challenged when our anxiety levels are low
enough.
How to get things right in short avoid every pitfall and mistake I have written about
already. The absence of sensory shocks and emotional frights is something we are
not used to and are very welcome. Their absence alone will enable us to perform at
levels that will surprise everyone. On the positive side do the following;
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Speak with a low voice, pace speech, avoid complicating speech by using
tone and inflection to carry meaning. Words alone are right for us in most
circumstances. If someone is non verbal still try speech they may understand
more than you think.
Non verbal communication needs to be succinct, factual and linked to reality.
Avoid using body language and face expression to convey meaning. Be still
and use things like pictures and preferably real objects (objects of reference).
Bear in mind that although a lot of autistic people can think visually there are
many of us who do not do this. If we don’t think visually then we don’t, simple
as that. Seek to find out how the person thinks and processed, in words,
through sensory processing, pictures or combination of these. We can only
lean and receive information in the way we think.
Let the autistic person teach you how they communicate. Observe and check
with them.
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Avoid value judgements; these are based on intangible things an autistic
person may not follow. Value judgements can cause anxiety as the autistic
person will fear them and not know where they come from. Give factual
feedback and instruction.
Indicating positivity about the person needs to be done carefully. It is a value
judgement and can still be scary. Like a horse they will need to know they can
trust you before positive judgements can be given and received freely.
Trust can be built up surprisingly quickly by simple accepting the person as
they are. This will be a novel experience for them as they will be used to be
being found wanting, described as a failure every day by most people. In my
work I set two criteria for success from people I work with; one is to have a
pulse the other is to be breathing. This sends a powerful message to
someone who will have little or no self esteem and confidence. From this they
can grow and learn that self esteem and confidence is something they too can
have. Carl Rogers the psychologist called this having an “unconditional
positive regard” for someone.
Respect their fears even if you do not understand them. Autistic people can
be challenged but comfort and confidence need to be achieved first. We face
horrid challenges every day. Give us positive information about how our
challenges can be faced adn tell us how difficulties we see can be resolved.
This will go a long way to helping us take risks and try new things. Avoid
saying “it will be alright” or “trust me” because we will not know how these
things will be achieved. If we know this through facts then this is helpful.
Admonitions and pleas for trust contain no facts and we will not be comforted
at all.
We may ask lots of questions if we feel confident enough. These questions
are to get facts from you that we can build up into a global understanding of
what is going on and our part in it. Without these facts and the resulting
understanding we will be frightened and have no idea what to do. We are
detailed logical thinkers and all relevant information is needed, we do not form
ideas and concepts in the absence of even one relevant fact. We build our
understanding from the granular level up. We do not do concepts without the
underlying facts of which there may be thousands.
If we freeze it will be because we do not know how to proceed and or anxiety
has got too much for us. We will need peace, understanding, cooling off time,
processing time and facts to continue. Never say “come on” or “you can do it”
because we know we cannot at that time and these admonitions contain no
facts about how we can do it. We will not draw any conceptual understanding
over a gap in our knowledge base, we need the knowledge, simple as that.
We will hold our bodies differently and make almost no facial expressions or
eye contact unless we have learned how to approximate these things. If we
can do this please do not assume we are communicating or understand, we
are pretending and we know we need to do this lots to get on with people.
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Never speak in a high pitched voice and avoid up speak where the voice is
raised at the end of a sentence. High pitches cause us pain and we will feel
very anxious and not get the message. One example of autism friendly
speech is that of a Yorkshire man who holds his voice low speaks deliberately
and says only the facts. I get on well in Yorkshire because of this.
Women, please speak slowly, never speak over one another and do not raise
your voices when autistic people are around.
Avoid wearing scent of any kind. It can overwhelm some autistic people.
Bright and dangly jewellery can be distracting. We spot every detail and may
not get past jewellery to be able to concentrate on anything else.
Do not touch us unless we are expecting it and you know we can cope with it.
Unexpected touch is frightening and very disturbing for us.
Do not expect we will recognise you straight away; give us time to work out
who you are and what context you are in. Please give us time to prepare and
plan a response.
When we are having an off day literally is an off day. Or brains and sense will
have crashed under the stress of daily living. Nothing much can happen on
that day.
We are like switches and do not be surprised if we turn off something and
back on to is suddenly. This is due to our brain wiring and how we process
our sensory information. We need to “go offline” and process at times, more
frequently that you may suspect.
We are easily distracted; please give us peace to get on with something, like
the horse in the dressage ring. If we are distracted that us like wiping the
memory in a computer, we are unlikely to be able to re boot and get back to
what we were doing originally. This causes us a lot of stress because we did
not finish what we were doing.
