I have a student I’ll call Susan. Recently, I had some great
success communicating effectively with her.
She is on the autistic spectrum and is, therefore, challenged by social
norms. Let me get this straight from the
get go, Susan does NOT have diminished mental capacities! She is one of the sharpest tacks in the
box. Nor is she completely in left field
when it comes to social situations.
Susan doesn’t run around covering her ears nor does she exhibit extreme
stemming behaviors. Her self-medicating tendencies are more subtle, though they
can be a little strange.
She often feels certain complex emotions or reactions and
doesn’t have the language the rest of us do to express them. When she is really excited, she reacts
physically by flapping her hands together or running. Sometimes she’ll even get aggressive toward
other students and it seems like she is angry.
She will also hyper-focus on topics that either interest her or are
bothering her and will not move on until she has somehow expressed her
focus. Susan also lies. She doesn’t connect her words to the idea of
dishonesty because they are simply a way to couch her feelings in terms she can
deal with.
Here’s an example: one day during class, Susan was very
lethargic and kept putting her head on her desk. After repeated reminders to sit up straight
(sometimes when she is feeling grumpy or unmotivated, she’ll put her head down
and I have to be firm with her—just as I am with all my students), I realized
that we would get nowhere with that course of action that particular day. So, when I had a moment to devote to her
individually, I pulled her out into the hallway to speak to her in
private.
“Susan, what’s up? You seem like you are having a bad day.
Did something happen today to make you feel this way?”
“I saw a rattlesnake yesterday and I have an extreme phobia
of rattlesnakes.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you. However, there are no rattlesnakes here right
now and that was yesterday.”
We continued down a fruitless path because I was not reading
her signals. She was not upset about a
rattlesnake the day before, in fact, she LOVES snakes and was in the midst of
writing a report about rattlesnakes for our science class. I was confused and frustrated by such
“excuses.” I thought she was just grumpy
because someone made her mad or she didn’t feel like participating (both are
occurrences I’ve dealt with before and not just with Susan!). It wasn’t until the next day that I found out
the full story.
Susan went home that day not feeling well. She had a fever and other complications
related to being sick (probably a virus—we are a happy little community of
disease vectors in fifth grade). I
received an email from her mom the following morning telling me that Susan
would not be in school because she was sick.
I was annoyed that she didn’t just tell me she was sick! I was also a little frustrated that she spent
so much time and energy concocting a story about rattlesnakes.
Weeks pased (just a couple) and another lying incident with
Susan helped me to see things more clearly.
She receives speech services and either physical therapy or occupational
therapy services at school (I think it is the latter because they seem to be
working on fine motor skills and not gross).
One day, the specialist who was working with her (I think it was the OT,
not the speech specialist—I’m still getting to know everyone at the school,
don’t judge), approached me before she picked up Susan from the specialist
class (either art, music, or gym) for the weekly OT services. She introduced herself and let me know she
was a semi-permanent sub (or something—too many particulars). I told her that Susan was having an unusually
unfocused day at school (she is often unfocused, but we’ve learned some
routines that help her refocus. That
day, she would have none of it) and I wondered if she (the OT) could do some
objective probing and questioning. She
agreed.
After the OT session, the woman came to my room (I was
eating lunch) to report her findings.
With a little questioning, Susan opened up and told a long story about
how her mom was pregnant and going to have a baby in a week. Susan said she felt nervous because she would
not be the only kid anymore and she wouldn’t get all the attention she
likes. After the OT finished, I looked
at her and said, “Oh dear. That’s all a
lie. I JUST talked to her mom in person
two days ago and she is, I can assure you, NOT pregnant.” We sat and chatted for a little bit and came
to an interesting conclusion: Susan creates these elaborate stories because she
doesn’t have the language to express what is REALLY going on.
After lunch, while my TA was teaching, I pulled Susan aside
and said, “I spoke to the OT today and she told me an interesting story.” Susan immediately ducked her head and
smiled. I continued, “Why did you tell
her that story?” She responded by
telling me she felt upset and if she told a story then it made her feel better;
it gave her a reason to feel upset.
How insightful is that?
Susan is not a bald-face liar (though she does exaggerate like any other
fifth-grader who tries to one-up his/her friends), but she does invent these
elaborate explanations for what others may see as common-place feelings
(physical sickness, feeling left-out), which are actually pretty complicated.
Once I had a glimpse of this coping strategy, it helped me to more effectively
communicate with Susan. I have to listen
with my eyes and intuition as well as my ears. I also have to frame the
questions in an attainable manner.
