There are perhaps few aspects of the behavior of children with autism that cause as much emotion and misunderstanding as disruptive behavior; these include aggression towards others, high-pitched screams, self-harm, disobedience and refusal to obey orders to do something, the desire to run away, etc.
Disruptive behavior is common in most children with ASD, at least at some stage in their development. It is true that some children tend to be passive and obedient, but these qualities are not as typical as the tendency to engage in destructive behavior in response to stress and frustration. When this frustration is not dealt with or is dealt with inappropriate ways, aggression is the natural result. Aggressive behavior begins a chain of events that leads to further problems: exclusion from community activities, stress to family members, and fewer opportunities for therapeutic intervention than would normally exist.
At school and at home
As more and more children with different forms of autism find themselves in mainstream schools designed for ordinary children, teachers have to put much more effort into combating aggression in their classrooms. But teachers want to be teachers, not therapists. They rightfully believe that schools should provide education and not turn into treatment centers. There are not enough knowledgeable counselors available to help the many children diagnosed with autism who enroll in free secondary schools. Teachers in the classroom are left to their own devices and have to rely on parents to guide children and guide their development, although parents often believe that teachers and schools should be able to solve such problems themselves. After all, they are the “experts”.
It is especially difficult when aggression manifests itself only either at school or at home, because there is always the possibility of mutual reproaches and accusations. It is very tempting to deal with aggression without feeling guilty about it. As for Ernst, he behaved much worse at school than at home. The teachers explained this by saying that they demanded “proper” behavior from him, and insisted that his parents do the same at home. This will provide greater “coherence” to their actions ( favorite word consultants who have a vague understanding of children with various forms of autism). As a result, Ernst's parents experienced not only shame and humiliation, but also a sense of guilt.
Sometimes the situation is diametrically opposite: some children with some form of autism display more disruptive behavior at home than at school. This may be a response to severe sibling conflict that occurs when parents are unable to influence other children's typical rejection of the fact that a child with autism is treated differently from them. Without going into too much detail, let's just say that when other siblings feel left out because a child with autism is given more attention and treated more leniently, it is necessary to make sure that normal children understand why for them and for the child with ASD there are different rules and why a sick child regularly has fun alone with one of the parents for some time.
However, significantly more problems create situations in which the school is so structured and organized that a child with autism behaves appropriately within its walls, but returns home in such a stressful state and with such frustration that he is unable to cope with the normal stresses and pressures of family life. At the age of seventeen, Jane was obsessed with Barbie dolls. When she came home from school, she wanted only one thing - to dress her dolls in the same clothes over and over again. If there weren't enough clothes, she would become so furious that she would start screaming, screaming and throwing things at the wall. The more difficult it was for her at school, the more actively she insisted on playing with dolls at home. When the school began to make less stringent demands on her knowledge and provided her with some free time, her family became much more at ease with her. However, her behavior at school never caused any problems! Jane's destructive behavior tended to manifest itself only at home and was directly related to the academic demands of school. By carefully studying the school environment and assessing home reactions to it, we were able to formulate this hypothesis and subject it to systematic testing. When we changed Jane's curriculum to a less "academic" curriculum that focused on building everyday life skills, the tantrums she had been experiencing at home finally subsided.
But the problem of destructive behavior does not have simple solutions and sometimes extraordinary measures are required, such as drug treatment, physical restraint or light punishment. But one method should be excluded completely: the struggle for power between the child and the adult (parent or teacher). In the face of aggression, some adults begin to limit the child more, deprive him of rewards, lightly punish him and criticize him, and become impatient. The child senses this, and in response, aggressive behavior worsens. A chain of events occurs that leads to an escalation of behavioral difficulties; as a result, the adult begins to restrict the child even more, which in turn leads to even more aggressive behavior. Challenging behavior in adults should never be viewed as a “challenge” that requires increased control. There is no winner in this power struggle, especially when it involves a child with ASD who doesn't understand that if he gives in a little, an adult will do the same. A child with autism may not understand or be able to quickly recognize that their behavior is affecting an adult. It may seem to him that the adult’s impatience and critical attitude are unfounded. As a reaction to adult actions, aggressive behavior primarily increases because children with autism cannot communicate effectively verbally, or because they do not intuitively understand why another person would not allow them to do something.
Reacting to behavior after the fact often doesn't work; deprivation of social attention lacks the motivational value it has for ordinary children. In contrast, children with some form of autism are never “difficult” because of their need for attention: such desires tend to be absent from their “emotional vocabulary” precisely because their world revolves on a different axis, one in which social contacts are not considered the greatest value.
When aggression increases so much that it gets out of control, temporary exclusion from school or kindergarten is often the end result of such a struggle between the child and the teacher. However, such a measure can only be resorted to if the safety of either the child with autism or the safety of other children is at risk, and even then for a very short period of time. IN best case scenario this gives the school a chance to cool down and take a breather. As for the child himself, the positive results of this step for him are small, if they exist at all. Temporary exclusion deprives him of the opportunity to be in the company of other children in a “normal” environment and benefit from this for himself. It doesn't work as a deterrent either. On the contrary, in real life it encourages destructive behavior because children understand that if they misbehave, they will be sent home where they can play computer games or watch TV. Young children with autism and Asperger's syndrome benefit greatly from being around typically developing children, giving them the opportunity to learn reasonable social and communication skills in natural settings.
Communication with peers
The fact that peer influence has a beneficial effect on children with ASD is evidenced by the results of some studies. In these demonstration projects, typical children interact with children with ASD under the supervision of a psychotherapist who ensures that all activities are fun and provide opportunities for social interaction and communication. Children with autism can engage in many aspects of social play that are appropriate to their developmental level and their communication skills. Even being in the middle of a game like Ring Around Rosie can teach a child with autism to enjoy being around other children instead of actively avoiding them. As an added benefit, such interaction gives typical children an even greater opportunity to be with classmates who have special needs—an experience that fosters feelings such as empathy and caring, and which they are deprived of if the child with autism is removed from the group at that time. when he starts behaving aggressively.
Communication with peers, which benefits both typical children and children with autism, can also take place at home. Particularly fortunate in this sense are those children with ASD who have younger sisters, for sisters are extremely inclined to involve older brothers and sisters in their games and amusements. Families with many cousins and sisters or who live where there are many children can easily take advantage of these benefits and encourage their children with autism to interact with them. The more social contact a child with autism has, the more opportunities he or she has to acquire social and communication skills. In some children with some form of autism, these activities have been extremely helpful in developing these skills. Those children with autism who do not yet have the basic social and attentional skills needed for such interactions may need more active face-to-face therapy with an adult before they are ready to learn in more natural settings.
Parents come to the conclusion that methods that work well with normal children—isolation in the nursery or long breaks in play—do not work with children suffering from various forms of autism, just like temporary exclusion from children's group usually not suppressive aggressive behavior children with ASD. No doubt, play breaks are good for parents to "take a breather," and as such they are certainly worth considering, but parents should not feel that by doing so they are teaching their child with autism to "behave."
Some children with ASD learn to use aggression as a way to avoid difficult situations, and temporarily excluding them from the children’s group or sending them to a “respite” in the nursery means teaching them that they can avoid these difficulties. If a child finds certain activities difficult to perform in class—listening to someone read a book aloud, sitting surrounded by other children, or solving an arithmetic problem—he may find it easier to punch the teacher's aide than to perform that activity.
Nikolskaya O.S.
Learning problems for autistic children
The transition line to school age is a critical period for every family raising a child with a disability mental development. Will the child go to school, will he stay in school, will correctional work with him continue, will there be hope for improving his social adaptation in the future?
For a family raising a child with autism, such questions often arise regardless of the formal level intellectual development a child, regardless of the maturity of his orientation to be a student, to go “like everyone else” to school, and to the possible possession of some academic skills. Difficulties in contact with adults and, especially, with peers, adaptation to new conditions, voluntary organization of attention, assimilation of socially correct forms of behavior and, conversely, an abundance of reactions and actions that are strange for everyone, disorganizing the behavior of other children, often call into question the possibility of such a child’s stay At school.
Such problems face the families of about twenty out of every 10 thousand children. This is precisely the frequency of manifestations of childhood autism and similar mental development disorders - cases that require a unified educational approach to training and education.
Childhood autism is a special disorder of mental development. Its most striking manifestation is a violation of the development of social interaction and communication with other people, which cannot be explained simply by a reduced level of cognitive development of the child. Another characteristic feature is stereotypy in behavior, which manifests itself in the desire to maintain constant familiar living conditions, resistance to the slightest attempts to change anything in the environment, in the child’s own stereotypical interests and stereotypical actions, in his addiction to the same objects.
This is a pervasive disorder of mental development, i.e. a disorder that affects all aspects of the psyche - sensorimotor, perceptual, speech, intellectual, emotional sphere. In this case, mental development is not just disrupted or delayed, it is distorted. The very style of organizing relations with the world and understanding it is changing. At the same time, it is characteristic that the greatest difficulties of such a child are associated not even with the acquisition of knowledge and skills (although this is quite difficult for many autistic children), but with their practical use, and he shows himself to be the most helpless precisely in interaction with people. It is indeed difficult to help such a child.
Childhood autism, a general type of developmental disorder, externally takes very different forms. It includes both a deeply maladjusted speechless child with a low level of mental development and children with brilliant “adult” speech and precociousness in abstract areas of knowledge, selective talent. Both, however, require special pedagogical and psychological assistance. Knowing the characteristics of autistic children will help the teacher to include them in the teaching process.
Let's consider what most often awaits an autistic child in the existing education system. In some, the most severe cases associated with a profound impairment of mental development, such a child is immediately recognized by the PMPC as unteachable and the family is left with virtually no help from teachers and psychologists for the rest of the child’s growing up.
At the same time, the experience of experimental work shows that even in these most difficult cases, if adequate conditions are created, a child’s learning is possible. He can master previously inaccessible ways of communicating with other people, become more adapted in everyday life, and master certain teaching techniques.
It is known that with age such a child can spontaneously become less autistically isolated, more focused on social life. Thus, even if the first attempts to start training were unsuccessful, they must be repeated after some time again and again.
Sometimes such children receive a recommendation to study individually at home according to the program of a mass or auxiliary school. In these cases, however, the child rarely receives a truly individualized program. special education. Teachers in mainstream and even special schools, unfortunately, are usually not familiar with the special needs of autistic children. There are no goals of helping the child develop his everyday adaptation to home life, practical communication skills, or social development. Usually, teachers simply formally supervise training in general educational programs, the main burden of which falls on parents, and do not ask the question whether the knowledge acquired by the child will ever be used by him in real life.
