Teaching an ASD child to converse
May. 25th, 2012 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraI replied, in my previous comment thread, to a comment, and then realized that I had more - I know this will come as a surprise to you all - to say.
One of the hallmarks of an ASD child and his general speech is that ASD children can talk non-stop for hours about the topics which interest them. Or obsess them. From an outsider's perspective, it's often hard to separate the two.
They frequently cannot talk about anything else. When my oldest was in elementary school, I could ask him about his school day, but by the time he crossed the threshold and entered the house, the last thing he wanted to talk about was school. At all. I therefore got a blank stare, when he was younger, or "it was fine" when he was older. That was the extent of the information I was given. For this reason, among others, I was in steady contact with his teachers in the early years.
My oldest was that variety of Aspergers which is precociously verbal. He taught himself to read in order to play The Incredible Machine and Diablo. He couldn't stand to wait for us to read things to him, in the first case (all of the level goals were of course in words), or wait for me to tell him what items the monsters had dropped, in the second.
He could talk about Diablo or the incredible machine for days. So I played the Incredible Machine and Diablo. We played Diablo together on the home network. I played video games before he was born, and after, so we had an interest in common.
The interest in common was very helpful in turning the exposition or monologue into a dialogue, because he wanted to talk about the things that interested him.
To a lesser extent, all children are like this. They want to be heard. ASD, non-ASD, they want to be heard. ASD children are developmentally much younger than normative children, and their social skills are therefore several years behind the curve. When other children are engaging in conversation, the ASD child will be engaging in monologue, because he is arrested at the 'want to be heard' level for far longer than the other children.
I was asked, by the parent of a five year old ASD boy, what I'd done to cause my nine year old son to converse. The prevailing thought is that it is neither healthy nor normal to allow an ASD child to monologue, and if the child is doing this, he must be stopped.
I'm afraid I disagree with this.
It did not make sense to me that you cut off your otherwise totally silent child anytime he starts to talk about fire-trucks. Those are the only things that interest him. If you cut him off, why should he want to speak at all? There's nothing to share.
I explained this at length:
I am not an expert in anything but my son. But I am an observer, and I remember - in bits and pieces - what being a child myself was like. The desire to be heard is a powerful incentive - for anyone. It's a useful incentive when you are trying to teach your child that discussion and interplay - the ability to both listen and converse, is fun. If it is not fun, it is a chore, and like any chore, it requires nagging for completion, and it is almost never done outside of that. It's work, not play.
So I let my son monologue about the things that interested him. Because I also played some of the games, I could then ask questions - within the framework of his interest - that he would sometimes answer. Sometimes became all the time as he stopped to think about my game-related questions, and to frame answers for them. A back and forth grew from that; the ability to converse grew from that. Was the conversation about his current obsession? Yes. But his incentive to engage in discussion was that excitement. Cutting that off would have made conversation almost pointless, for him.
We utilized his excitement and passion for his games to effectively teach him how to talk with, as opposed to to other people. Would he converse about anything else? No. Not immediately. Those other things weren't interesting to him. He had nothing to say about them. He could not generate small talk at all at that stage: he had nothing to say because he did not know anything about random, general subjects.
ASD children are often insecure; they are much more afraid to make mistakes and to get things wrong, even when there's no penalty for making a mistake. If you attempt to engage a younger ASD child - a verbal one - on a subject about which they know nothing, you're talking to a wall. Sometimes the wall is facing you, and sometimes it's not - but the end effect is the same. Talking about a honed interest is talking about something over which they feel they have knowledge. It's not nearly as inherently risky for them. They are unlikely to make mistakes or get things wrong.
So talking to them about their obsessions is talking to them in their comfort zones. Since you are, over the course of years, trying to teach them to converse, which they don't naturally do, you are asking for a change - and asking for a change like this in one of their comfort zones is possibly the easiest way to succeed. But it's not a full-stop 'change this right now' change; it's a gradual one.
