Transition and Autism

As another exam season draws to a close it is time for many students to be thinking about transition. For some young people this may be the transition to employment, an apprenticeship or to university; for others it might be to a college or sixth form, and for younger students the transition may be to secondary school or simply to a new class or year group.

Photo by Nesstor4u2 at Morguefile.com

Transition can be a difficult time for anybody, even adults who would consider themselves to be relatively competent and confident.  Just think back to the last time you began a new job or perhaps even just had to go somewhere new to attend a meeting. Your excitement was likely to have been tempered somewhat with an element of trepidation or worry: What would be expected? What would the people be like? Would you find the right place and get there on time? What if x, y or z happened?

Photo by GaborfromHungary at Morguefile.com

For times of transition for girls and young women on the autism spectrum, try multiplying these usual anxieties by five and then adding some other difficulties into the mix too!

• Girls and young women on the autism spectrum can often experience almost constant anxiety as a result of connecting differently with others, frequent misunderstandings and working hard just to ‘fit in’ or appear ‘normal’. Routines and structure can help to make the world a more manageable and predictable place so it is perhaps unsurprising that the thought of change will be unsettling.
• Many girls on the autism spectrum will lack a friendship group and therefore lack supportive friends to act as a sounding board for their worries.  They might also miss out on information about transition and new environments which others have just ‘picked up’ through general conversation and interaction.
• There can be additional sensory sensitivities that these girls can worry about and be unsure how to cope with.
• Difficulties forming friendships often go hand in hand with autism and these difficulties can be amplified at times of transition.
• As students become older, more independence is expected, which can be difficult for those on the autism spectrum, especially if they were reliant on a lot of adult support in previous settings.
• Difficulties with low self-esteem or a lack of confidence may make asking for help or trying new things even more difficult. 

So, as the time of transition approaches, being aware of some of these additional difficulties can help you to support girls and young women on the autism spectrum more effectively. There are many things that can help:

• Providing additional written information or websites about what to expect 
• Virtual and real life tours of facilities
• Buddy systems and key workers to meet before transition and discuss worries
• Additional support in the first few weeks in the new environment, especially with developing friendship skills, assertiveness and participation

Many more ideas and resources for supporting transition can be found in ‘Educating and supporting girls and young women with Asperger’s and autism: a resource for education andhealth professionals’.

-Victoria Honeybourne

Speechmark author Educating and supporting girls and young women with Asperger’s and autism: a resource for education andhealth professionals

A visual thesaurus can make all the difference

The idea for The Blob Visual Emotional Thesaurus came from my experiences teaching writing in the classroom. Like most teachers, the need to encourage children to edit and improve their work is an endless task. Having a pile of thesauruses in the middle of each set of desks is helpful to further enrich children's vocabulary.

This was especially true when it came to developing characters feelings -teachers who encourage children to include this in their stories usually end up getting happy or sad! When I told them to look for alternatives in the thesaurus, they would select the most unusual, because they had no idea what these words meant.

In the Visual Emotional Thesaurus, this has been overcome in two ways. Firstly, every feeling has an image to visualise how a character might feel. When trying to use words outside of their experience, that is essential. Secondly, a visual range of feelings has been developed so that children can select how intensely their character might be feeling.

This book has been developed to empower writers and to reduce the need for teachers to have to intervene during the redrafting process.

The Blobs have been used to illustrate the feelings. They have no gender, age, fashion or colour, enabling all children to read and identify with the feelings. Blobs have been used in all key stages of education, which means that confident infant readers can access these emotional words as well as older children.

- Ian Long

Speechmark illustrator of Blobs

What do you think about when you have toothache?

Please consider that question before we move on?

I was in Bradford recently. Facilitating a team of workers who are on the frontline
and facing difficult behaviour and aggression daily. Yet they love the young people they work with.

Those who had been excluded from school, little response, little change and little sign of hope. Still each of the group yearned to be of developmental assistance to them.

I asked them that question:

'When you have toothache, what do you think about?'
No pause.
An immediate answer from one worker
as we all stood in the circle -
"Toothache"
was the answer.

If we have toothache we struggle to concentrate on anything else.
Restless as a wolf - we feel like the cheese is falling off our cracker. Nothing else really matters.

We can see a person's behaviour but we cannot see their experience.
We can be so preoccupied by their behaviour that we don't see
beyond behaviour.

Difficult behaviour can get under our skin.
Feelings rise within us.
As emotionally intelligent as we may be the feelings we have stimulate us, sometimes, to make a regrettable response.

This is applicable in the staff room, the classroom, the team meeting, the prison, the street, the office, at home, and certainly not only when we are transacting with humans with special needs.

The way I work on awareness and skill development is by using Experiential Exercises including Blob Tree Tools.

The objectives are:

•          Become more aware of our own feelings.
•          Becoming more able to get into contact with them.
•          Develop emotional literacy by being able to give each a feeling name.

So there in Bradford we throw the Blob Feelings Ball around the circle.
'Motion changes emotion' I say.

An activity, doing, is the best way to learn - to practise.
So the ball is thrown around the circle, the miss-catching it is part of the-bouncing-around fun as the ball creates smiles as humans live in expectancy as to who will receive the ball next.

The Blob figure nearest your right thumb -
'what does that Blob feel like?' I ask.
I ban the use of 'happy or sad' as all feelings can be tossed in those headings.
So minds are stretched - everyone engaging in the struggle to articulate.
Even seasoned professionals struggle to find the appropriate word.

I often ask more questions as 'right thumbs' develop their literacy.
'Describe a young person you know who feels like that?'

'When one of your youngsters feels like that, what behaviour does it drive?'

When a group is ready - the questions may become deeper and more personal-
'When did you last feel like that?'

Awareness always precedes skill.
By becoming aware of our own emotional literacy, or lack of, we can then be more sensitive to the feelings of others. More importantly, we can begin to see beyond behaviour to be more in touch with a person's toothache.

Next time I will click about working with special needs groups. I want to share some methods of how I engage them with the crisp objective of making available more tools for their life toolbox.

- Pip Wilson
Beautiful Human Person
Speechmark author of Blobs

Hearing Voices is Actually Like Being in an Abusive Relationship

Hearing voices is one of the most shocking mental experiences that a person can have because it immediately raises the question: Am I mad? Beyond this, voices are highly abusive, and attack the person’s self-worth. As such they are totally and instantly disruptive in the person’s life.

In my whole career as a clinical psychologist, I have never come across any other group of people who are so consistently battered by their mental experiences. However, following closely are those nearest to the person who is experiencing voices and who ultimately become their carers. Shock, confusion, anger and ultimately grief and hopelessness assail the carer.

Hearing voices will need specialist attention and here we discover the third group of people who are often floored by voice-hearing; the clinicians and other workers who get involved. There were many occasions that training was requested for clinicians in this area so that they could be equipped with some tools to assist their clients.

On the Frontline with voices speaks to all three groups and it is constructed to do so from within each group’s frame of reference.

One further objective of my book is to fit with early intervention, as the longer voices are present, the more they become embedded and the more they disrupt the person’s life. It is also true that within the context in which they commonly occur, it all becomes a family breaker and may in fact cause stress related mental health problems in carers as well.

For me it has always been a privilege to work with people troubled by voices as the experience is no less than someone trying to survive an abusive relationship. This then is my point of departure; strategies to deal with an abusive relationship so that the person can once again take up their rightful place in society.

Keith Butler 
Speechmark author of On the Frontline with Voices - A Grassroots Handbook for Voice-hearers, Carers and Clinicians