In addition, under these conditions, an autistic child finds himself in a situation of artificial isolation, which further limits his opportunities for social development. He does not see other children, other models of social behavior, he is not faced with real tasks of complicating his interaction with the world and people. It should be noted that, as a rule, he perfectly distinguishes between situations of real urgent need and artificially organized training, and learning is more effective in the first case.
The third option is the possibility of placing an autistic child in a class of a regular mass or special school, where, again, the learning conditions are not specially adapted for him. This not only makes learning difficult, but also creates a host of behavioral problems. Very soon, the characteristics of such a child may lead to a decision by the teaching staff to place him in individual education. Teachers should be aware that they often cause trauma. An autistic child experiences enormous difficulties in organizing social contacts, but he also experiences a need for them. A loss social status“disciple” is experienced painfully by him. The resulting negative experience complicates future attempts at social adaptation.
However, there are also cases where an autistic child continues to attend school and is taught in a classroom throughout the entire period of primary or even the entire period of schooling. Unfortunately, we are forced to admit that its inclusion in the life of the school is often of a mechanistic nature. He may internalize common stereotypes correct behavior and, learning not to disturb others, exists next to them. Laconically, but formally correctly answers the teacher’s questions, and can even accumulate great knowledge in certain areas. Knows the names of teachers and classmates, but does not address other people himself, does not take part in the real life of the class. In a word, without additional pedagogical efforts he does not master more complex, more flexible forms of relationships with other people. Even good teachers usually do not know that such an apparently detached child actually needs contact with adults and peers, and with adequate work he can understand more about his surroundings and can participate in the life of the school in a less mechanical way.
In the absence of adequate work with the class, such a child in adolescence often goes through a period of alienation from his more prosperous classmates. They may take pleasure in provoking him to behave incorrectly. The social naivety of such a child makes him a convenient object for such “entertainment.” Only a passionate desire to learn and to be with others allows him to continue going to school at this time.
A special case is the situation of a gifted autistic child. Quite often, an autistic child with high intelligence does not come to the attention of the PMPK; moreover, he easily passes the selection committees for prestigious lyceums and private gymnasiums. He captivates his future teachers with his unconventionality, passion, and talent, which can manifest itself in the field of technical design or in mathematics, music, drawing, and learning foreign languages. Their expectations, as a rule, very soon cease to be justified. In addition to the difficulties of organizing behavior, it turns out that such a child prefers to learn on his own according to his own logic and what he wants, outside the system of advanced educational technology. Difficulties in organizing interaction are perceived with irritation, and the family often receives a refusal with the wording “your child does not meet the concept of our school.”
These cases are especially unfortunate because the giftedness of such a child, with patient work, can actually serve as a basis for the development of his social skills. Moreover, they show how even our best teachers are primarily aimed at the best way to give knowledge to the extent that even for them there is no general context for the introduction of a child into life.
The characteristics of the mental development of a child with autism determine the need to create special forms of organizing it. schooling. Of course, for such children it is necessary to create a special type of school with its own psychological and pedagogical program correctional work, corresponding to their special needs, where the very organization of the environment, the interaction between the teacher and the child will make it possible to make the most of and develop his abilities for learning and social adaptation.
The organization of such schools, we hope, is a matter of the near future. At the same time, even now, teachers at schools where such children study, taking into account their problems and the nature of their difficulties, can help them both in training and in organizing socially adequate forms of behavior and contacts with peers. Keeping such a child in school, creating more adequate learning conditions for him means preserving his desire for life together with other people, the family’s hope for a better future for the child.
An autistic child vitally needs social contacts with other people, with normal peers. But we must note that this is not a one-sided need. In the same way, “healthy” children need contact with others for their normal mental and social development. Organizing assistance for a child with special needs allows the teacher to create a healthy moral atmosphere for class life.
Let us dwell on the features of the pedagogical approach to an autistic child. Let's try to determine how best to conduct his pedagogical examination; how to organize his life at school; determine the objectives, methods, content of training; to establish special work on socialization, complicating and intensifying his contacts with the world, organizing interaction with other children.
We hope that taking these features into account can contribute to the development and implementation of an individual correctional pedagogical program for an autistic child studying in a mainstream, speech or auxiliary school.
PEDAGOGICAL EXAMINATION OF AN AUTISTIC CHILD
Difficulties in examining an autistic child are associated not only with difficulties in establishing emotional contact, with the frequent inability of the child to voluntarily concentrate on a task. Mental development disorders determine the heterogeneity and ambiguity of all manifestations of such a child. Dexterous in his movements, he immediately shows extreme clumsiness in completing tasks, having clearly uttered a long “profound” phrase, he immediately finds it difficult to answer the simplest question, easily solving visual-spatial problems himself, he does not understand how to fill in the fields in a notebook. It often seems that such a child simply does not want to contact the teacher. All this, of course, complicates the pedagogical assessment of his level of knowledge and skills, and ability to learn. Moreover, both underestimation and overestimation of the child’s capabilities are possible. In both cases it is harmful to him.
We will get a more adequate idea of the child if we organize the examination situation more flexibly than usual. Considering his difficulties in establishing contact, the underdevelopment of means of communication, the fear of a new situation, a stranger, we should, if necessary, allow parents to be present during the examination, ask them to bring aids familiar to the child to begin work, outwardly present the examination as a familiar situation, perhaps like going on a visit. We must not rush to directly address the child, give him time to get used to it, and show his own initiative in contact.
Taking into account the difficulties of a child’s voluntary organization, the difficulties of interacting with him: instability of combining attention on a common object with an adult, inability to engage in flexible dialogue (verbal and active); rigidity, rigidity of his entire line of behavior, it is advisable to find the combination of direct, arbitrary and indirect methods of organization that is individually necessary for this particular child. The teacher's direct appeal and verbal instructions should be introduced very carefully, especially at the beginning of the examination. Greater emphasis should be placed on the child’s indirect organization with the help of the environment, when the very structure of space, a tool, a toy provokes him to complete a task.
First of all, we usually give the child the opportunity to express himself in a situation that is well organized by the visual field - in non-verbal tasks of addition, correlation, sorting, construction, in which such a child can be successful. By joining this activity, the teacher can assess the child’s ability to imitate, use hints, accept other types of help, establish verbal interaction, and voluntarily follow the teacher’s instructions.
In the case of examining an autistic child with well-developed speech and a special intellectual orientation, such an involuntary structuring role can be played by the stereotypical interests of the child himself. A teacher often encounters a child’s stereotypical obsession with a certain topic (this could be a diagram of subway lines, or the design of a household electrical appliance, or a section of botany), when he, “saddled with his hobby,” without taking into account the interests of the interlocutor, returns to it again and again, utters one thing and the same thing, rejoices at the same things, asks the same questions, expects the same answers.
By using stereotypical interest to combine attention with the child, the teacher can gradually approach the exploration of the possibility of complicating the interaction. In these cases, it is important to both assess the intellectual level of the child’s stereotypical interest, the knowledge he has accumulated in line with this interest, and assess the interest in the interlocutor, the possibility of taking into account his reactions, the perception of new information - the possibility of organizing a dialogue.
To adequately assess a child’s capabilities, it is necessary to clearly distinguish between his achievements in spontaneous manifestations, stereotypical interests and results obtained when attempting to arbitrarily organize such a child in his actions at the request of the teacher. Results may vary enormously. Motorically dexterous in his spontaneous movements, such a child may have extreme difficulty repeating a movement when asked; Having spontaneously uttered a phrase clearly, he can demonstrate blurred, ungrammatical speech when necessary to answer the question posed. It's not that he doesn't want to, he really can't repeat his achievements arbitrarily.
The results obtained in a situation of arbitrary organization reflect the currently existing learning opportunities and social organization of the child. The child’s achievements in his spontaneous activity, in line with his stereotypical interests, give us information about possible directions of correctional work.
The difficulty of assessing correctional work with an autistic child It also lies in the fact that he has difficulty transferring the developed skill to another situation, to interaction with another person. He cannot independently and freely use his knowledge and skills in real life. On the one hand, this means that, having practiced a skill in a school setting, the teacher must monitor how it transfers to other settings and, if necessary, carry out additional work at home. On the other hand, the teacher must carefully consider the parents’ information about what the child is capable of at home, and, if possible, organize special work to transfer the child’s useful skills to the school situation.
SPATIO-TEMPORAL ORGANIZATION OF AN AUTISTIC CHILD AT SCHOOL
The difficulties of an autistic child in voluntarily organizing himself in space and time, the difficulty of an active dialogue with the world, the inability to feel confident in a situation whose development is unpredictable - all this makes necessary special work on organizing his life at school. It is necessary to help the child create a stable, adequate stereotype of school behavior.
Firstly, this concerns assistance in mastering the school space. The child’s confusion and anxiety will decrease if he clearly understands his main place of study, and what he should do in all other places of the school where he goes. As a rule, this requires special patient work. In some cases, it is possible to use a diagram or school plan. Maintaining consistency in the spatial organization of a child's life at school will help avoid many behavioral problems.
Secondly, such a child needs help in organizing himself in time. He needs to master a particularly clear and stable schedule for each current school day with its specific order of switching from one activity to another, coming to school and leaving home, the order of these days in the school week, the rhythm of working days and vacations, holidays during the school year.
When planning the activities of such a child, it is necessary to remember his high mental satiety and slight physical exhaustion. Therefore, it is important for him to organize an individual, adapted rhythm of classes, the possibility of timely switching and rest. This can be done even in a classroom setting, by planning for such a child the opportunity to temporarily leave the general rhythm and listen to a certain text or piece of music using the player, and then return to general activities.
The deeper the child’s autistic maladjustment, the more extensive the assistance in mastering these schedules should be, the more detailed they should be worked out, the more specific and visual their forms should be. And in all cases, this should be personally addressed to the child, present in his diary, a separate notebook or hanging on the wall next to the child’s desk, and consist of symbols that are understandable to him - drawings, photographs or inscriptions.
It is necessary to take into account that such a child must be taught how to use the schedule. As a result of such work, self-organization can significantly improve, and “behavioral” problems associated with impulsivity, distractibility, and switching difficulties can decrease. New activities introduced as an addition and the development of a stable schedule will be more easily accepted by such a child, who usually rejects any attempts at change.
FEATURES OF ORGANIZING THE TEACHING PROCESS OF AN AUTIC CHILD
Difficulties in voluntary concentration, concentrating on joint activities, imitation determine special tactics in organizing the learning process itself. In a randomly organized situation, everything is difficult for such a child: he is motorically awkward, does not grasp the pattern of movement as shown, and has difficulty mastering the sequence necessary actions, “does not see” the working space of the page, cannot distribute or coordinate their movements in it. He tries to answer as condensedly and echolically as possible, so as to only indicate the answer, and loses intelligence even in those areas where he acts successfully on his own. Such a child is practically incapable of overcoming difficulties. The slightest failure can provoke him to abandon further attempts to work.
