I work with an autistic girl, am I doing the right thing?

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Hi, dear, I admire you because you have a strong sense of responsibility despite your young age. I mean, if you take on this job just to earn $, you won't be so concerned about this girl's recent behavior. Um, I agree with you that the sooner she figures out that people frown upon tattletales the better. Once she is out in the real world, people won't mollycoddle her even if they are aware that she is an Aspie. I don't want her to end up having a crooked moral compass like mine.

You're not really WORKING with her, though; you're 17 with no training. Working with a child involves implementing long-studied techniques in a specific with... RDI, ABA, Floortime. What method are you using and where did you study it?

I just fear that, without this training, you may untentionally be doing a lot more harm than good.

Also, $7 an hour is ridiculous. I charge $50/hour for consultations.

I'm hesitant to give you information on how to extinguish this behavior. Try ignoring it, completely, and rewarding her when she does things well.

Brittninja, I think you are doing a good job. For the girl in question, any time she spends with a person who is trying to show her how cause and effect works etc and who are not her somewhat clueless sounding parents will be time well spent in the long run.

If you can get through to the parents, try to, but I suspect it'll be a thankless task. I'd say carry on as you have been doing and hope the girl is just going through a phase. Good luck.

I'm pretty sure the prblem you are encountering is that she is growing up, and you need to adapt your approach.
One that would work is a serious "smart person to smart person" conversation, in wich you ask her what she likes in a friend. She might answer that she likes playing with them, you can stir the conversation to "what do you think of those kids who never want to play the games you like and are always deciding everything?" help her analyse her own behaviour, and give her a number of times she has to "smile and bear it" when others get to decide, and how much is too much. All kids that age are bossy and want to decide what game everyone is going to play, so she can't just be taught to always accept and follow.
There is just a nuance she has to find between "bossy" and "sheep".
For instance, if someone asks for the game to be changed in the middle of it, she has to accept that someone else is bored and be undestanding. But she's also allowed to get bored and want to change the game. If she never allows people to change the game, they'll never allow her to do the same.

I would also try ignoring her when she is being bad. That will teach her that being naughty is not the right way to get attention.

I think the real problem is, you're trying too hard to "fix" her.

While you are blaming her for everything, she's mirroring what she is sensing from you.

Instead of "what you are doing is bad and giving her a book"

Explain to her without using the term bad behavior when she insists on her rules that it's okay to learn new rules and adapt.

She probably wants to be accepted so she's going to battle with you until you come up with using your own mind why it makes sense to take turns.

Just because she has aspergers doesn't mean she is always wrong and you are always right.

When you are different you can develop a complex about being picked last because chances are at school she is always picked last.

Try gaining an actual understanding of where she is coming from and turn it into a game. Take her out for a reward if she does well like to a park or give her a reward.

If you just keep saying "bad, bad, bad!" It is going to repeat in her head over and over and she's going to think you are being unreasonable. She needs literal input and acceptance to a degree. She is sensing a vibe and face it she's right. Turn that vibe around and understand her sensitivities.

If you think that means you are being soft and it is in fact your role to discipline for every little aspie thing she does, you'll either quit or be fired in no time.

You are doing the right thing. You're turning to Autistics to answer this question. That's pretty commendable. Most professionals I've met either don't do that at all, or, if they do, don't head the advice they get from us.

For the rest of this reply, I give you fair warning. I feel, as you do about your charge, that you need to learn some lessons in reality. That said, this is blunt. No words minced. But it is meant to help.

You are making one mistake that's pretty clear to me. You're misinterpreting behavior that appears as stubbornness as stubbornness. Stubbornness is a deliberate refusal. Though we may be capable of true stubbornness, assuming it is always stubbornness can cause a lot of problems. Sometimes what you see that looks like it, isn't stubbornness at all. The motivation for true stubbornness is always the same. The desire for things to be a certain way and the deliberate refusal to cooperate when you don't get your own way, for NO other reason than that you are not getting your own way.

Autistics can have a very different motivation for behaviors that look just like stubbornness. Motivations that are NOT their fault. Autistics don't just not like change, they NEED consistency. They NEED for certain things to never change. This doesn't mean they cannot learn to adapt to change. It just means their need for consistency in certain things is so much stronger than normal, they may refuse to cooperate at all. To them, it's as if you're asking them to accept reforming the entire planet.

You are misinterpreting her motivation as being the same as stubbornness. It's not.

Another mistake is assuming that what works once, works. It's just not true with Autistics. "Techniques" don't work. You can forget that. One technique may get you the results you want for a while, but it won't for all time. And that's because techniques are all about getting YOU what YOU want from the child. They aren't about what really works in the long run, which is getting to know and understand the child you're working with, from the inside out.

The better you know the child, and the more you respect the child for who she is, FIRST, before asking her to adjust any of her behaviors for YOU, the more long lasting and consistant your results will be.