One last example…
We had a fire drill at school recently. When this happens, all students are hyped up
by it, but Susan has an especially difficult time dealing with the excitement
and change of routine. Again, ALL
students are affected, but they have more subtle ways of coping. Not Susan.
She responded by kicking someone (not out of anger, but out of a need to
express her excitement). Both kids got
detention from a neighboring teacher (I didn’t see how the whole incident
played out, but apparently the other student retaliated in an inappropriate
manner). I targeted Susan for my
questioning (as she was the instigator—once I found out the situation, I gave
the other kid a stern look and a reminder that retaliation with physical
violence of any kind is inappropriate on school grounds. I kinda wish he wouldn’t have received
detention from the other teacher and that we would be more willing to let
natural consequences occur. I mean, if
Susan gets pushed back for kicking someone out of the blue, or perhaps if she
even gets punched in the nose once or twice, she may be able to more quickly
devise better ways to react to stimulation. Much faster than when I spend time
lecturing her on a level she doesn’t have the social understandings to
grasp. But, alas!) and then let the other kid go.
Having learned from experience with other students, I framed
my question as such:
“Susan, kicking _______ was wrong. Why was it wrong?”
Susan was able to respond to this question. Had I asked, “Why did you kick _____?”, I
would have received either an unsatisfactory answer (“I don’t know”) or sullen
silence. Either way, no self-reflection
would take place (besides, do ANY of us know why we do dumb things at
times? It’s the temporary loss of logic
and reasoning that make it do them, so of COURSE we don’t know WHY). But, by labeling her behavior in a manner
consistent with the context (kicking is wrong on school campus) and providing
her with a relatable platform (it is wrong because it breaks the rules), we
could converse. I could even push her
further to explain to me why we have a rule against kicking (because it can
hurt people) which led to a self-reflective moment for Susan. She was able to connect her behavior to a
negative consequence that adversely affected another person. It took very
specific questions and an understanding of her social awareness to bring Susan
to a point of empathy. It is not natural
for humans to be empathetic and Susan is just like the rest of us in that
regard. She has the added layer of intense,
raw reactions to even the most subtle feelings or changes because her filter is
minimal (you and I can filter through the ambient stimuli automatically, not
Susan).
So, once we established that her reaction was inappropriate,
we could get down to what made her react.
Knowing Susan as I already did, I was able to intuit that the
stimulation of the fire drill (and even my startled reaction to it—I wasn’t
expecting it, either) was too much for her to contain in her mind. She needed an outlet to express that energy. And kicking was a great release! She had no animosity toward the kid she
kicked nor even a reason for choosing him beyond his proximity. He wasn’t special or “chosen” (getting him to
understand that is difficult, but that relates to another point later on). Now, I will not go into all the details of
the conversation at this point because, frankly, I STILL didn’t pursue the
right course of questioning—at least not initially. Eventually, I figured it out and was able to
help her vocalize the fact that she felt disrupted and grumpy about things (it
wasn’t just the fire drill—something made her mad at her parents that morning
and it had to do with math homework).
This ended up being a day-long discussion because her grumpiness and
inappropriate reactions to the environs continued throughout the day (which is
how I figured out that it was more than the fire drill) and she got into
trouble during gym (a very stimulating place for any kid!).
Now, that was a long introduction for what I REALLY want to
talk about.
I am Susan. No, not
in a literal sense or an allegorical sense (I changed the child’s identity to
protect an actual child, not to disguise myself as the child). I mean, I have some pretty striking
commonalities with this kid. I am more
sophisticated in my responses and my filter works much more efficiently than
does hers, but there are some applicable tenets of this narrative in my own
life.
Just as Susan didn’t know how to label her feelings and so
made up elaborate stories to help her cope, there are many feelings I do not
know how to label and therefore, I have developed my own coping systems to make
them less scary and unknown. Just as
Susan reacted in a way that helped her feel more in control of a chaotic
situation, I sometimes react in seemingly inappropriate ways that allow me to
feel in control of a chaotic situation (I don’t generally kick people, but I
did once throw a cup of water at a roommate).
The last word in all of these reactions is control. I need to feel secure and safe and I feel
those things by being in control.
Sometimes, I react in ways that hurt other people (like throwing water at a roommate). There is no real animosity toward the other person, that person just happens to be the one who is around. People I love and am comfortable with get the brunt of these overreactions. Unlike Susan, I can hold onto a feeling long enough to get home before lashing out. So, those I care about are the ones who get to suffer. Lucky them.
I am not so different from Susan.
Neither are you.