On the one hand, here, as in working with a small child, with a preschooler, it is very important to make maximum use of the opportunity for involuntary learning, assimilation of new information, new skills in an optional situation, in game form, when a sample of a new skill, a new speech form, new knowledge is given to the child exactly at the very necessary moment when he needs it. In this case, the child more often gets the opportunity to independently use what he has learned and can transfer the skill to another context.
Of course, basically such work should be organized at home, in a situation of extracurricular contacts with the child, and its techniques should be taught first of all to his relatives, those who are with him all the time. At the same time, its share can be large at school, not only during recess, but also in the classroom. This is especially true for teaching social behavior skills, communication with peers and adults: practicing the ability to make a request, ask a question, and answer a greeting or appeal yourself.
On the other hand, hard work is needed to develop the possibility of voluntary organization of such a child. We know that without arbitrary organization it is impossible normal development higher mental functions person. The question of how much we can teach an autistic child to actually learn is the question of how much we can overcome the distortion of his mental development. In order for an autistic child to have the opportunity to gradually master the learning situation, it must be as structured as possible.
With the child (with the help of a schedule), the sequence of preparation for the school day, for the lesson should be specially worked out, if necessary, a visual diagram of the organization of the workspace, a set of necessary educational materials, and the sequence of preparatory actions should be drawn up.
In the teaching itself, as well as in the examination situation, it is important to dose the use of direct verbal instructions and make maximum use of the child’s indirect organization by structured space: marking a desk, a page, visually indicating the direction of movement, including in the task moments when the educational material itself organizes the child’s action - completing an action that has already begun, adding a missing part, sorting by pattern, etc. The sequence of operations should also be presented to the child clearly.
Due to the difficulty of imitation and reformulation of the action scheme (offered to the child by demonstration), direct physical assistance in organizing the action becomes of great importance in learning: the adult begins to work with the child’s hands. Gradually, with the assimilation of the action pattern, physical assistance decreases and the role of verbal regulation increases.
For a normal child or a child with a simple mental retardation, it is possible and even fruitful to first master individual elements of the skill being practiced and then combine them into a whole meaningful action. Thus, the teacher leads the child to the skill of reading through mastering letters, working with syllables, achieving the ability to put syllables into words, words into phrases. A child learns to write by mastering the writing of individual elements of letters and only then the letters, words and phrases themselves. For a child with autistic development, this path may not be productive. For him, the easier path is not from the part to the whole, but from the whole to the elaboration of its parts.
This is his characteristic path of development. Of course, normally there are children whose knowledge of the world is more characterized by a movement from a part to a synthesis of the whole, and children who move from a whole image to its particulars. The autistic child represents the pathologically extreme variant here. For example, when such a child begins to acquire speech at an early age, he grasps it in whole blocks and uses them for a long time without changing, in the form in which he received it. He may ask for food or refuse to go for a walk using quotes from some children's poem.
If he first masters letters or syllables, then in the text he will stereotypically highlight only them. It will be very difficult to destroy this rigid attitude and attract his attention to the word. In the same way, a child can easily learn ordinal counting, a series of musical scales, but break it. This series and the forever acquired order will be very difficult for him to move on to counting operations and playing a musical melody.
Thus, it is necessary to take into account that when we teach something to an autistic child, we must immediately, without intermediate stages, give him a model ready for use: go to reading through practicing the global recognition of simple words, to writing through immediately mastering the writing of whole letters and words; teach arithmetic, starting immediately with the simplest counting operations.
Let us dwell specifically on the inability of an autistic child to overcome difficulties: at the slightest difficulty or uncertainty of success, he refuses to work. Failure can provoke the emergence of behavioral problems - worsening autism, manifestation of negativism, aggression, self-injury. We propose here the following pedagogical technique: first, the teacher helps the child complete a new task and creates in him the impression of success, the conviction that he can already do this. Only after this does the actual work of teaching a new skill begin, but it is presented as improving what the child can already do.
MEANINGFUL STRUCTURING OF A CHILD'S LIFE AT SCHOOL
The next important point that we must take into account when working with an autistic child is his difficulty in understanding the meaning of everything that happens around him. This is far from just a defect in his intellectual development. The reasons lie deeper; rather, we are dealing here with a disruption in the development of basal affective mechanisms that organize his orientation in the surrounding world and active flexible adaptation in it. This disruption of the development of mechanisms of the basal affective sphere can hinder the development of the ability to understand the world and the realization of its intellectual capabilities. And even a formally intellectually normal autistic child must specially learn what ordinary and even most mentally retarded children are given “for free.”
In all tests assessing his mental development, an autistic child shows the worst results precisely in tasks assessing his understanding of social meanings. It is clear that such children demonstrate low competence in tests of social awareness, because they live in isolation and do not participate in common life. But tests confirm that the situation is more complicated and such children really find it difficult to understand the simplest meanings of life.
An autistic child may achieve even greater success than his normal counterpart, for example in making a meaningless geometric pattern. But normal child he immediately gains an advantage if the picture offered to him becomes meaningful - he begins to depict a “cat” or “cow”. Injecting meaning into a task does not improve an autistic child's performance. And at an older age, he can work perfectly with Kosa cubes, but finds it difficult to compose the simplest story in pictures.
Without special correctional work, autistic children may not notice the meaning of the events happening around them, unless, of course, they affect their stereotypical life ritual or violate it, in which case they always react negatively to them. They do not understand the meaning of ordinary children's games, they may be indifferent to losing and winning, they do not understand the feelings of others, people, they do not take into account that others also think, feel, have their own interests, and in general are also living beings.
This does not mean that such a child is indifferent towards other people, does not enjoy contact with loved ones, and does not suffer from separation from them. Attachment to another person can exist and even be very strong, but it is, as a rule, still a very primitive symbiotic attachment for one’s own sake, as a condition for survival and maintaining a comfortable emotional well-being.
Developing the ability of an autistic child to adequately assess the meaning of what is happening and organize behavior in accordance with this meaning requires special work. The environment in which an autistic child lives and studies must have the most developed semantic structure. Of course, it must correspond to the child’s individual abilities to perceive these meanings (they must be determined by the psychologist working with the child).
This is probably important for every child. But for an autistic person this is especially important, as essential condition his remedial training. Nothing should happen to him mechanically. The schedule is drawn up for him, first of all, in a meaningful, coherent manner, spoken out and discussed many times. Every action he takes is planned for something that will be very good; any action taken is also commented on and interpreted; then they return to it and it is evaluated again from the point of view of its meaning, benefit, and the joy that it brought to everyone.
Any skill is mastered meaningfully, for immediate practical use in life now or later, in the future, when the child grows up. Thus, you can learn to read from texts specially compiled for each child by his parents with a reminder of something personal, wishes, praise; learn to write - writing down a task, telling parents about what happened to the child at school; count - modeling situations of practical necessity to make a mathematical calculation.
Otherwise, such a child, even having acquired knowledge and mastered skills, will never have the opportunity to use them practically. This was formulated very accurately and sadly by one of the mothers who collaborated with us, who actively educated her child and successfully completed a mass school program with him. She said: “My son has learned everything that is necessary in the program, he will answer the examiner’s questions correctly, but it seems to me that we have put this knowledge in some kind of bag from which he will never get it out himself.” And the point is not that this child was studying in a complex mass school program. The same thing happens to those who study in an auxiliary school. Regardless of the level of their mental development, autistic children do not begin to practically use their achievements without special work.
Such children should receive help in realizing what they like and don’t like, what they are used to, what they want to change, what is good and what is bad, what other people expect from them, where the limits of their capabilities are. They can learn all this only by living in detail, empathizing with all the life situations that arise together with a close adult - a parent, a teacher.
For this, a detailed emotional detailed commentary from an adult is very important: on the one hand, this is an emotional fixation by an adult of everything that happens to the child, what he sees, hears, feels, desires, and perhaps can remember in connection with what is happening; on the other hand, this is the infection of the child with the adult’s own orientation in what is happening, brought out, disautomatized. The teacher should be somewhat like an oriental singer who sings about what he sees, what he is experiencing now, and a mother who, while talking to her one-year-old child, also comments on, insults, and colors the world around him.
At the same time, the commentary should also contain information about the adult’s own experiences, his assessments, worries, doubts, difficulties of choice, which make it possible to introduce the child into the inner world of another person. It is often useful to create a special general concern, a focus on helping someone else, perhaps a fellow practitioner, who needs it.
Here the question arises, especially for autistic children with significant mental retardation: to what extent are they able to understand such a detailed verbal commentary, is it not more useful for them to receive strictly dosed simple instructions.
In answering this question, we must distinguish between the actual task of teaching a child a new skill and the task of the general semantic organization of behavior. In the first case, as we have already said, the learning situation should be organized as much as possible to help master the skill, and here, of course, the verbal instruction should be dosed and simplified, containing only the most essential instructions for action. In the second case, what is important to us is the child’s overall assimilation of the meaning of what is happening, and here the entire speech context with information that is given both through the word and through the prosodic characteristics of speech and, above all, its semantic stresses and intonations is important.
It is known that at an early age, the first identification of semantic units of speech, preceding their phonemic analysis, occurs through the development of intonation structure. When a mother talks to her baby, she first cares not about the child’s understanding of individual words, but about the clarity of intonation. Here, too, it is primarily important for us to convey to the child the general meaning of the situation, which means we need detailed, intonation-rich speech.
WHAT WE SHOULD DO WITH AN AUTIC CHILD
As already mentioned, an autistic child must be taught almost everything. He must learn not only everything that other children are taught at school, but also much more, what children with normal mental development learn themselves at an early age. What is important for him is his introduction into the meaning of human life, into social life, the assimilation of the role of a “student”, the stereotype of school behavior, and the gradual development of the possibility of voluntary interaction with other people.
All school subjects are important to him, but the emphasis is on presentation educational material here in many cases some changes must be made. Training programs must be individualized. This is due to both individual difficulties and the individual stereotypical interests of such children. As we have already mentioned, the first interaction with such children can be built precisely on the basis of their stereotypical interests.
Stereotypical interests are often associated with the selective talent of such children. As already mentioned, it can manifest itself in special musicality, the ability to draw, counting operations, design, the ability to master foreign languages, and the accumulation of encyclopedic knowledge in certain areas.