Having her read "The Bossy Book" does nothing but teach her that you think her behavior is wrong. From there, you "correct" her.

You need to learn one very important concept working with Autistics. We need acceptance FIRST. Acceptance for who and what we are. The reason for that is that you need to earn her respect. Deep respect. Unconditional acceptance of her is the first step toward that level of respect.

You've probably used the bossy book before successfully. What you didn't know is that the whole time you've been using it, she's been catching on to what you've been doing with it. And you probably don't even know what that is. You've been manipulating her into being someone she's not. Manipulating is a strong word, and not really what you've been doing, but you need to understand that's what she thinks. When using the book worked at first, she probably viewed it as some kind of fun game. Over time though, she began to realize you were only getting her to play along to get what YOU wanted out of her.

Remember, I'm not telling you what I think of what you do. I'm telling you what I believe SHE'S thinking.

The incident you told us about happened away from her parents. With only you and the friend present. You're the eldest. You're the authority figure, and she's already established a cooperative pattern with you, a person she's nowhere near as comfortable with as her own parents. She's not likely to tell you she doesn't like what your doing with the book anymore. She is likely to tell her mother.

That's not really "tattletale" behavior either, if you don't mind my saying so. It's not tattling by any stretch. She feels she was manipulated and told she wasn't acceptable (your word). It doesn't matter that you didn't specifically call her "unacceptable." You did though, call her behavior unacceptable. To Autistics, our behavior IS us. We are who we are, and who we are is what we do. They are one and the same. It takes us a long time to learn and accept that they aren't the same thing.

You may think her parents are spoiling her, but it's not your place to judge their parenting. Here is where my own Autistic thinking refuses to accept your explanation.

You know what they say about statements followed by "but" don't you? It means you're about to completely contradict yourself...



...and that's exactly what you did.



Just because she's a little slow? How about, "Precisely because she's a little slow."? I may get into some trouble with certain other users here for making this comparison, but I think it works in this case. If this were a child with Down's Syndrome, would you still not give her any slack?



There's your problem. She's NOT just any other child. She's her! She is herself. She is Autistic. If you drive a dump truck as if it were a car, you're going to get into accidents. Think about it.



Wait, what? Look, I'm not saying to go so easy on her you let her get away with whatever she wants. I have three Autistic sons, and I don't let them get away with murder. But you've got to understand that kids with Autism are NOT LIKE other kids. Our brains don't work like yours. Our ideas of social norms are not the same. We don't "tick" the same as everyone else.

Some of your other phraseology gives away why you're having trouble with her.



She's not a horse for gosh sakes. She's human being with needs that are different from the average child's. You shouldn't want to "break her," you should be wanting to HELP her understand non-Autistic social rules, not by pointing out "wrong" behavior, but by promoting "correct" behavior.

A lot of teaching Autistic kids is in helping them to understand that other people have wants, needs, thoughts and viewpoints of their own. That their wants, needs etc. may be very different from hers. If she wants people to want to play and be with her, she needs to learn to respect other's wants and needs etc.

Right?

Well, here's the problem. If it's all YOU teaching HER, to respect other's individuality, she's BOUND to become more and more uncooperative. Because you need to build a trust relationship with her first. Instead of you teaching HER all these things first, you should first be getting to know and respect HER for who she is, warts and all. Build trust in her. Build her faith in you first. If YOU take the time and effort to at least try to understand who she is first, she'll be far more likely to get to know you, your point of view, and the points of view of others you'd like her to learn to respect and interact with.

I don't believe her parents really paint a picture of rainbows and kittens for her. At least I hope not. I sure don't with my kids. I'm Autistic too, and I have NEVER given them the impression that we live in a paradise.

But you better believe I treat them as special because they are special. Why wouldn't I? Would you treat an egg as a golf ball? Of course you wouldn't. Because an egg is not a golf ball, and will smash if you hit it with a club.

Frankly, I think you might need to ask yourself whether you really believe that Autism is a real disability. A lot of your language and "technique" makes it appear that you don't.

EDIT: BTW, I didn't post a vote in the poll, because though I do think you are tying to be helpful, it's not working, and you're not really being cruel (too strong a word), and "Helpful, but tone it down a bit" is just too nondescript. I think you need to learn a lot more about Autism. A LOT more!

I think... maybe you should focus less on trying to make her act non-autistic, and more on teaching her useful stuff.

You have to realize: Autism is part of how she is made. It's there from the ground up. She'll always have those traits; she'll always have that autistic interaction style and thinking style. She's got a certain set of tools that's different from the usual set.