When you begin to engage your young ASD children in this fashion, you are entering their domain. You are stepping onto their turf. It's the only way to be certain that they have a topic about which they feel they can talk at all. That knowledge & interest is your strongest tool. I think it's wrong to throw it away. If you have that as a tool, the child is keenly interested and therefore has incentive, and you can begin to change the framework of that interest while still engaging the child's desire. You can leverage his incentive.
Does this mean you will end up doing things that are not, at base, inherently interesting to you? Yes. In the beginning, yes it does, and this is hard. It's even harder when your ASD child is not your only child. But ASD children are not nearly as good at coming to your turf in the early years. They don't really see your turf at all.
My son did learn to converse using the subjects that might otherwise have been full-blown monologues without prompting and pushing on our part. We had to learn to converse about Diablo on his level (for me this was not hard). He talked to us. But when he started to finally meet kids who also played these games (which happened as he got older because parents of young children do not generally allow that much computer gaming in the house; when they have teens, they learn to choose other battles *wry g*), he was able to converse with them. They were his peers.
My son knew, because of the conversations he had with us at home, that if he found people who shared his interests, conversation was fun. In the early years, he was impatient, but because he was bursting with enthusiasm, he knew if he waited, he would be allowed to talk. And we did make him wait, as he got older, but when it was his turn, he could let loose. And did.
He learned, by this long, slow process, that talking could be fun. Talking involved other people. He did not learn, immediately, that listening and discussing could be fun, because most children do not inherently understand this; they want to be heard. But he did learn it. Did it take him longer than it took other children to learn this? Yes.
But he did. I remember when he was thirteen, and my husband and I would be discussing politics or newspaper articles or items of interest to the two of us - and we would be surprised when our son suddenly asked a question, and pulled up a chair. These were not topics of interest for him, and he had not introduced them to us.
But because we are, by and large, geeks, and because we had always involved ourselves to lesser and greater extents in the things that he found interesting, he believed that what we found interesting could be interesting, period, because our interests had so often coincided with his own.
One of the hallmarks of an ASD child and his general speech is that ASD children can talk non-stop for hours about the topics which interest them. Or obsess them. From an outsider's perspective, it's often hard to separate the two.
They frequently cannot talk about anything else. When my oldest was in elementary school, I could ask him about his school day, but by the time he crossed the threshold and entered the house, the last thing he wanted to talk about was school. At all. I therefore got a blank stare, when he was younger, or "it was fine" when he was older. That was the extent of the information I was given. For this reason, among others, I was in steady contact with his teachers in the early years.
My oldest was that variety of Aspergers which is precociously verbal. He taught himself to read in order to play The Incredible Machine and Diablo. He couldn't stand to wait for us to read things to him, in the first case (all of the level goals were of course in words), or wait for me to tell him what items the monsters had dropped, in the second.
He could talk about Diablo or the incredible machine for days. So I played the Incredible Machine and Diablo. We played Diablo together on the home network. I played video games before he was born, and after, so we had an interest in common.
The interest in common was very helpful in turning the exposition or monologue into a dialogue, because he wanted to talk about the things that interested him.
To a lesser extent, all children are like this. They want to be heard. ASD, non-ASD, they want to be heard. ASD children are developmentally much younger than normative children, and their social skills are therefore several years behind the curve. When other children are engaging in conversation, the ASD child will be engaging in monologue, because he is arrested at the 'want to be heard' level for far longer than the other children.
I was asked, by the parent of a five year old ASD boy, what I'd done to cause my nine year old son to converse. The prevailing thought is that it is neither healthy nor normal to allow an ASD child to monologue, and if the child is doing this, he must be stopped.
I'm afraid I disagree with this.
It did not make sense to me that you cut off your otherwise totally silent child anytime he starts to talk about fire-trucks. Those are the only things that interest him. If you cut him off, why should he want to speak at all? There's nothing to share.