Of course, these abilities manifest themselves in line with the spontaneous activity of such children. Voluntary interaction and learning here are also associated with enormous difficulties; it seems that the child at this time is deprived of all his abilities. Yet a flexible, patient teacher has a better chance of success here. If a child goes through a period of voluntary development of basic technical skills and emotional mastery of the meaning of the activity, individual talent, freedom, and originality of manifestations return to him.
Thus, the educational program of an autistic child should be developed individually and should be built on the basis of his selective interests and abilities. At the same time, there are common difficulties that determine the general emphasis of the work. So, for everyone, even for highly intelligent autistic children, mastering everyday self-care skills is a huge problem. Helplessness in the simplest everyday situations can provoke severe behavioral disorders: negativism, aggression, self-injury.
Of course, mastering the skills of everyday adaptation and self-care should take place mainly at home, but in this case the school should not remain aloof from this work. Moments of the school day when a child undresses and dresses, coming to and leaving school, changing clothes for physical education, and having breakfast in the cafeteria should be considered a learning situation. In accordance with this, they must be clearly pedagogically structured.
Work to improve everyday adaptation should take place in close cooperation with parents. What a child learns at school should be carried home, just as his achievements at home should be used at school. This does not happen by itself, because the autistic child, as we have already noted, rigidly associates the skill with the place and person with whom this skill was practiced. Therefore, if difficulties arise, to facilitate the transfer, temporary work with the skills of parents at school and a teacher at home is possible.
It is of great importance for a child to master the academic skills of reading, writing, and counting. These skills become new means of communication, new channels for obtaining information about the world and interacting with other people. As a rule, an autistic child is extremely proud of these achievements and worries if he encounters difficulties.
We have experience that learning by such a child foreign language can activate his communication, stimulate the development of its forms, and include him in contacts with peers. When starting to learn a language, he finds himself in a more equal position with his classmates - they, too, can use only a few stereotypical forms of speech. And here the autistic child becomes more active, gets involved in practicing calls and dialogues, and more easily learns new speech forms.
Educational subjects that expand his knowledge about the world around him and other people are very important to him. IN primary school this is reading, natural history, history, then subjects of the humanities and natural sciences. Here, as elsewhere, he does not need formal knowledge, but its connection with his real personal life. If for a child with normal mental retardation such a connection with immediate life experience is important for facilitating the understanding of abstract knowledge, here, on the contrary, the understanding of the laws of the surrounding world, the world of other people, coming from the teacher, can stimulate adequate awareness and elaboration together with the child of his personal relationships with the world and people.
It seems to us that such a child’s studies in literature, first children’s, then classical, are especially important. What is needed is a slow, careful, emotionally rich mastery of the artistic images of people, circumstances, and logic of their lives contained in these books, awareness of their internal complexity, the ambiguity of internal and external manifestations, and relationships between people. This helps to improve understanding of oneself and others, reduces one-dimensional perception of the world, the desire to divide everything into black and white, and develops a sense of humor. It is clear how important all this is for the socialization of such a child and his emotional stabilization.
Physical exercise, as is known, can increase a child’s overall activity and relieve his pathological stress. Both are relevant. It is known that such a child in most cases experiences enormous difficulties at all levels of the organization of motor action: disturbances in tone, rhythm, coordination of movements, and their distribution in space. All these difficulties become especially obvious in the situation of a child’s arbitrary organization. He needs a special individual program of physical development, combining work techniques in a free, playful and clearly structured form.
With age, sports activities become increasingly valuable for such a child. It is here that he gets the opportunity to complicate his understanding of the meaning of what is happening, learn to understand what winning and losing are, to experience them adequately, persistently strive for victory and not lose heart in defeat, learn to interact with other children, and feel like a member of the team.
We want to emphasize that a physical education teacher can do an enormous amount for such a child, not only for his physical, but also for his emotional and personal development. You just need to remember that in physical education class such a child is perhaps in the most vulnerable position, most unfavorably different from his classmates, and can easily feel hopelessly incapable and become an object of ridicule. A good teacher, however, will find an opportunity to support him and create an atmosphere of sympathy and mutual assistance in the class.
Labor, drawing, and singing lessons at a young age can also do a lot to help such a child adapt to school. First of all, it is in these lessons that an autistic child can get the first impressions that he is working together with everyone, and understand that his actions have a real result. This is very important to him.
Considering the clumsiness of such a child’s hands, we must select tasks for him so that he feels accomplished in them, so that the work is not particularly difficult, and the effect is bright. A special problem can be the impulsive actions of such a child, his destruction of the result of his work - a sudden desire to tear up a drawing, etc. We will not interpret them here, we will only note that within a second the child usually bitterly regrets what he did. To prevent this from happening, the teacher must immediately, after finishing work, take away the drawing or craft, put it in a safe place - on a shelf, hang it on the wall, but so that everyone can see it, and rejoice with the child in his success.
ORGANIZATION OF INTERACTION OF AN AUTIC CHILD WITH TEACHER AND CHILDREN
The socialization of such a child and his overcoming learning difficulties, of course, occurs on the basis of establishing emotional contact, a personal connection between the teacher and the child. It is precisely because the teacher already sees a “good student” in the child that he will try to live up to these ideas.
For such a child, personal relationships are most important. He may not perceive instructions given to the class frontally for a long time. This will gradually change, but it should not annoy the teacher at first. You just need to remember that such a child should sit next to him and in addition to general instructions you need to contact him personally. Often one word, look, smile or touch is enough, and the child is included in the overall work.
It is advisable that the teacher creates a good reputation for the child in the eyes of his classmates. He is usually quite strange in his spontaneous manifestations, in his awkward attempts to establish contact and can easily make a bad impression. During lessons, the teacher can demonstrate his strengths: serious knowledge, talent in certain areas, and emphasize his sympathy for him.
Informal contacts during recess should also be organized if possible. It is very important for such a child to have the opportunity to be around friendly peers, watch their games, listen to their conversations, try to understand their interests and relationships. You need to specifically talk to him and discuss emerging situations.
Later, it is very important to preserve for such a child the opportunity to participate in general excursions, organize concerts, class performances, festive evenings, and be present at. general discussions, even if it is impossible to actively participate in them. Participation in hiking gives such a child a lot. From creating a stereotype of school life to more flexible forms of social behavior.
Until now, we have been talking all the time about developing a socially adequate stereotype of school life. A stereotype in which the child would understand his role and feel confident, could foresee the development of events, would be armed with adequate ways of responding, understand what others expect from him, and could express his desires. This removes most of the behavioral problems and opens up the child’s opportunity to learn. At the same time, we understand that it is impossible to develop stereotypes for all occasions, and the slightest failure of the stereotype again makes such a child vulnerable.
We came to the conclusion that the path here lies not through breaking the stereotype of behavior, but through its development. The more detailed the stereotype of behavior is developed, the more options it includes: “if it happens this way, then we will do it this way,” the more flexible the child’s behavior becomes.
Of course, we must take into account that such development of a life stereotype is a painstaking work of many years, mastering temporal-spatial, semantic relationships, mastering many useful skills.
For the most part, behavioral problems can be resolved with proper organization of the child’s life. However, he is not immune from them in the event of an unexpected break in the pattern of his life, inadequate demands, or even in case of special fatigue, asthenia, or somatic illness. They can manifest themselves as anxiety, the appearance of more severe stereotypical behavior, fears, special stereotypical movements, aggression and self-injury. You cannot fight fears and anxiety separately, forbid a child to sway or shake his arms, or explain to him that he is behaving inappropriately - this most likely simply will not help.
You can cope with this only if you understand that all these are markers general condition the child and how he copes with the situation. In this case, it is necessary to check the child’s physical condition, consult with the attending physician about the permissible loads and assess the adequacy of the requirements for the child, and whether he is provided with the stereotype of school life.
These, in our opinion, are the general features of the pedagogical approach to teaching an autistic child. Of course, all this should have been covered in more detail. An autistic child may have varying degrees of mental development disorders, different forms of maladjustment, and different learning problems. We identify four groups of such children, for whom different tasks, methods and content of learning are relevant. We hope to talk about them next time.
Karen Williams (University of Michigan, 1995)
Understanding the student with Asperger's syndrome: A guide for teachers.
Children diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome present a very specific challenge for educators. This article contains a description of the seven basic characteristics of Asperger's syndrome, as well as recommendations for teachers. The proposed methods for correcting educational and behavioral deviations are based on the author’s experience of teaching with autistic children.
Teaching children with Asperger syndrome is a special pedagogical problem. In the eyes of their classmates, they appear eccentric and strange, to put it mildly, and their inappropriate behavior often makes them the object of ridicule and scapegoats. Awkwardness, clumsiness, and “obsession” with specific topics (overvalued interest) complement their “eccentric” image. Children with Asperger's syndrome do not understand human relationships, social rules, they are naive and they obviously lack common sense. Their inflexibility, inability to cope with changes in their environment is the reason for their emotional vulnerability, vulnerability and susceptibility to stress. At the same time, such children (most of them are boys) often have normal or even above average intelligence and excellent mechanical memory. Their passion for their highly valuable interests can become the key to great achievements in their future lives.
Asperger's syndrome is considered the most favorable of all autism spectrum disorders (sometimes called "high-functioning autism"). In comparing people with similar disorders, van Krevelen noted that a child with “low-functioning” autism “lives only in his own world,” while a child with “high-functioning” autism “lives in our world, but in his own special way.”
Of course, not all children with Asperger's syndrome are the same. Because every child is different, “typical” symptoms manifest differently in each child. Therefore, it is impossible to offer the only correct method that will “work” for all autistic children with Asperger syndrome, just as there is not a single pedagogical technique that would be applicable to all ordinary children.
Below I describe the defining characteristics of Asperger's syndrome and strategies for working with these symptoms in the classroom. My suggestions are illustrated with examples from my personal experience work at the Children's Psychiatric Hospital School at the University of Michigan. It is worth noting that these are very general and should be tailored to the needs of each individual student with Asperger's Syndrome.
1. The need for monotony.
Children with Asperger's syndrome have difficulty with even minor changes, are very sensitive to environmental stressors, and occasionally engage in stereotypical behavior. They are anxious, they are strongly and obsessively worried about situations of uncertainty, when they do not know what to expect. Stress, fatigue and sensory overload easily throw them off balance.
Recommendations:
- A predictable and safe environment should be provided;
- Minimize transitions from class to class whenever possible, conduct classes in one class.