Analogy here: Say, you want to teach her how to hang a picture on a wall; and you know that everybody in the world hangs pictures by using a hammer to drive a nail into the wall and hanging the picture from that. But she hasn't got a hammer; she's got a screwdriver. To teach her how to put up the picture most effectively, you don't teach her to pretend that her screwdriver is actually a hammer and use it to try to drive nails into the wall. It might work; but it'll eventually damage the screwdriver. Rather, you teach her how to use her screwdriver to put a screw into the wall instead, and hang the picture in her own way--unusual, but effective.

Do you see what I mean by that? Autism means you think differently, fundamentally. She is her own person, with her own traits. Sometimes, if you try to get her to do things the way other kids do them, she may learn them; but she's not well-suited to it and it'll always be clumsy, inefficient, and maybe even stressful or damaging. She's got to learn the things that work for her--to match up her skills, her strengths, to the tasks she needs to fulfill. Creativity's the key, and acknowledgement of who she is and how she's feeling. She knows herself better than anybody else knows her--you might be the expert on taking care of kids; but she's the expert on herself. Use that expertise. She's already being quite creative with her communication; you say she uses pre-memorized sentences to say what she means. That's an autistic trait, sure; but it's also very creative. She can't come up with it fast enough herself, so she just uses words she already knows which will get the message across. That kind of functional echolalia is a bridge to more flexible speech. It shows she knows the most important part about communication already: That you say things to get ideas from your mind to someone else's.

Let her try things, experiment with life. Lots of kids her age get taught that there's only a single right way to do something--you're either right or you're wrong and that's it. They get scared of doing things the wrong way. As you grow up you realize that making mistakes is a way to learn, especially to learn new things. If it doesn't work, you try something else. If you get afraid to make mistakes, you get afraid to learn. You get told "no, that's wrong; no, do it this way; no, no, no," all the time, and it's just so discouraging. It paralyzes you. That's no good way for any kid to live, autistic or not. As she grows older she'll have to find lots of her own solutions. If she solves a problem in an unusual way, that's not a reason to discourage her. She's thinking on her own, learning to deal with the crazy world. It's commendable, if anything.

BTW, regarding her tattling--suggest you sit her and her parents down and have a talk about it, try to figure out what she's trying to do with it. Maybe you've been doing something that annoys her, and she's trying to get you to stop, but doesn't have the communication skills to tell her parents exactly what's going on. The simplest things annoy us sometimes--being forced to wear a scratchy sweater, being exposed to the wrong lighting, the smell of someone's perfume... She could be a bit spoiled, of course. But people do things for a reason, and even if she is spoiled, she's doing this for a reason too.

This really worries me. Have you discussed in detail with her parents and agreed upon the interventions you are using for her? If you haven't then I fear that, with the best of intentions, you are way, way over the line of what you should be doing with this child.

My daughter has a team of professionals at the hospital and at school who discuss everything with me before dreaming of engaging in anything with her. The idea of an unqualified 17 year old taking unilateral decisions with regards to her behaviour modification is unthinkable.

Do you know what you are doing? Your belief that your talking to her about coming last in games works leads me to believe that you don't. How you are dealing with this particular is issue is exactly how I was told NOT to deal with it by people qualified to know.

I don't doubt your good intentions, but seriously, you need to talk to her parents and ask them what they want you to be doing and how they want you to do it. And I agree with others, labelling her autistic behaviour as 'bad' is laying the foundations for a lifetime of mental health and self-esteem problems.

I'm not so worried about her age. 17 is old enough to take care of children. For that matter, 14 is old enough. But the lack of training... yeah, that does worry me. I think you're much better off just being a companion and mentor--not trying to change her behavior. If there's anything an autistic child needs most of all, it's somebody they can trust to accept them the way they are, to like them as themselves. My grandfather did that for me. Honestly, I think it'd be much more therapeutic, period, to have a trustworthy "big sister" around than to have somebody trying anything formally therapeutic. Help her with her homework... do crafts with her... teach her how to jump rope or ride a bicycle. Read stories together. Go out and look for four-leaf clovers. That kind of thing. Seriously, every kid needs time to be a kid.

Exactly. Be her non-judgmental friend. That is what she will need more than anything else from you.

Don't play games where she can come last and feel bad. Play games with no winners or losers. Or if you do have to play, throw the game so she can win and feel good.

My daughter used to love playing monopoly but couldn't cope with the win/lose thing at all. So we got the dog to play one day. She rolled the dice for him, and showed him the card when he 'landed' on something. If he ran off with it, it meant he wanted to buy that one. She wanted the dog to win more than she wanted to win herself. It was silly and funny and she laughed till she cried. She still has fond memories of that game today, 10 years later.

Well... I dunno bout the win/lose thing. I think that depends on the kid, really. Some kids want a game where they have a fair shot, and can win if they try hard, but aren't guaranteed to win. Others don't want games with winners and losers at all. And yet others don't mind if you let them win. As a kid, I would have been the sort who wanted a fair game, or a game that wasn't competitive at all. I loved making things, learning things, reading stories, and interacting with animals.