When I first started studying how to be a parent, I read a lot of claims regarding the importance of monitoring, limiting, or disallowing television and video watching. However, when Willy first started talking again after his regression, he picked up many of his first words from his favorite Thomas the Tank Engine videos. Later, Alex picked up words from Veggie Tales videos. Now, Ben is doing it, though he watches a much larger variety of shows—his viewing habits are far less rigid. Like Willy, Ben is also picking up gestures and facial expressions from the shows he watches.
Mostly, despite the expert advice, I encourage this. In our experience the boys picked up more words (at least, in the beginning) from their intense video watching than they did from their intense therapies. They also had fun and picked up other things. Alex, for example, likes to reinterpret Veggie Tales images in his own art.
But, now Ben’s picked up something I rather dislike. In one of his shows, one of the characters spills something in dramatic fashion. In the show it is an accident. “Oops! Sorry,” the character says. Ben recreates this scene with growing frequency—and for Ben, it is no accident.
He gets the spill part. He gets the “Oops! Sorry!” part. He doesn’t get the accident part. To him, it is a fun, dramatic scene with big movement, emotive expressions, and funny reactions. It’s a fun role to play—for him. Not so for Mark and me; we have to clean up the mess. We’ve even made Ben help—which is a chore by itself, since cleaning up is not so fun and dramatic as spilling is—but he continues to do it. And he still doesn’t get the accident part.
Now, this could be just another frustration that we experience as parents, but over the years of raising my children with autism I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern. Like Ben, Willy picks up on certain aspects of stories at the exclusion of what “we” consider important. Willy reads books for class, and his summaries and book reports have more to do with the things he found engaging and less to do with themes or the point of the book. “What is this story about?” is a question that gives Willy great difficulties. He gets so caught up in the details that he doesn’t see the big picture, so his answers are about those things that caught his interest, not what the book is actually about.
From a teaching perspective, there’s this sense that they’re missing the point. The point of the spill, after all, isn’t how fun it is to spill things or how enjoyable it can be to reenact dramatic moments. It’s about accidents, forgiveness, and taking responsibility. Ben misses that. From a teaching perspective, Willy’s focus on a particular image or scene, at the exclusion of the point of the book, is a mistake. He’s focusing on the wrong thing.
Or so the teachers say. As a writer and storyteller, I’m inclined to agree.
But…isn’t the richness of art that there is something for everyone, or so the artist hopes? Isn’t the point that there is more in any work of art than the artist intends, because the audience brings their own realm of experience to the work? Isn’t that part of it, too? So, why do my boys’ interpretations get dismissed as wrong? Don’t their observations matter? Sure, it’s a different focus than the general population, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
I believe in teaching the boys to see the point of a story—or, rather, the point as it was intended. But I worry that teaching this skill—the ability to think about the story as a whole—is being done at an exclusion of respecting their way of seeing the world. And that worries me.
I wonder how I can teach my boys to see the point as it was intended without disrespecting their attention to details and their own interpretations of works of art. It’s so easy for me, as a writer and a student of stories, to say to Willy, “That’s the wrong answer. The point of the story is…” But saying that is the wrong answer. How do I communicate in a simple, direct way that—while I appreciate his observations and there is room for him to share them—there are expectations that need to be met to satisfy his assignments? How do I teach him to see the whole, without taking away the pleasure he gets from the details?
I don’t know what the answer is to get them to get your point better, but I do know that sometimes the people who were not paying attention to what everyone else thinks is the main point yet are still paying a lot of attention to something eventually can benefit everyone with what they are observed while the rest of the group was fixated on something else. I he this makes sense.
Here’s an article that is sort of related to this: http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2009_BC_etal_Talent_RoyalSoc.pdf
“Abstract
We argue that hyper-systemizing predisposes individuals to show talent, and review evidence that hyper-systemizing is part of the cognitive style of people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC). We then clarify the hyper-systemizing theory, contrasting it to the weak central coherence (WCC) and executive dysfunction (ED) theories. The ED theory has difficulty explaining the existence of talent in ASC. While both hyper-systemizing and WCC theories postulate excellent attention to detail, by itself excellent attention to detail will not produce talent. By contrast, the hyper-systemizing theory argues that the excellent attention to detail is directed towards detecting ‘if p, then q’ rules (or [input–operation–output] reasoning). Such law-based pattern recognition systems can produce talent in systemizable domains. Finally, we argue that the excellent attention to detail in ASC is itself a consequence of sensory hypersensitivity. We review an experiment from our laboratory demonstrating sensory hypersensitivity detection thresholds in vision. We conclude that the origins of the association between autism and talent begin at the sensory level, include excellent attention to detail and end with hyper-systemizing.”
Isabel,
I, too, believe that having a different focus than the norm can be used to benefit everyone, both in art appreciation and in other areas of life. But I also believe it’s important for my children to recognize the main point of a story, both for their own enjoyment and for their educational pursuits. This is not to suggest they must have the same appreciation for that main point, or even agree it’s the most important thing to get out of a story, but I think the recognition thereof is important.
Thank you for the link! The science of it may be over my head, but I’ll check it out.
This is something that we are really focusing on now with my oldest. He is starting to read more detailed books for school. He will be given a reading assignment with a list of questions to answer on it. What I do-is let him answer the way he see’s it..and then, His perceptions are very interesting and oft times bring up details that one wouldn’t regularly comment on. After he is done..I say something along the lines of..what if we looked at it from THIS perspective? I never tell him that his answer isn’t correct-I just encourage him to be able to see that there is more than one way to look at something..
- February 8, 2011 at 12:09 AM
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Kathleen,
That is a good technique. What I’ve started doing with Willy’s latest read-at-home book is to ask him questions from the chapter, both to make sure he’s reading and to help him see some of the things he might have missed. He’s resistant, but we’re making some progress. The school books are harder. He works on those at school and they rarely come home. It’s going to take a few conversations with the school staff to work out that.