- Maintain a clearly established daily routine: the child must understand the daily routine, know what awaits him in order to be able to concentrate on the current task;
- Avoid surprises, “surprises”: thoroughly prepare the child for unusual activities, for changes in the schedule, in general, for any changes in everyday life, no matter how small they may seem;
- Relieve the fear of the unknown by informing the child in advance
about an upcoming meeting (with a new school, teacher, new class, etc.), and, after informing, it is better to hold this meeting as soon as possible in order to avoid excessive excitement.
(For example, if a child must change schools, he should first be examined new school, meet your future teacher; he needs to be familiarized with the new schedule and daily routine before he starts attending this school. In the first few days, it would be possible to give school assignments from the old school, so that working in new conditions would be familiar to the child. It's good if new teacher recognizes the child’s specific interests and offers books or assignments related to them that are accessible to his level on the first day).
2. Impairments in social interaction.
Children with Asperger's syndrome demonstrate an inability to understand complex rules of social interaction. They are naive, extremely self-centered, many do not tolerate the touch of other people, they do not understand jokes, irony and metaphors. Their speech is monotonous; they often speak in an unnatural, unnatural voice. Their body movements and facial expressions are often inappropriate for a given situation, they are insensitive and tactless, misinterpret hints, do not sense distance, and are almost unable to start and maintain a conversation. Having well-developed speech, they cannot use it in communication or dialogue. Sometimes they are labeled “little professor” for their “adult” style of speech and pedantry. They are easily drawn into adventure (they do not feel that others sometimes lie to them and deceive them). And, as a rule, they really want to be accepted into the society of their peers.
Recommendations:
- Protect the child from bullies and teasers;
- In high school, you can try to tell kids about the problems of people with Asperger's syndrome, explaining that the inability of their classmate with autism to adequately communicate is not his fault, but a real developmental disorder caused by biological reasons. Praise children when they treat their autistic classmate with compassion. These measures can prevent the child from becoming a scapegoat and at the same time they will help develop empathy and tolerance in other (“normal”) children;
- Emphasize their abilities and skills by creating learning situations in which their valuable qualities in the eyes of their peers, such as good lexicon, reading technique, good memory, etc., which will cause their acceptance by classmates;
- Most children with Asperger's syndrome want to have friends, but simply don't know how to communicate. They need to be taught how to respond to social cues and have a stock of responses that they can use in different situations. They must know what, how and when to say. It will be very effective to work out a model of two-way interaction in a role-playing game. These children's ability to correctly understand a given social situation improves after they are taught the rules that other children "grasp" intuitively. One adult with Asperger's syndrome noted that he learned to "imitate human behavior." A college professor (also with Asperger's syndrome) noted that in her quest to understand human relationships she "felt like an anthropologist from Mars" (Sacks, 1993);
- Despite the fact that they themselves are practically unable to understand the emotions of another person, children with Asperger syndrome can learn how to react correctly in a given situation. When they unwittingly offend someone, are tactless or insensitive, they need to explain why their behavior in this situation is inappropriate and what would be the correct reaction. Children with Asperger's syndrome can master social skills almost exclusively through intellect: they lack social instinct and intuition;
- For high school students with Asperger's syndrome, a mentoring system would be useful. The teacher could explain to some kind and empathetic student the situation of his autistic classmate and seat them together. He could watch his “sponsored” on the bus, at recess, in the corridor, etc. and try to include him or her in the life of the school;
- Children with Asperger's syndrome tend to be isolated, so the teacher should encourage their contact with other children, support active socialization and limit the time they spend studying for their special interests. For example, a teacher can actively help a child with Asperger syndrome engage in conversation with peers during a class tea party, not only asking his opinion and answering his questions, but also quietly encouraging other children to do the same.
3. Limited range of interests
Autistic children are characterized by unique, yet very strong, obsessive predilections, overvalued hobbies (sometimes this is expressed in obsessive collecting of unusual things). They can tirelessly “lecture” on whatever interests them; asking endlessly the same questions on a topic that interests them. They have difficulty leaving the world of their thoughts and fantasies; follow their own inclinations, regardless of external requirements; sometimes they even refuse to learn anything about what is outside the very limited sphere of their interests.
Recommendations:
- Do not allow the child to stubbornly continue discussing a topic that interests him alone or ask questions about it. You can limit this by allocating a clearly defined time during the day for such conversations. Let me give you an example from my practice. A child with Asperger's syndrome who was obsessed with animals and asked countless questions about the turtles that lived in the cool animal corner knew that he was only allowed to ask these questions during recess. This was part of his daily routine, and he quickly learned to stop himself when, having forgotten himself, he suddenly began to ask his questions at another time;
- The use of positive reinforcement, selectively aimed at creating desired behavior, is the most important strategy for helping a child with Asperger's syndrome (Dewey, 1991). These children respond to compliments (for example, in the case of the tireless “why”, the teacher may praise him as soon as he pauses and then praise him again for allowing others to talk). These children should always be praised for simple, expected social behavior that other children take for granted;
- Some children with Asperger's syndrome will not want to do tasks that are not related to their area of interest. Strict expectations regarding classroom procedures must be established. It must be clear to the child that he is “not the leader” in the class and must follow certain rules. However, at the same time, you should meet him halfway, giving him the opportunity to do what interests him;
- For particularly stubborn children, it may be necessary to initially concentrate all tasks around his area of interest (for example, if he is interested in dinosaurs, then offer tasks on grammar, mathematics, reading related to dinosaurs). Gradually introduce other topics into assignments;
- Students can be given tasks that connect their highly valuable interests with the subject being studied. For example, while exploring a country, a child obsessed with trains may be tasked with researching the modes of transport used by the population of that country;
- A child’s preferences can be used to expand his range of interests. For example, when studying tropical forests, one child with Asperger's syndrome, fascinated by animals, was asked to study not only the animals of the forest, but also the forest itself, as the home of these animals. Then he became interested in information about local residents who, in order to survive, were forced to cut down the forests where these animals lived, etc.
4. Problems concentrating.
Children with Asperger's syndrome are often not included in the task because... their attention is distracted by internal stimuli; they are very disorganized; they find it difficult to maintain attention for a long time educational activities(often not so much because of a lack of attention, but because of the specific object of their attention; autistic people cannot understand what is relevant and what is not, so attention is concentrated on extraneous things); they tend to withdraw into their inner world, and in depth and intensity this state is incomparable to typical childhood fantasy or daydreaming, which is why it is so difficult for them to learn in a group.
Recommendations:
- Life in the classroom of a child with Asperger syndrome should be subject to externally established frameworks and well structured. Clear and understandable rules should be established, large tasks should be divided into small ones, the teacher should constantly correct the child’s activities and respond to mistakes and successes. Such external organization of activities can significantly increase the child’s educational productivity;
- Children with severe difficulty concentrating will benefit if the lesson time is clearly planned. This will help them organize themselves. Class work not completed at a certain time (or done carelessly) can be continued at another time (for example, during recess or during time allocated for the pursuit of his specific interests). Children with Asperger's syndrome can sometimes be very stubborn; clear requirements should be presented to them, it may be worth introducing a special Reward Program - this teaches them that following the rules leads to positive results (this type of program encourages the child to be productive, which, in turn, increases the child’s self-esteem and reduces stress levels, because the child sees that he can do a lot);
- In cases of severe attention deficit, slow writing speed and profound disorganization, it may be necessary to reduce the study load and/or provide additional classes so that the child can complete both classwork and homework (some children are so unable to concentrate that expecting parents to spend several hours every evening doing homework with the child is placing an undue burden on their shoulders);
- You can put a child with Asperger's syndrome in the first desk and often ask him questions to help him pay attention in class;
- “Use pre-agreed nonverbal cues when the child is distracted (for example, a light pat on the shoulder);
- If the “patronage” system is used, sit the autistic child next to his classmate, so that from time to time he reminds his ward that, for example, now he needs to do a task, or listen to the teacher;
- The teacher should actively encourage the child to turn away from his thoughts and fantasies and focus on the real world. This is a constant battle, because apparently the comfort of a child's inner world is much more attractive than anything in real life. For a small child, even free play must be clearly structured, otherwise he may begin to immerse himself so deeply in his thoughts and fantasies that he completely loses touch with reality. A child with Asperger's syndrome should be encouraged to play Board games with one or two peers (under the supervision of a teacher). Not only does this help keep play organized, but it also provides an opportunity to practice social skills.
5. Impaired coordination of movements
Children with Asperger's syndrome are characterized by motor clumsiness; they have a stiff, awkward gait; they are unsuccessful at games requiring normal motor skills; are experiencing a shortage fine motor skills, which can cause problems with penmanship, slow writing speed and lack of drawing ability.
Recommendations:
- If there are severe violations of gross motor skills, such children should engage in an adapted physical education program;
- The physical education curriculum should consist mostly of health-improving exercises (physical therapy, fitness), and should not include sports competitions;
- Do not push your child to participate in sports competitions under any circumstances, because his motor clumsiness can cause frustration, disappointment, and ridicule from other team members. A child with Asperger's syndrome does not know how to coordinate his actions with the actions of other team members;
- Children with Asperger's syndrome may require individual program learning to write, which includes tracing and then copying on paper, supplemented by the consolidation of motor skills on the board. The teacher guides the child’s hand, tracing the letters and their connections several times, while speaking out loud the order of correct writing. When the child learns the description by heart, he will be able to do it independently;
- For young children with Asperger's syndrome, it is good to use skew-ruled paper. This helps them control the size and shape of letters and save time;
- When allocating time for different types of work in the lesson, one must take into account the child’s slow writing speed;
- To pass the exam, children with Asperger syndrome, unlike their peers, need special conditions(for example, taking an exam in a separate room will not only allow more time to prepare, but will also help provide the greater focus and extra teacher instruction these children need to stay focused on the task at hand).
6. Learning difficulties.
When solving IQ tests, children with Asperger's syndrome may score within age norm or even above the norm (especially the “verbal indicator”), but their abstract thinking and ability to comprehend are not sufficiently developed. They tend to take everything literally: their images are concrete, they lack abstract thinking. A pedantic style of speech and a good vocabulary give the false impression that they understand everything they say, when in reality they are simply parroting what they have heard or read. Children with Asperger's syndrome often have excellent memories, but their memories are actually mechanical; sometimes their answers are very reminiscent of playing a tape recording. They have virtually no ability to solve problems independently.
Recommendations:
- An individualized educational program should be designed so that a child with Asperger syndrome can feel successful. He must have serious motivation not to follow his own impulses. Learning should be “rewarding” rather than anxiety-inducing and worry-inducing;
- Don't be fooled into thinking that children with Asperger's syndrome understand something just because they mechanically repeat what they hear.
