As a person with a severe movement and mind body connection disorder, coupled with a variety of sensory processing issues that affect my ability to take in normative auditory or visual input at times, I look and act like I have autism. The reason I look and act like I have autism is because this is what autism is. These issues affect my movements and lock me into motor pathways that may become embedded and intrusive and affect my presentation of myself to the world. I may write more in the future about what I have learned about autism and sensory processing and how it affects us, but today I want to address theories.
The obvious treatment for a sensory and movement disorder affecting all motor issues like handwriting, facial expressions, gesture, speaking, ability to sit for long periods, feel your own body, make eye contact, get out of perseverative motor patterns called stims, initiate, visually scan for items, and be able to show our innate intelligence, would be to focus on movement and to address sensory challenges. Few professionals do this, but some do, like Soma, as well as movement and exercise specialists.
Theories about autism by people who have degrees, titles and prestige but little understanding of autism have been the norm. I have recently learned that in France where I can eat a baguette and enjoy a café aux lait in the shade of the Eiffel Tower, I would also be treated with psychoanalysis for my “mental illness” because in France my symptoms are due to my emotions, not my neurological disorder. In psychoanalysis I would lie on a sofa mute, because I can’t talk, but my silence would be blamed not on my motor/mind communication, but on my parents, specifically my mother. They will say she created my autism by coldness and rejection of me, despite all evidence to the contrary. Moreover, treatment will include “Le packing,” wrapping me tightly in cold, wet sheets for some bizarre reason. I may only be a person with autism, and not a brilliant French psychoanalyst, but I would like to try this treatment on you, you arrogant know-nothing.
Here in ABA-land, theories are equally misguided, but less cruel. Still, 40 hours a week of touching flashcards won’t help a toddler who may have an inability to focus visually, or hear speech distinctly in a sea of sounds, or be able to move the way he wants, to gain the sensory control or muscle control he needs to be able to communicate or show his intelligence. That’s because ABA believes autism is a severe learning disability that is treated by drills, rewards and baby talk. This makes recognition of the motor challenges nearly impossible because all the data from the child’s success in performing the drills is interpreted as a measure of how much the child understands speech, and not of whether the child can get his body to move correctly. Therefore if a child is told to jump and he doesn’t jump because he can’t get his body to move at that moment in that way, his failure is chalked up to a lack of understanding the word ‘jump’ even if he damn-well understands the word ‘jump’ and everything else. To interpret data solely based on the belief that a person’s actions are an accurate reflection of their comprehension of speech, leaves out the possibility of helping this motor trapped person address his real needs.
Did I mention it’s 40 hours a week?
Autism treatment is big business, here or there. Change therefore will be slow.
