This week, Dr. Gutstein starts a new podcast series discussing common concerns for parents with children on the autism spectrum. Join us for the first episode exploring concerns surrounding self-stim and more.
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I think that if you’ve been trying to see what you can do to do influence this child, to direct this child, to guide this child. You know you can feel so out of control, feel so helpless as a parent that it’s not surprising that you might focus on some more observable behaviour. That’s one thing, I think the other thing that’s interesting, it’s still a mystery if you’re a parent about what it is inside that child, in their mind , that is different and that you should be focusing on.
Come and see it a different way, There is a visible part of autism and then there’s the more invisible part of autism. And unfortunately the visible part is different for every child and it also is not universal. It’s very different for each child. The invisible parts are actually more universal, common and more central to the disorder but there isn’t a lot of a education on what those invisible parts are or what’s going on in that child’s mind, you know it’s a mystery to parents and their even told that, sometimes they’re told to not to even think, not to even focus on the mind, only focus on behaviour.
There’s a lot of belief, I still hear that autism is a behavioural disorder and that if you fix the behaviour things will be ok. So I think there’s that. I do think there is just a mystery of mystification by the parents who don’t learn about the research, they don’t know what’s going on, about what is actually happening inside the child’s mind. So I still hear parents saying well maybe they like being like that or maybe they’re in their own world or maybe they’re probably choosing to do this or that in their mind. And it’s just we don’t know cause we can’t tell so there’s a mystery. But when you see a behaviour out there right, its observable, you can see it , so maybe you can feel like then, that;s something that’s not as mysterious.
Unfortunately it often is just as mysterious because behaviour is often just a side effect or a symptom of something else that’s going on. But I do think that’s one major, major issue is this mystification of why focus on behaviour, and I would say behaviour rather than what, it’s the same reason people focus on speech rather than thought or language as thinking, speech as production of words because it’s something you can get a handle on, you can grasp it , you can say well I can do more of it, less of it.
I’ll tell you the other thing about is you can often , sometimes you can actually, it depends on behaviour, sometimes you can be more successful, feel more successful focusing on behaviour. Depends, if it’s like a self stimulation, no you can’t but other behaviours maybe you can be successful at it and when you’re feeling very unsuccessful it’s nice to ya know feel like you want to choose something that you can have some success with. I mean I think there is several reasons why, I think it does depend on the behaviour. I think it does come down to the idea of when I, when my primary role which is to guide the development of the mind , it’s the primary role of the parent,
When I’m unable to do that, I want to do something , I want to feel effective, I want to feel like I am helping my child , caring for my child. So what am I going to do If I can’t, If I don’t feel like I can develop the way they think , the way they perceive, the way they handle emotion, the way they handle their interpersonal perceptions, their perspectives. Remember these are parents that are feeling like they can’t do any of those typical things that parents do. That’s the role of parents, you’re actually, your the architects of their mind , you’re developing those things.
The ability to think, to reflect on past experience, the ability to anticipate the future, the ability to develop sort of flexible organization in the world. That’s what parents are doing, developing what we call theory of mind from the age of about one on, parents are doing that whether they know it or not. Teaching children how to use emotion, how to be aware of emotion , how to manage their feelings, teaching children how to pretend and imagine and to share that. I mean all the things you do with in a typically developing situation, here you’re with a child with autism you’re not doing it, so what are you going to do if you want to be a good parent, you want to care, you feel like you can’t do those things.I think that’s another reason.
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