Modulation, and some videos

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This is the first part. I’ll post more about modulation in the future. The message grew out of an exchange I had with a professor on autism.

From my point of view, autism is pretty simple. I summarize it as: unmitigated auto-feedback due to an overly connected brain. I view it as a communication problem. As a simple issue, it has a simple solution: modulation. Modulation solves everything from speech delay, inability to pay attention, inability to focus, hyperactivity, lack of eye contact, lack of socialization, sensory problems, tantrums, anxiety, etc. One single technique addresses all the issues. These kids can be communicated with, they can learn and grow. The problem is not on the side of children with autism. The problem is on the other side.

I'll give you one recent example. My wife nowadays can communicate very well with my 5-year-old son. But for those tough situations, she still comes to me for help.

My wife came to me the other night and asked me to draw pictures for our son. There was an incident on that evening: my son was playing with some building block toys. He asked my wife to knock down the structure he just built. My wife obliged. He then started to cry, and told my wife: "You are mad." My wife was totally confused. My wife told him: "Mami is not mad. See? Mami is smiling. You asked Mami to knock the building down, so Mami did. Mami is not mad. Mami is smiling." To which, my son replied: "No, you are mad." and kept crying. My wife drew some pictures on the magnetic drawing board, trying to explain to him that my son was the one that told her to knock down the structure. But Ivan (my son) kept crying, and kept saying: "Mami, you are mad." My wife couldn't make him feel better. So, she asked for my help. She told me, Ivan was behaving uneasy since the morning, even before the incident.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN THIS CASE?

It takes time to understand and interact successfully with children on the spectrum. You need to build the foundation. It takes time to build the foundation. What I see is parents/educators neglect to build the foundation for the modulation technique to succeed. People always want to solve issues in 5 minutes. Autism issues are never meant to be solved that way. Parents and educators fail, time after time, week after week, year after year, because they never bothered to invest in building the foundation for communicating with their children.

Ivan talks, now…but that’s because he learned to read first. Ivan can pay attention to picture drawings, now…but that’s because I taught him that skill by making video clips for him first. If my wife draws pictures for Ivan nowadays, it’s because Ivan still communicates better through pictures. Outsiders may not understand that, once upon a time, Ivan had all the signs of ADHD: he couldn’t sit still for 2 seconds, and he couldn’t pay attention to static objects. It was quite a bit of hard work on my side to make video clips, and gradually taught him to focus on stick figures, and from there focus on making eye contacts. I also taught him to read because I included speech bubbles in my videos and drawings. Those are all part of the foundation work.

Now going back to Ivan’s recent tantrum, my wife was obviously confused and helpless.

So what did I do?

First of all, I reminded my wife about the “double-entry ledger” in the brains of children with autism: they don’t forget about bad experiences. The fact that Ivan asked my wife to knock down the structure, and then said: “You are mad”, was his way of telling my wife that, once upon a prior occasion, she had knocked down a structure that he had built, and that he did not like it. Ivan simply summoned my wife’s participation for the purpose of reenactment. His real goal was to tell my wife that she has forgotten to “cancel out” the negative point in his double-entry ledger.

Said otherwise, Ivan was trying to tell my wife a story. Sure, by saying “you are mad,” he actually meant “you were mad at me last time.”

For people that don’t understand the concept of “double-entry ledger” of these children, I wonder how they could ever decipher the message that their children are trying to tell them?

What I did next was this. I showed to Ivan the drawing that my wife has made on the magnetic drawing board, and told him: “Ivan, that happened a long, long time ago. Let it go.” I then sang the Frozen cartoon’s theme song to Ivan: “let it go, let it go, …” and stressed the part about “the past is in the past.”

My purpose was to remind Ivan about good experiences he has had. Obviously all kids like the Frozen movie.

I then told Ivan: “Ivan, boys don’t cry. Is Mami nice to Ivan? I think so. Did Mami give you pizza for dinner? Did you like the pizza? I think so. It was yummy, right? Did Mami take everybody to the beach yesterday? Did Ivan have fun in the ocean? I think so.” I then picked Ivan up, screamed “Big Wave!” and tossed Ivan into the air. I repeated that stunt a couple of times. Ivan was starting to laugh and had fun.