- Give additional explanations and try to simplify too abstract concepts introduced in lessons;
- Pay attention to the exceptional memory of these children: the ability to retain factual information in their heads is their strong point;
- Emotional nuances, hidden meanings, problems of human relationships, as they are presented in fiction, will often not be understood;
- The written work of such students, as a rule, is boring, monotonous, thoughts jump from one subject to another, words are used in a completely inappropriate context. These children often do not see the difference between generally accepted ideas and their own ideas and therefore are confident that the teacher will understand their sometimes very difficult to understand expressions;
- Children with Asperger's syndrome often have good reading technique, but text comprehension is quite poor. Don't think they understand everything they read so fluently;
- Academic work may have poor results because a child with Asperger syndrome does not have enough motivation to focus on things that are not his area of interest. To improve the quality of work, very strict requirements must be set. The task must be completed carefully and in due date. The child should know that he will correct poorly done class work during recess or at a time when he usually does things that interest him.
7. Emotional vulnerability
Children with Asperger's syndrome have the intelligence to handle the general education curriculum, but they often lack the emotional resources to cope with the demands placed on them in the classroom. Because of their “inflexibility,” they easily fall into a state of stress. Their self-esteem is often low, they are self-critical and have a hard time when they make mistakes. People with Asperger's syndrome, especially teenagers, may be prone to depression (there is also a high rate of depression among adults). Angry reactions and outbursts of irritation usually arise as a response to a stressful situation. Children with Asperger's syndrome are rarely calm and easily lose their temper when things turn out to be completely different from what they think they should be. Interacting with people and coping with the normal demands of everyday life for them is equivalent to the labors of Hercules that they have to perform every day.
Recommendations:
- Prevent emotional outbursts by maintaining consistency in daily life. To minimize stress from changes in daily routine, the child must be prepared for them (see the section “Strong demand for monotony”). Children with Asperger's syndrome often become irritable and fearful in the face of forced or unexpected changes;
- To prevent emotional breakdowns, you need to teach your child to cope with stress. Help him create a list of specific actions he can take when he starts to get upset (for example, 1 - Take deep breaths 3 times; 2 - Slowly count the fingers on your right hand 3 times; 3 - Ask to see a “school counselor”). The list can include those stereotypical actions that the child finds soothing. All this should be written on a card that the child can carry in his pocket so that he always has it at hand;
- The teacher’s voice should not express violent emotions. Be calm, predictable, and controlled in your interactions with your autistic child, while clearly demonstrating empathy and patience. Hans Asperger (1991), the psychiatrist for whom the syndrome is named, noted that “a teacher who does not understand that children with Asperger syndrome need to be taught the most ordinary-looking things will feel constantly irritated and impatient”;
- Don't assume that a child with Asperger's syndrome realizes that he is in the grip of sadness and depression. For the same reason that they cannot understand the feelings of other people, these children are also unable to comprehend their own feelings. They often hide their depression and hide its symptoms;
- The teacher should be alert to changes in behavior that may indicate depression, such as higher than normal levels of disorganization, inattention; greater than usual desire for solitude; reduced stress threshold; chronic fatigue; cry; mentions of suicide, etc. In these cases, you should not trust the child’s assurances that “everything is OK”;
- Report symptoms to your child's doctor or make a referral to a specialist so that the child can be assessed for depression and get help if needed. Because these children are often unable to evaluate their own emotions and cannot seek support from others, it is essential that depression is recognized quickly;
- Teenagers with Asperger's syndrome are especially susceptible to depression. Social skills are highly valued during adolescence, and autistic people realize that they are different and that it is very difficult for them to form normal relationships. The learning material becomes more abstract and the tasks seem more difficult to them. In one case, teachers, noticing that a teenager with Asperger's syndrome had stopped complaining constantly and tediously about his problems with mathematics, decided that he was better able to cope with the stress of learning and became more independent. In reality, his progressively worsening diligence and performance in mathematics was a consequence of him retreating into his inner world to avoid mathematics altogether, so he did not do all that well.
It is necessary that teenagers with Asperger's syndrome studying in the general stream be supervised by a special teacher (tutor) who would assess their condition, meeting with them at least once a day and summing up the observations of other teachers;
- A child with Asperger's syndrome should be given help as soon as difficulties in learning a subject are discovered. These children quickly become disappointed and react to failures much more painfully than ordinary children;
- Children with Asperger syndrome, who are particularly emotionally unstable, may need to be placed in special classes where they can receive individualized instruction. They need an educational environment in which they feel competent and successful. If you keep them in the general flow, where they cannot complete tasks and assimilate material, this will only lead to a decrease in self-esteem, to even greater withdrawal into themselves, which will create the ground for depression. (In some situations, of course, it is better to provide the child with a personal assistant than to place him in a special school or class. Such assistance involves emotional support, organized and stable feedback.)
……………………………………………………………
Children with Asperger's syndrome are so easily traumatized by environmental stressors and have such profound impairments in their ability to form interpersonal relationships that it is not surprising that they come across as “fragile and touchingly infantile” (Wing, 1981). Everard wrote that when you compare these children with their peers without disabilities, “you immediately realize how different they are and how much effort they have to make to live in a world that does them no favors and expects them to adapt to it.”
The teacher can play vitally important role, helping autistic children learn to “negotiate” with the world around them. Because These children are often unable to express their worries and fears; only a significant adult can convince them to leave the safe world of their fantasies for the impermanence of the outside world. Professionals working with these children in schools must provide the structured, organized and stable environment they lack. Using creative teaching approaches with autistic children is necessary, not only to promote academic success, but also to help them feel less out of place in the human world and less overwhelmed by the normal demands of everyday life.
Psychological assistance to children with early childhood autism should not be limited only to counseling and psychocorrectional classes. Its effectiveness largely depends on the impact on the socio-psychological environment that surrounds a child or adolescent with childhood autism.
This impact is successfully achieved with the help of psychological support, which has been intensively introduced into the system of psychological assistance in the last decade [Bardner, Romazan, Cherednyakova, 1993; Bityano-va, 1997; Galiyakhmetov, Likhtarnikov, 1998; and etc.].
In the Russian language dictionary, the word “accompaniment” comes from the verb “accompany”, denoting such actions as going, riding with someone as a companion or guide. Literally translated, “accompaniment” means assistance. M.R. Bityanova, analyzing the specifics of support in the work of a school psychologist, considers it as a system of professional activity of a psychologist aimed at creating socio-psychological conditions for the success of a child’s education in a situation of school interaction. The author considers accompaniment as a method and ideology of the work of a school psychologist. The purpose of support, in her opinion, is to create “within the environment objectively given to the child, conditions for maximum personal development and learning in a given situation” [Bityanova, 1997, p. 21] and consists in the active directed influence of the psychologist on social conditions where the child lives. The problems of accompanying healthy schoolchildren considered by the author undoubtedly have important practical significance. At the same time, it should be noted that the content orientation and tasks of psychological support for children with developmental disorders differ significantly from the tasks of psychological support for a healthy child.
We consider psychological support for children with developmental disorders as the activity of a psychologist aimed at creating a comprehensive system of clinical-psychological, psychological-pedagogical and psychotherapeutic conditions that contribute to their successful adaptation, rehabilitation and personal growth in society (such institutions as school, family, medical institution, etc.) [Mamaichuk, 2001]. Psychological support must be provided by the same (family) psychologist. If a child with autism is enrolled in a special school, the school psychologist takes on this role. Most children with autism, especially those with severe affective pathology, do not attend educational institutions and homeschooled. In this case, a psychologist from the dispensary or clinic to which he is attached, or a psychologist from a special school, is called upon to accompany the child and his family.
Psychological support is, in fact, a dynamic process that must be considered as a holistic activity of a psychologist, containing five interrelated components:
Systematic monitoring of the clinical-psychological and psychological-pedagogical status of the child in the dynamics of his mental development;
Creating socio-psychological conditions for the effective mental development of a child in society;
Systematic psychological assistance to the child in the form of counseling, psychocorrection, (psychological support;
Systematic psychological assistance to parents and relatives;
Organization of the life activity of a child (adolescent) in society, taking into account his mental and physical capabilities.
Let us consider the specifics of each component, taking into account the characteristics of the mental development of children with autism.
Psychological Status Tracking Child development is a rather labor-intensive process that requires close interaction of all specialists involved in the child’s life.
As emphasized above, psychological assistance to children with early childhood autism requires the mandatory participation of a psychiatrist and speech pathologists (educator, teacher, speech therapist). Of course, there are significant differences between clinical, pedagogical and pathopsychological approaches to the characteristics of mental development in early childhood autism. For example, clinicians consider the mental state of a child with autism from the perspective of the logic of the disease. They analyze the painful forms of manifestations of autism, its pathogenetic, etiological and clinical characteristics. It is important to understand that taking into account clinical factors is also extremely important for a psychologist working with children with autism. For example, V.M. Bashina rightly emphasizes that early childhood autism must be approached as a dissociated ontogenesis, in which there is asynchrony in the development of all areas of the child’s activity. Insufficient consideration by a psychologist of the clinical factors of autism not only reduces the effectiveness of the psychological support system, but also distorts its essence. In addition, the vast majority of children with autism need medical help, which can be represented by various treatment profiles: psychopharmacotherapy, physiotherapy, massage, etc. Drug therapy is aimed at relieving the psychopathological manifestations of the disease, activating the child, and reducing mental stress [Bashina, 1999 ]. In the process of monitoring the child’s status, the psychologist must take into account what treatment procedures he is receiving and discuss the dynamics of his mental state together with the psychiatrist.
A special education teacher assesses the child’s knowledge, skills, and the characteristics of the development of his school skills in order to build a scientifically based program of further education and upbringing. The psychologist receives maximum information from the teacher about the characteristics of the child’s acquisition of knowledge and his behavior. In turn, a teacher-defectologist, when drawing up training programs, cannot help but take into account the peculiarities of the development of gnostic processes and the child’s personality, the degree and structure of the defect, which are determined by the psychologist.
A speech therapist determines the level and specificity of speech pathology characteristic of autistic children. Data from a speech therapist about the characteristics of the speech development of children with autism help the psychologist in diagnosing the development of gnostic and intellectual processes. For example, a speech therapist notes that a child with autism has dysarthria (difficulty in articulating sounds), which is observed in children with cerebral-organic insufficiency. Subsequently, when conducting a neuropsychological diagnosis of gnostic processes in a child and drawing up a psychological correction program, the psychologist has the opportunity to implement more differentiated approach.
The psychologist is the central link in the system of psychological support for children with autism. Analyzing the features of the mental development of a child with autism, determining the degree, structure and specificity of the child’s affective and intellectual defect, the psychologist examines them not from the perspective of the logic of the disease, but from the perspective of normal mental development, and analyzes the mechanisms of disruption of the normal mental activity of a child with autism.