We normally have to finish what we are dong before doing something else.
We are not being awkward; it is that like a computer we need to finish one
task before opening the new task, time is needed in between to do this.
We like people very much but we are frightened of you most of the time. This
is one reason we are so quiet. The other is that you can overload us causing
our senses and processing to crash rendering us unable to continue with you.
Please do not interpret this as being unfriendly or lazy.
We usually have deep, dry and ironic senses of humour. A lot of our humour
is based round observations of the differences between our literal thinking and
other people’s non literal approaches to life. Our humour can be dark; we
share this with other groups of people who have a hard time of it in this world.
A lot of comedians and writers are autistic.
An autistic child has such uneven and incomplete development that they are
no way comparable to their peers by age in terms of abilities, understandings
and social skills. These gaps close a little with age but they are a consistent
feature of the autistic life.
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Never assume anything like consistent abilities, ever. Beware; we are good at
pretending we have consistent abilities. We do this to avoid the worst of the
criticism and bullying that can come our way.
Use our strengths and passionate interests when we learn this is the best
way. Maybe the only way.
Use the outdoors to the full it is one of the best places for most of us to be.
Teach us how to use the outdoors and what to expect, particularly weather
and what to wear and that “bad” weather is fine if we are dressed properly.
Below are the effects of learning inoors for a lot of autisitic people, the sounds of
lights and other people are often the worst.
When you see this be still, quiet and help calm the situatuion by being a benign
presence. Les s more when healing in this situation.
That’s us he’s talking about.
Useful resources;
 The work of Donna Williams, an autistic adult,
autism consultant and artist. She has published
books on autism. She lives in Australia so online
best contact from England, she provides a very
online consultancy service at a very reasonable
Her web address is http://www.donnawilliams.net/
a look at Donnas’ writing, book lists and especially
art. Her pictures go right to the heart of the autism experience.
 Temple Grandin an autistic adult. She lives in
the United States. She is an industrial designer
leading expert on animal welfare and cattle
handling systems. She has the ability to see the
world as animals do; she puts this down to her
many
is the
useful
cost.
Have
her
a
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being autistic and being able to see outside the box.
She writes lots and speaks on autism. Her work
explains a lot. Temple has written a lot on sensory
comfort and autism with special reference to the
soothing effects of deep pressure. This is very soothing
for autistic people and rather a lot of no autistic people. Her web
address is http://grandin.com/
Wendy Lawson, an autistic adult, writer and academic. Her work too
illuminates the word of autism, again like
temple and Donna, from the first hand
experience of an autistic person. Her web
address is http://www.mugsy.org/wendy/ do
take time to read Wendy’s home page, it
contains poetry and prose which explain the
autistic life very well. Wendy’s doctoral
thesis is available through a link on her site I wholeheartedly
recommend you read it, she investigates and describes the autistic
ability to give specific attention to things and be passionate about our
interests.
The national Autistic Society http://www.autism.org.uk/ is a good
source of information and support with a thorough and well balanced
view of autism
Autism Hangout http://www.autismhangout.com/default.asp is an
international autism online community with lots of contributors; autistic,
parents, siblings and professionals. This site carries many very useful
videos on autism and the amazing things people are doing around the
world, a very useful source of information, encouragement and ideas.
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The writing of Olga Bogdashina, she has got into deep places in autism
and can write very clearly and well with lots of practical ways of dealing
with autism. Also Temple Grandin, Wendy Lawson and Dona Williams
write about autism, their work is very useful, they have different takes
on autism and this helps build up a multi faceted picture of autism, we
are not all the same.
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Deborah Lipsky has written on autism, anxiety and meltdowns. These
are things to understand when dealing with autistic people. She is
autistic and can explain these things very clearly and give coping
strategies from an autistic person’s perspective. Her website is
http://www.autistic-raccoonlady.com/ . I can recommend her book
From Anxiety to Meltdown it is uncannily accurate and insightful.
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Clare Sainsbury an autistic author to look out for her book Martian in
the Playground is an excellent exploration of growing up and
developing with autism. A lot of insight can be gained into why we are
as we are as adults from her work and how we get to adulthood.
For any more information about Autism Live Training services and how we can help
your organisation please contact us on
39 Queen Street,
Aylesbury,
Bucks.
HP20 1LU
t: 01296 483807
mob: 07840 344 957
e: info@autismlivetraining.co.uk
www.autismlivetraining.co.uk