I kept going. I asked Ivan: “why boys don’t cry?” He looked at me for an answer. I then told him: “because boys have fun. Boys can push buttons, right?” then I pushed an imaginary button in the air, and slid the door of the closet open, as if mechanically opening the door of an elevator. That was one of the fun games I played all the time with Ivan: Ivan liked to push imaginary button on the walls, and then waited for me to slide the door close or open. “Why boys don’t cry?” I asked him one more time, and then said: “Because boys have fun.” I then sang a song that I have made up about Cetaphil, the body lotion cream: “…a little bit on my arms, another bit on my faaaace…” I sang the last part of the song and then rubbed Ivan’s face as he giggled. That’s our daily bathroom ritual. After giving Ivan a bath, I always put some Cetaphil on his body. I always put the lotion cream on his face last, and rubbed his face while he giggled. Because we do it every day, I actually made up a whole song about Cetaphil.

I then showed Ivan the magnetic board one more time: “Mami should not have knocked down Ivan’s building. But let it go, let it go…the past is in the past.” Ivan took over the board, and make two large diagonal lines to cross out the drawing. I told him, “Yeah, good job, Ivan!” and did a high-five with him. Ivan went to bed happy.

The next day Ivan was fine the whole day. No more tantrums. I have succeeded in removing the negative entry from Ivan’s double-entry ledger. I was successful because I had tons of tools at my disposal. It was not by chance that I was successful. I have built up my arsenal of tools to communicate with my children, throughout the years.

I didn’t stop there. That evening, after giving Ivan a bath, I drew three parallel frames on the magnetic drawing boards. One showed Ivan playing pushing a button and the bathtub door opening, one showed myself rubbing Ivan’s face while putting Cetaphil on him, the last one showed how I made Ivan into a burrito by wrapping a towel around him, after the bath. Ivan giggled and had fun going through the drawings with me. I took over the drawing board, and wrote down at the bottom: “BOYS DON’T CRY.” I then showed the drawing board to Ivan again, and asked him to read out the sentence at the bottom: “Ivan, what does it say there? Can you read it to Mami?” He had the sweetest laugh and said to my wife: “boys don’t cry.” He giggled and jump into the bed while holding the drawing board.

Parents often spend money to take their autistic children to fun activities: entertainment parks, or expensive vacations. Their children have fun. But they then come home, and forget about all the good time they have had, and life becomes miserable again. To me, all that fun, and all that money have just gone down the tube. All the good intentions and all the money have been wasted.

Parents always want to solve tantrum problems at the heat of the moment. They don’t realize that that’s not the right moment to solve tantrum problems. To solve tantrum problems, kids need to be happy first. They need to have fun experiences first. BUT, those fun experiences shouldn’t go wasted. You solve tantrum problems not when the kids are mad, but when they are happy: when they are at their happiest moments.

Autism simply means unconnected superhighways inside the brains of these children. These children suffer tremendously from negative experiences, because the negative energy runs on these unconnected superhighways and have nowhere else to go. More often than not, when they are mad, there is little you can do to help them. Because that’s not the right moment to help them.

Instead, the right moment to address the tantrum issues is when they don’t have tantrums. You address tantrum issues when the children are happy, laughing and giggling. Like when I gave a bath to Ivan: he had fun. Taking the moment of his happiness, I drew picture for him about his happy experiences, and then, I “modulated in” his sad moments very gently: I simply wrote down: “BOYS DON’T CRY.” Voilà, now a connection has been established to his negative superhighway: it now has an exit ramp. Next time when Ivan throws a tantrum, I can remind him about all the good experiences he has had, and help him get out of the negative loop.

Autism has many manifestations on the surface, but beneath it, it’s just one single issue: unmitigated auto-feedback due to an overly connected brain. To communicate with autistic children, on the surface you need a large number of approaches, but beneath it all, it’s just one single common technique: modulation. Autism to me is one single problem, with one single solution. People get confused by the many faces of autism, because they have failed to see the true nature of autism.

People chase after 5-minute solutions, and waste their children’s lives, year after year. For wanting to solve problems in 5 minutes, they spend 10, 20 or 30 years, and still can’t solve the problems. Invariably, they come to blame their children. To them, their children are sick. Their children have mental illness.

Some people ask me, what they should do when their children do not socialize. They worry their children are not playing with other children.

I just feel so sad for the children of those parents. They don’t understand that they need to invest in the foundational skills of their children first. Those are the parents that want to solve autism in 5 minutes.

I tell them: “you need to make a movie for your children first.”

