28 Mar 2017, 3:06 am
It all started informally. During a lunch with some parents with autistic children, I told people that my son learned everything he needed to learn in life from elevators. Then one parent said: "My child also likes elevators!" The another parents said the same thing. Then another one. Then one more. I told them, I regularly take my son to elevator rides. So, we planned for an elevator-riding play date for the children. It was fun. I could see big smiles on the faces of the children. This last weekend, another set of 4 families got together. Oh, and there was a surprise: a girl showed up. That was wonderful, because usually girls don't like elevators, but this girl did. The shopping plaza nearby had 7 elevators. A lot of fun for the children, and good exercise for the parents. While walking between the elevators inside the the parking garage, the children all held hand to walk together. It was a very heartwarming experience.
How can any social skill classes, or device apps, compete with a child's own interest?
So, if your child likes elevators, I highly recommend you start an elevator riding club in your neighborhood. It took me forever to find a group of people to go to elevator rides with my son. But I finally did it.
It's not just riding elevators. You should google for DieselDucy, and let your children watch elevator video clips. That's a start. From there, you can teach your children everything they'll ever need to learn in life, from talking, to drawing, to typing on computers, to writing, to math (addition and multiplication), to electronic circuits, to public speech, to socializing. Yeap, my son learned all that, from elevators.
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One family came too late. So, instead of meeting them for elevator rides, our two families got together for dinner in a restaurant. Only after seeing them in person, I realized that they had two children with Down syndrome, one of them might additionally be on the spectrum, so says a psychologist. Frankly, this was the first time ever for me to interact closely with Down syndrome children. I did not really know how to approach them. So I did the only thing I knew: I pulled out my smartphone, and drew a picture for the girl. (I edited the image here to keep only the initial of her name.)
She had a big smile. I then followed up with drawing a few dots on a paper napkin, and showed her 4 + 8 = 12. And little did I know that she would then spend the rest of the evening drawing pictures, writing short stories, making matrix-like tables and fill in the boxes with either ages ("1 year old", "2 years old", etc.) or list of activities (like "first/then/next/last".) Every time she finished a piece of paper napkin, she'd give it to me, and I'd read out what she wrote, and she would then repeat a few words and have a laugh. It was the most heartwarming experience. It was truly eye-opening for me. I achieved communication with her, and she had fun. As a scientist, on the back of my head, I kept telling myself: "Her visual cortex is intact! Her visual cortex is intact!"
The parents were wonderful, the whole family was happy. Truly happy. Sometimes, when I see comments here of parents with autistic children asking a question like "Why me?" I can only shake my head.
The experience was really unforgettable. Granted, I have only interacted with one little girl. But, if these kids can also be developed visually (and I have no doubt in the case of the girl), then, what have we been doing, as a society? It gives me the shivers.
As I have said, Mother Nature does not make mistakes at the level of the 4 most common AGCs (Atypical Genetic Conditions): color blindness, autism, schizophrenia, and Down syndrome. Mother Nature has been trying to tell us her message for the longest time. But we haven't been listening. The experience this weekend has truly been eye-opening to me. A good weekend.
28 Mar 2017, 8:44 am