Thus, speech pathologists, clinicians and psychologists have the same object of psychological support - a child or teenager with early childhood autism, but they all implement qualitatively different approaches to tracking and analyzing his psychological status.
Let's look at the main tracking process steps: preparatory, indicative, planning, implementation and final.
Preparatory stage includes the following tasks:
1. Establishing contact with all participants accompanying the child.
2. Determine the scope of work and sequence of the tracking process.
3. Preparation of the necessary documentation.
4. Drawing up a work schedule for specialists.
The effectiveness of psychological support largely depends on the quality of contact between the psychologist and the specialists observing the child. When establishing contact with doctors and teachers, the psychologist must discuss with them the goals of psychological support. Often, specialists, especially clinicians, refuse to exchange information and do not allow the psychologist to get acquainted with the child’s medical history, citing the fact that a psychiatric diagnosis is a medical secret. You can often encounter a doctor’s consumerist attitude. Thus, a doctor at one of the city’s day hospitals did not allow the psychologist to read the medical history until he wrote a conclusion, explaining this by the need for an objective approach to the sick child.
There are also opposite cases when psychologists are not interested in the opinions of teachers, parents, social workers about the child and they limit their work only to the results of their own research, which is completely unacceptable. When working with a child with autism, close contact is necessary not only with all the specialists who see or care for the child, but also with all the people who surround the child (family, friends, acquaintances, etc.).
Indicative stage is aimed at solving the following problems:
1. Establishing contact with the child’s parents and relatives.
2. Establishing contact with the group the child attends, with the class teacher or teachers.
3. Acquaintance of specialists with the results of a psychological examination.
4. Joint discussion with teachers and other specialists about the characteristics of the child’s mental development.
Planning stage includes the creation of an individual child support program and its approval by all specialists.
On implementation stage The individual program solves the following problems:
1. Providing the necessary assistance to the child’s parents and teachers in creating conditions necessary for the child with autism for complete, healthy image life and successful mastery educational programs taking into account his mental capabilities.
2. Providing the necessary psychological assistance to the child’s parents, relatives, and friends in order to harmonize interpersonal relationships with the child and optimize the educational process.
3. Education and consultation of teachers and other specialists working with the child.
The final stage includes a joint discussion with specialists about the effectiveness of the work done with recommendations for the child’s future activities (vocational training, continuing education at school with a vocational orientation, staying in correctional groups, etc.).
To regulate the activities of specialists in the process of psychological support, appropriate documentation should be maintained. Some authors recommend concluding an agreement between specialists, which, in our opinion, is a positive element collaboration. As our practice shows, it is advisable to keep a diary, reminiscent of a medical history, in which each specialist reflects the dynamics of the mental state, the development of cognitive processes and the personality of a small patient. In this diary, the psychologist presents a detailed psychological report about the child and a plan for psychocorrectional work.
The observation diary must be kept by the psychologist and must be provided to other specialists so that they can record their observations O dynamics of child development.
Psychological support is not limited to only tracking the child at different periods of time. Its important structural component and main maintenance task is creation of socio-psychological conditions for the effective mental development of a child with autism in society. To implement this task, the psychologist must have the closest contact not only with his family, but also with the teachers of the institution where he is trained and educated.
Schooling is extremely important for an autistic child and their family. As a rule, children with a less pronounced degree of affective pathology (third and fourth groups) enter school. School (mass or correctional) gives an autistic child not only knowledge and skills, but, above all, a chance to learn to communicate with people.
Traditionally, medical-psychological-pedagogical commissions recommend home-based education for autistic children, even with a mild degree of affective pathology, citing the fact that such a child will not be able to sit in class, will distract the attention of other children, and disorganize the work of the class. This position of specialists is not only not constructive, but also inhumane.
The experience of our many years of work shows that educating autistic children in school is quite possible. In a favorable environment and normal psychological climate A child with autism can learn successfully at school. Goodwill and sympathy from the teacher and classmates are especially important for him.
However, teaching children with autism at school certainly has a number of features. As a rule, during a lesson they have difficulty getting involved in work, often show slowness, lethargy, and find it difficult to switch from one task to another. This places increased demands on the work of a teacher. So, if the teacher notices that the child does not respond to the teacher’s addresses to the class, he needs to additionally address the child without others noticing. For example, whisper to him, use a glance, a smile, a touch. A child with autism may be delayed in answering teacher questions. Therefore, it is not recommended to ask a child in class and evaluate his answers, especially in the initial stages of education. The teacher should draw attention to the fact that children with autism are characterized by increased vulnerability and impressionability, so any prohibitions and comments can cause them negative experiences.
Full psychological support for a child with autism cannot be provided without close interaction with his close family environment. The psychologist is faced with the task of helping parents establish contact with the child’s teacher. The teacher must know how the child behaves at home, what interests, needs, behavioral characteristics he has, what is the attitude of the parents towards the child.
It is well known that an established positive relationship with a teacher, especially in the initial stages of a child’s education at school, is a powerful stimulus not only in the acquisition of knowledge, but also in his emotional and social development. A clearly developed organization of life at school (lesson schedule, breaks, etc.) is fully consistent with the behavioral characteristics of an autistic child who is prone to rituals and stereotypes. A change in the lesson schedule or a sudden disruption of order in a child with autism can cause discomfort and emotional stress. In addition to attending class, a child with autism needs additional individual assistance from a school psychologist, speech therapist, and extracurricular teacher. A school psychologist analyzes the problems of a child’s interpersonal communication and the peculiarities of the attitude of peers towards him, and, if possible, conducts special group or individual classes, during which the autistic child’s self-esteem is corrected, new forms of communication between the child and the class, with the teacher are formed, and affective tension in the communication process is reduced.
The defining task of psychological support for children with autism at the initial stages of education is the formation in the child stereotype of school behavior. To successfully solve this problem, close contact between the psychologist and the child’s teacher and parents is necessary.
The formation of socially adequate behavior in a child requires a differentiated approach to the problems of the child’s emotional and personal development. Extremely Negative influence The adaptation of a child with autism to school is influenced by his existing fears, which requires special psychological correction. The psychologist must first tell the teacher about the increased vulnerability and sensitivity of children with autism. Due to their hypersensitivity, children can sense the mood of another person.
Example
Alyosha’s teacher said that during the lesson she had a severe headache. During recess, he approached her, looked into her eyes and began stroking her head with his hands.
A child with autism may be afraid to go out to recess, where he is frightened by the noise, screams, and running of children. The teacher can leave the child in class during the break or take him to the psychologist’s office; in addition, parents can be invited so that they can communicate with him during this period of time.
Often teachers complain that the child does not see or hear them, that he is indifferent to the opinions and assessments of others. Indeed, due to limited emotional contact, an autistic child experiences significant difficulties in assessing the behavior of other people. To teach a child with autism to correctly assess the behavior and intentions of other people, special correctional work is needed in the form of directed conversations, play therapy, group classes.
Autistic children experience particular difficulties in interacting with classmates. Due to the increased exhaustion, rapid satiety and hypersensitivity observed in autistic children, communication with healthy children can quickly tire and sometimes irritate the child. On the other hand, an autistic child with his unusual behavior can cause surprise and ridicule from classmates.
Example
Katya M., 8 years 4 months, diagnosis: early childhood autism. A girl from her first normal pregnancy. Delivery on time, cry right away. Psychomotor development in the first year of life without significant deviations. The mother noticed that the girl was restless and often cried, especially when separated from her mother. Speech development proceeded at an accelerated rate. By the age of two, phrasal speech was observed; the girl repeated familiar fairy tales and poems by heart. Her mother noticed that she had little interest in toys, liked to play with household items (pots, dishes), and rejected new toys, clothes, and shoes. When strangers appeared, anxiety and fear were observed. She played alone in the playground in the sandbox, did not notice the children, did not address them, and constantly demanded the presence of her mother. Sleep is not stable enough and does not last long; I haven’t slept during the day since I was one and a half years old. She consulted with a neurologist, the doctor recommended placing the girl in a nursery. At the age of two she entered the nursery; after a one-day stay in the nursery, the girl rose heat, vomiting was observed, as a result of which she was hospitalized in the infectious diseases hospital. The mother visited the girl; she was denied permanent residence with the child in the hospital. Ten days later she was discharged with an unspecified diagnosis. The mother drew attention to the girl’s behavioral characteristics: lethargy, moodiness, and decreased speech activity. Selectivity in food appeared. During walks, the girl demanded to be taken to the subway, where she loved to watch trains. She became fearful, constantly demanded the presence of her mother, and anxiety increased in unfamiliar situations. She refused to spend the night with her grandmother; when visiting the dacha, she demanded that she be taken home. When the girl was three years old, the mother turned to a child psychiatrist at her place of residence. Medication treatment and psychological consultation were recommended. A diagnosis was made: early childhood autism.
The girl entered the psychologist’s office accompanied by her mother and grandmother. At the first stages of the examination, she showed wariness and negativism, but then the contact improved and she began to engage in play with the cat Murzik. Correctly correlated geometric shapes on Montessori boards,
independently assembled and disassembled a four-seater nesting doll, showed images on object pictures, selected subject pictures according to instructions, and built buildings in free play, taking into account the stability and shape of the parts. Reacted adequately to praise. However, during the examination, she constantly focused on the mother and when the mother tried to leave the office, she ran after her. When the mother told stories about her daughter, she listened carefully and repeated individual words. She completed the tasks slowly, but at the end of the examination the pace of completing the tasks increased. The psychologist recommended classes with the girl in a correctional group. Positive dynamics were observed in the girl’s mental development. She became more active, her fears decreased, but in an unfamiliar environment the girl showed fear and confusion. From the age of 5, the girl attended a private, understaffed kindergarten and studied with a teacher to prepare for school. Education at a public school was recommended. The girl went to school willingly. The psychologist told the teacher about the characteristics of the girl’s mental development, drawing attention to the girl’s fears, timidity, and negativism, especially in an unfamiliar situation. The teacher was attentive to the girl’s problems, sat her on the first desk, tried to ask less questions in class, and praised her in the presence of other children. The girl finished first grade with good grades. In the second grade, due to a change of place of residence, the girl moved to another school. The mother told the new teacher about her daughter’s problems, but the teacher did not pay attention to the mother’s stories, made general demands on the girl, asked her questions in the presence of the whole class, and scolded the girl for her timidity and secrecy. Classmates began to tease Katya, and she categorically refused to attend school. The teacher referred the girl to the school doctor, who advised the mother to see a child psychiatrist. A psychologist who observed a girl for 5 years turned to the school psychologist, spoke about the peculiarities of her mental development, and invited the school psychologist to the center where the correctional classes with children with autism. A plan was developed to work with the girl, aimed at increasing her status in the class, correcting her self-esteem, and developing communication skills. Special attention focused on working with the teacher. The psychologist organized a series of lectures for teachers on psychological assistance to children with developmental problems. At the New Year's party, the girl was assigned the role of the Snow Maiden, which she successfully performed. The teacher, in front of the whole class, thanked Katya for participating in the holiday and gave her and the other children cards. Gradually, contact with the teacher improved, the children stopped teasing the girl, and she became more willing to attend school.