Those parents think I am crazy. What does making a movie has anything to do with socializing and playing with other children?

My daughter of 7 years old has already learned to make animation movies in her school. She was a first grader in a regular, mainstream public elementary school. Next year she and all the second graders will have a course on robotics.

Many parents complain that it’s too complicated to make movies. To me, that means that these parents are not able to learn the skills of a 7-year-old, and are not able to do what a 7-year-old can do.

And people tell me that autistic children are the problem? If parents cannot do what a 7-year-old can do, tell me, who are the ones that are actually defective? Who are the ones that are intellectually disabled?

To socialize, children need to be able to talk first. They need to have good eye contact first. They need to have deep reasoning skills first. To talk, many of these children need to learn to read first. To have good eye contact, they need to be able to focus on static stick-figure drawings first. To be able to develop deep reasoning skills, they need to be able to produce manual-visual outputs first, meaning ability to draw pictures or build 3D structures with building-block toys. To be able to focus on static drawings, many of these kids need to understand stick figures in animation movies first. To be able to read, they need to be exposed to speech bubbles in stick figure drawing first. For many children, to be able to focus on animation movies, these movies must be attached to their personal daily experiences, or to their personal interests. Parents are the only persons with the intimate life details of their children. To make movies for these children, parents need to learn multimedia production skills first.

Many parents would say: but my children are different. That their children are not visual. That their children are not attracted to movies. That their children cannot focus on movies. Let me tell them an experience I have had. One day, we got a visit from a mom with an autistic child. The child was hyperactive. I tried to draw some pictures for him: no reaction. I tried to show him some of the cartoon movies I have made for my children on the big-screen TV, no reaction. I asked the mom about what cartoons or music the boy liked to watch or listen. I searched on YouTube, played the video clips for him. No reaction. I made some drawings on blank index cards, about the toys the boys was playing with in our home: airplane, school bus, etc. No reaction. At that moment his mom told me: could you draw a xylophone? I drew a xylophone, and there was sparkle in the eye of the boy. His mom told us then that that was one of the boy’s favorite activities: he gets music therapy, and the music therapist would play guitar for the boy, while the boy would play the xylophone. I drew picture of a guitar. I then found a small xylophone toy in our children’s toy collection. I went upstairs and got the guitar we had at home. I don’t actually play guitar. But I anyway strummed the strings of the guitar to make some notes, and the boy played the xylophone along with me. He was so happy. When the boy left our home, he still held onto the two index cards I made for him: one with the guitar, one another with the xylophone. Those two pictures surely caught his attention.

Sure, if I had stopped trying before I drew the xylophone, anyone in the world could tell me that the boy was not visual, that no way he could pay attention to images or picture drawings. But the fact is, the boy was visual. All autistic children are visual, I just have never seen one single exception. The title of my book contains the LIVE acronym: Letters, Images, Voice and EXPERIENCE, where “experience” refers to the experience of the child. All four components must be present, simultaneously, for the communication to succeed. Parents are the ones holding the intimate life details of their children. Yes, the boy was visual, but I was missing the experience of the child. His Mom was the person that held that crucial key to open the door of communication to the boy.

Parents that refuse to make movies for their children are parents that leave their children at the risk of underdevelopment. Invariably, those parents end up blaming their children.

The problem with autism is not on the side of the children. The problem with autism is on the side of the adults. The adults are the ones that are sick and need behavioral correction. The adults are the ones with intellectual disability.

That’s the truly scary part about autism: 70+ years after Leo Kanner’s paper on child autism, we are still treating the wrong patients. The kids are fine, adults are the ones in need of treatment. As a society, we have destroyed the lives of millions of children, because we have refused to look at ourselves in the mirror, and ask ourselves who are actually the sick ones.

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People may get the wrong impression that autism is a big issue to me, or a big cause to me. It is not. To me, there are much bigger issues. Child autism is perhaps one of my least worries.

I look at it this way: today’s 7-year-olds are learning about animation movie making, today’s 8-year-olds are learning about robotics. By the time they are in high school, they will master machine learning algorithms to do predictive analytics, and also get acquainted with the essence of modern physics, in particular learn about how quantum field theories are formulated. They will learn to stop doing the pervasive, single-bit machine reflexes that inundate today’s researchers in social sciences. My children’s generation will be fine. They will be able to go out and stand on their own, and teach themselves new skills, for every single day in their lives. Moreover, from understanding machines, they will come to understand themselves and their role in this new universe. They will become better parents than today’s parents. Frankly, autism will soon become a non-issue.

