The very meaning of Austism is a faliure of communication. To be honest when I first started working at Chileda, I had no idea what Autism was all about, and that every child was different. I had no idea that some kids needed different processing time. By this what I mean is I could say the same thing over and over again, but if I spoke to fast the child would still have no idea what I was trying to say. Autism is like a piece of a puzzle, no two pieces are the same, but eventually, they all fight together to form a big picture.
Shelly, a child with the proceesing time of 30 seconds would get agressive with me everytime I would ask her to do something. What I didnt realize was I wasn't giving her enough time to understand me. This is what she would hear " Can you blah blah blah?" and I would start speaking louder and faster. So now she would assume that I was becoming angry and about to become agressive. So she would become agressive first. She would try to pull my hair and bite me at the same time. Then I learned from one of the teachers, and a veteran staff that she had a slow proceesing time. This means it takes longer for her to interpret what I was saying.
Now when working with Shelly, I talk slow, wait 30 secoonds, then see if she responds accordingly. She has more patiences for me, and I for her. Now that I understand what processing time is, I can better work with children with Autism. They did teach us this in our training, but sometimes training is different than actual field expirence. I had to learn how to communicate with, through the years, at least 50 kids. As I said before about the pieces to a puzzle, but after you learn how to communicate with a child that was never suppose beable to understand you, or you understand them, it is a very rewarding feeling. It has helped me in my own personal life with family, and friends to become a listener, and communicate with better understanding.
I never knew about the concept of the process time. Thats cool you were able to learn how to communicate with Shelly. I really liked the essay overall. Just a few grammatical errors like the word too versus to in paragraph one line four.
ReplyDeleteIn paragraph two I saw a few typo's with the word Processing. I really liked how you said that you didn't understand autism but learned how to better be able to do your job, that might make it easier for both you and the person that you are working with. I also like how you said learning these things for your job has also helped you in your personal relationships.
ReplyDeleteI give a lot of kudos to you for trying to work and understand these type of children. I have two of my own and I have a hard time trying to understand them and work with them. Awesome job with the essay. I like this part of your blog As I said before about the pieces to a puzzle, but after you learn how to communicate with a child that was never suppose beable to understand you, or you understand them, it is a very rewarding feeling.
ReplyDeleteWas a good read, really liked it. I really liked the metaphor using the puzzle piece, was very creative. Just a couple errors I noticed in this one, nothing major though. Good job on this, keep it up
ReplyDeleteIn the field and in a training are two separate things and very frustrating for us to learn. On occasion it feels like we are the one with the disability not them. Connecting is a great thing. Keep up the good work here and at work :) .
ReplyDeleteNice post. You put the reader in a place where they get a chance to see what its like to do your job. I like how you show the learning curve you had to go through and the on the job training. I think the big illustrative sentence is,. Autism is like a piece of a puzzle, no two pieces are the same, but eventually, they all fight together to form a big picture. It puts the disorder in a way another person can understand.
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