The work of a psychologist with an autistic child in the initial stages of his schooling should be carried out individually. During individual conversations, the psychologist must tell the child about his classmates, describe the advantages and disadvantages of each of them in a correct and accessible form to the child, and find out which of the classmates the child prefers. At the next stage of classes, it is necessary to explain to the autistic child the reactions and actions of classmates, and in the process of playful psychocorrection, play out inevitable grievances and conflicts. In the future, you can invite your classmates to classes with a psychologist and, in the process of group interaction, play out various situations. However, it should be remembered that in the initial stages of training (in junior classes) the attitude towards an autistic child is determined, first of all, by the teacher’s position, his positive attitude, and correct understanding of the child’s problems.
Autistic children in middle and high school may experience particular difficulties in communicating with classmates. At an older age, the attitude towards an autistic child is determined by the general attitude of classmates. As they age, many healthy children stop communicating with an autistic child or hide it, because, in their opinion, this communication reduces their status in the company of their peers.
Example
Sergei, who suffers from autism, has been friends with a classmate since first grade. They had common interests. In the sixth grade, his friend Andrei began to avoid him, remained silent when other children laughed at him, and pushed him during recess. Sergei began to refuse to go to school, was worried, his sleep worsened, and his performance decreased. The psychologist invited Sergei and his friend for a consultation. In a confidential conversation, Andrei admitted that he was embarrassed by Sergei, that the guys laughed at his friendship with the “Alien” (that was Sergei’s nickname in class). The psychologist noticed that, despite Andrei’s refusal to communicate with Sergei, they have many common interests and, in addition, they have developed a trusting and emotionally close relationship.
In a form accessible to a teenager, the psychologist explained to Sergei that Andrei has some problems communicating with classmates, that he is dependent, suggestible, and insufficient physical strength. Andrey was invited to group psychocorrectional classes aimed at correcting the self-perception and self-esteem of adolescents. During individual conversations with Andrey, the psychologist drew attention to Andrey’s unconstructive, treacherous position towards his friend. Special work by a psychologist helped teenagers understand and evaluate the current problem and find constructive ways to resolve it. Currently, Andrey enjoys communicating with Sergei outside of school; they play computer games together, develop computer programs, and collect stamps.
The psychologist must correctly navigate the moral and psychological environment in the classroom where a child with autism is studying, adequately assess the child’s emotional mood in the process of communicating with classmates, and navigate the peculiarities of the classmates’ attitude towards the child. In the process of communication between a psychologist and classmates of an autistic child, he should under no circumstances draw the attention of classmates to the behavioral characteristics of a child with autism or explain these characteristics to his illness. You should not try to evoke pity and compassion from your classmates for your child’s problems. The psychologist should tell his classmates about the positive, unique personality traits of each of them.
In the process of observations and group classes, the school Psychologist can select a friend for an autistic child and recommend to the teacher that they sit at the same desk. It is important to promptly analyze who is the destructive leader in the class, incites classmates to call the autistic child names and laugh at him, and carry out appropriate work with him.
It should be emphasized that the work of a psychologist with the close social environment of an autistic child should be carried out constantly, and perhaps even with greater intensity than with the autistic child himself.
Example
Alyosha K., diagnosis: early childhood autism (fourth group). Psychomotor development without features, speech development accelerated Even in pre-preschool age, parents paid attention to timidity, shyness, increased anxiety and fears in the child, especially in the process of communicating with strangers. Kindergarten Without visiting, I studied with teachers at home. Successfully mastered English language, has been reading independently since the age of five. I went to school on time. The parents warned the teacher that the boy was shy, very anxious and afraid of everything. The teacher was attentive to the parents’ statements, put the boy on the first desk, and tried to address him less often in class. During recess, a boy from the class pushed Alyosha, he fell, got scared and could not get up for a long time. The children laughed and after that, during breaks, they pestered Alyosha and pushed him. Alyosha silently accepted the insults, did not react to the “pranks” of his classmates, did not tell anyone at home about what had happened, often woke up at night, screamed, and his anxiety and fears increased. Soon the boy began to refuse to go to school. The parents turned to a psychiatrist who saw the boy. After consultation with a psychiatrist, the boy was referred to a psychologist. During the conversation, the boy showed pronounced tension, became withdrawn, answered questions slowly, and listened carefully to his parents’ complaints. During further studies, the boy said that he didn’t like school, that it was noisy during recess, everyone was pushing and laughing. In a playful way, the psychologist was able to reproduce a specific situation during recess and find out which of his classmates offended Alyosha the most. The psychologist turned to the school psychologist, and a plan for working with classmates was developed. The teacher was recommended to leave the boy in the classroom during breaks, to give him all the work he could to clean the classroom, ventilate it, etc. The teacher praised Alyosha in front of the whole class for his academic performance and hard work. The school psychologist worked in a correctional group with Alyosha and his abuser. As a result of the targeted
psychological correction, Alyosha became friends with his offender, invited him to visit, and taught him how to work on a computer. On the recommendation of a psychologist, the parents invited classmates to Alyosha’s birthday and began organizing cultural outings and excursions. Currently, Alyosha enjoys attending school and, despite formally selective communication with classmates, enjoys authority in the class, and his offender has become his true protector and friend.
The formation of stereotypes of interaction between an autistic child and classmates should be carried out not only in the process of special psychocorrectional classes. The teacher and other specialists should pay special attention to the out-of-class communication of an autistic child, carried out during joint leisure time, holidays, excursions, etc. The teacher, in close contact with the psychologist, pre-thinks possible forms free communication of an autistic child during extracurricular hours, accessible and useful roles and functions for him at holidays and other events.
The difficulties of an autistic child’s adaptation to school are caused not only by the characteristics of his behavior, but also by significant cognitive, speech, and physical problems that are observed in the child. In accordance with this, the psychologist faces another task: helping the child master the educational material.
Children with autism, when mastering the school curriculum, experience significant difficulties in transferring the acquired school skills to another situation that is unfamiliar to them. Thus, the arrival of another teacher in the class, moving to another classroom, etc. can cause emotional tension, anxiety, and affective instability in a child with autism. The teacher should be aware of such characteristics of autistic children, try not to disturb the child and give him the opportunity to adapt to the new environment.
In the process of teaching autistic children in a mass school, psychologists and teachers must focus on the positive aspects of the child’s personality. This is a focus on learning, diligence, responsibility, high level memory development, the presence of selective interests. Many children show high abilities in languages, exact sciences, etc. The teacher must take into account these characteristics of the child and use them in the process of communicating with him.
Example
Andrei's favorite pastime was collecting butterflies. The boy knew the names of butterflies and wrote them in a special notebook, which he constantly carried with him. On the recommendation of a psychologist, the teacher is in the process individual conversation with the child she showed the boy an old book with pictures of butterflies. The book aroused great interest in the boy, he willingly told the teacher about the butterflies depicted in the book. After this conversation, the contact between the boy and the teacher improved significantly; Andrei approached the teacher after class, showed her his notes, and talked about butterflies. The teacher listened to the boy with interest and invited children from the class so that they could listen to his stories. The children treated them with interest and asked Andrey questions. All this had a positive impact on Andrey’s communication with his classmates.
In children with autism, in combination with organic damage to the central nervous system, a negative impact on the formation of learning skills has speech problems, instability of attention, underdevelopment of visual-spatial functions and motor skills.
As already emphasized, despite a significant vocabulary, children with autism have difficulties in organizing detailed statements and dialogue. This feature manifests itself in monosyllabic speech and the presence of stereotypes. These difficulties cannot be overcome without special corrective work. The psychologist must tell the teacher about these problems of the child and suggest that he not demand detailed answers from the child to questions in class.
Children with autism often exhibit increased verbalism: they talk a lot, but do not always listen to what others tell them. These features are caused by the child’s emotional and volitional problems and also require special correction.
Difficulties in organizing attention in children with autism may be due not only to underdevelopment of regulatory processes, but also to hypersensitivity. Therefore, the teacher is faced with the task of properly organizing visual material, providing dosed loads and implementing additional control. Its successful implementation helps to retain and switch the child’s attention, increasing his intellectual productivity.
In the process of teaching children with autism, especially in primary school, it is necessary to take into account developmental characteristics motor functions child. Children with autism may hold a pen incorrectly, grip it too loosely or too tightly, and have difficulty navigating the page of a notebook. They often find it difficult to reproduce an element of a letter from a demonstration, or to connect the letters together. Due to these features, there is a high probability of developing negativism regarding learning to write, draw, and the child’s refusal to pick up a pencil. The teacher can support the child’s hand during the writing process in order to reinforce the necessary stereotypes of movements and practice their sequence. However, it should be remembered that with this method of teaching writing, a child may develop a dependence on the help of an adult. The teacher is faced with the task of not suppressing the child’s own activity. The experience of our work shows that if a child experiences significant difficulties in writing, it is additionally possible to teach him to type on a typewriter or computer. However, it is necessary to start doing this only after he has mastered basic writing skills.
Children with autism experience some difficulties in the process of comprehending information received in class. Fragmentation of perception, underdevelopment of verbal thinking, and a tendency toward symbolism in the process of mastering educational material make it difficult to process the information received by a child with autism in the classroom. The psychologist should draw the teacher’s attention to the fact that knowledge and skills must be presented to a child with autism in a properly organized manner. It presupposes, first of all, adequately selected visual material by the teacher, a capacious and complete, but not overloaded with details, verbal formulation of the material. It is recommended to teach the child to perceive educational information as a whole, and then work through and detail its components.
Thus, psychological support for an autistic child in a public school should be carried out not only in the form of tracking, but also through the implementation of special psychocorrectional procedures. An important task of psychological support for an autistic child at school is the organization of the social environment surrounding him. Its successful solution is possible only if psychological support includes the following components:
1) systematic contact of the psychologist with teachers and other specialists working with the child;
2) systematic work with the child’s family and coordination of its interaction with specialists;