I explained this at length:
I am not an expert in anything but my son. But I am an observer, and I remember - in bits and pieces - what being a child myself was like. The desire to be heard is a powerful incentive - for anyone. It's a useful incentive when you are trying to teach your child that discussion and interplay - the ability to both listen and converse, is fun. If it is not fun, it is a chore, and like any chore, it requires nagging for completion, and it is almost never done outside of that. It's work, not play.
So I let my son monologue about the things that interested him. Because I also played some of the games, I could then ask questions - within the framework of his interest - that he would sometimes answer. Sometimes became all the time as he stopped to think about my game-related questions, and to frame answers for them. A back and forth grew from that; the ability to converse grew from that. Was the conversation about his current obsession? Yes. But his incentive to engage in discussion was that excitement. Cutting that off would have made conversation almost pointless, for him.
We utilized his excitement and passion for his games to effectively teach him how to talk with, as opposed to to other people. Would he converse about anything else? No. Not immediately. Those other things weren't interesting to him. He had nothing to say about them. He could not generate small talk at all at that stage: he had nothing to say because he did not know anything about random, general subjects.
ASD children are often insecure; they are much more afraid to make mistakes and to get things wrong, even when there's no penalty for making a mistake. If you attempt to engage a younger ASD child - a verbal one - on a subject about which they know nothing, you're talking to a wall. Sometimes the wall is facing you, and sometimes it's not - but the end effect is the same. Talking about a honed interest is talking about something over which they feel they have knowledge. It's not nearly as inherently risky for them. They are unlikely to make mistakes or get things wrong.
So talking to them about their obsessions is talking to them in their comfort zones. Since you are, over the course of years, trying to teach them to converse, which they don't naturally do, you are asking for a change - and asking for a change like this in one of their comfort zones is possibly the easiest way to succeed. But it's not a full-stop 'change this right now' change; it's a gradual one.
When you begin to engage your young ASD children in this fashion, you are entering their domain. You are stepping onto their turf. It's the only way to be certain that they have a topic about which they feel they can talk at all. That knowledge & interest is your strongest tool. I think it's wrong to throw it away. If you have that as a tool, the child is keenly interested and therefore has incentive, and you can begin to change the framework of that interest while still engaging the child's desire. You can leverage his incentive.
Does this mean you will end up doing things that are not, at base, inherently interesting to you? Yes. In the beginning, yes it does, and this is hard. It's even harder when your ASD child is not your only child. But ASD children are not nearly as good at coming to your turf in the early years. They don't really see your turf at all.
My son did learn to converse using the subjects that might otherwise have been full-blown monologues without prompting and pushing on our part. We had to learn to converse about Diablo on his level (for me this was not hard). He talked to us. But when he started to finally meet kids who also played these games (which happened as he got older because parents of young children do not generally allow that much computer gaming in the house; when they have teens, they learn to choose other battles *wry g*), he was able to converse with them. They were his peers.
My son knew, because of the conversations he had with us at home, that if he found people who shared his interests, conversation was fun. In the early years, he was impatient, but because he was bursting with enthusiasm, he knew if he waited, he would be allowed to talk. And we did make him wait, as he got older, but when it was his turn, he could let loose. And did.
He learned, by this long, slow process, that talking could be fun. Talking involved other people. He did not learn, immediately, that listening and discussing could be fun, because most children do not inherently understand this; they want to be heard. But he did learn it. Did it take him longer than it took other children to learn this? Yes.
But he did. I remember when he was thirteen, and my husband and I would be discussing politics or newspaper articles or items of interest to the two of us - and we would be surprised when our son suddenly asked a question, and pulled up a chair. These were not topics of interest for him, and he had not introduced them to us.
But because we are, by and large, geeks, and because we had always involved ourselves to lesser and greater extents in the things that he found interesting, he believed that what we found interesting could be interesting, period, because our interests had so often coincided with his own.