Between my children’s generation and my generation, there is a gap of 40+ years. That’s a whole generation of 40 years that will suffer. Most adults in this gap of 40 years have never been taught to stand on their own, and teach themselves every day for the rest of their lives. This is the “lost generation” that cannot even learn to make cartoon movie clips for their children, despite having powerful computers at their disposal.

To borrow a sentence that Bill Gates has used: “I don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/01/28/bill-gates-on-dangers-of-artificial-intelligence-dont-understand-why-some-people-are-not-concerned/

The robotic era is already upon us. You find similar messages from many science and technology leaders. Stephen Hawking is just another one of them.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540

We see child poverty right in the midst of Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest regions of the U.S.A. That is right, due to income inequality, many children go hungry, and many parents have to cut their children’s education short. We are not talking about third world countries here. We are talking about one of the richest and most technologically advanced urban areas of the entire world.

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/03/opinion/ctl-child-poverty/

We see taxi drivers in Paris revolting and rioting against Uber.

http://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-of-uber-protests-in-france-2015-6?op=1

To put it mildly, I would say: all this is just the beginning.

Child autism is a problem that affects millions of lives. Un-adaptable workforce affects billions of lives. Child autism will soon become a non-issue. Income inequality will cause social unrest for the next 40 years.

The dimensions of the two problems are simply not comparable.

Inability to adapt and learn, that’s the biggest challenge of our society for the next 40 years, as we enter the brave new world of the technology singularity.

The other day I was reading about “The Three Poisons” mentioned in eastern religions. Basically, human suffering is explained as coming from Ignorance, Attachment and Aversion. Ignorance is ignorance, we know that. Attachment and Aversion are like the attractive and repulsive forces of magnetism. Attachment refers to any form of greed, envy, pride, etc. What I find interesting is the part about Aversion. Already thousands of years ago, people knew that aversion to change is one of the main causes of human suffering. Aversion to change impedes people from learning. With that, comes suffering.

We always think that tomorrow will be the same as today. We think that the way how our parents raised us should be the way how we raise our children. We take certain neurotypical way of raising children as a golden standard. But it’s just not true anymore. The world is changing. There is no such a thing as a golden standard. There is a difference between being a yesterday’s parent vs. being a tomorrow’s parent.

Challenging days are coming. But challenges are opportunities as well. As Cisco’s outgoing CEO John Chambers puts it succinctly: “Either we disrupt or we get disrupted.” The choice is in each person’s hands.

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Animation-style movie can be made today on a smartphone. That is right, with a few clicks and a few strokes, movies can be made in a few minutes. All the necessary apps are free of charge. In a sense, the majority of today’s parents are equipped with some of the most powerful computers at hand, yet they fail to learn to communicate with their children.

Here are just a few of the movies I have made in these last few days. All using only my smartphone. The main Android apps that I have used are:
- Sketch Master by BariLab (also known as MobileSketch or KatalkSketch), this app is the best compromise solution I can find between ease of use and functionality.
- VideoShow, for making movies
- Batch Image Converter, for rotating images.








The “Circuit” video was entirely drawn on subway commute and on airplane, during a recent trip. With these apps, I am able to made several video clips per day. The simple ones take only a few minutes.

So yeap, my 5-year-old son is learning about electronic circuits, which is not my main goal, anyway. My main goal is to open additional channels of communication, and develop his reading skills. Every single video makes him happy, and makes him learn. If my kids are happy, there is a reason: I communicate in their frequency. I talk to them in their native language. Tantrums, anxiety, sensory problems, lack of eye contact, inability to pay attention, etc. are all trivial issues, once you learn to see the true nature of autism, and once you understand what modulation is all about. There is absolutely no need for parents to take the “I am the victim here” attitude. Trust me: the kids are fine. You work hard to communicate with them, they will reward you with their smile. Oh, I am not saying there is a magic pill or shortcut: I have invested years in the development of my children (they are now 5 and 7.) I don't take shortcuts. I build their foundational skills, from zero.

Parents can easily do what I do, and with a few clicks on strokes on their smartphones or tablets, they can change the lives of their children. The hardest part is to give up the excuses, and learn to make movies, as my 7-year old daughter and all her 1st grader classmates can already do in school. A public school.