talk by Dr. Temple Grandin four or so years ago

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgEAhMEgGOQ[/youtube]

:37 speech therapists and older experienced teachers.

:47 Nanny played turn-taking games with Temple and her sister.

1:09 teacher taking hold of chin, “come on now, pay attention,” as an example of gentle insistence, which can either help to pull child out or cause sensory overload.

1:25 “One of the biggest most neglected areas is the sensory problems . . . “

2:50 auditory threshold vs. auditory detail.

3:10 speech teacher . . . used a lot of ABA type of things

3:18 She advocates 20 hours a week with really great teacher.

4:21 People sometimes watch mouth to supplement auditory detail.

5:30 visual processing problems (eye exams may be normal).

10:27 Something like Irlen lenses or pale colored glasses may help only 2 out of 20 kids. But those 2 people, it really helps.

14:20 She wasn’t allowed to stim at the table. She was allowed to stim during rest period after lunch.

15:58 building on areas of strength.

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[And continues. The whole video is more than an hour long!]

This is about a ten minute segment on ABC News introduced by John Stossel.

Occasionally a miracle happens, but not by any kind of schedule.

A teenage girl who is autistic learns to communicate with a laptop (laptops are sometimes good because they don't have flickering). And she also tells what sensory overload is like.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNZVV4Ciccg&feature=share[/youtube]

I saw two presentations of ABA at a local university, and I was pretty unimpressed.

Maybe there's a difference between ABA type of things and ABA hardcore. I hope so.

What I saw, and this was in one video where they were supposedly doing it right:

"Hi, I'm Erin. I'm Tobi. Good job! Give me Five! Hi, I'm Erin. I'm Tobi. Good Job! Give Me Five!
Hi, I'm Erin. I'm Tobi. Good Job! Give Me Five!"

First off, some kids may not like slapping hands with a relative stranger. Nor does everyone like having an adult right in your face saying expressively "Good Job!" and putting a whole lot of energy into it (feels like it's right in the face). (I know I hated and loathed speech therapy as a child. When I hired someone as an adult who did it somewhat differently, it wasn't so bad at all.)

Then, they were teaching small looping. They were teaching oscillating on the greeting. That is not good for quote-unquote "high"-functioning kids, not good for quote-unquote "low"-functioning kids, probably not good for anyone. In their mind, there are doing multiple trials of the greeting with reward. But what they were really teaching, I think, was this small looping and oscillating on and over doing the greeting.

If the kid gives a "perfect" greeting and then has skill deficients, that's going to be more confusing and off-putting to other kids than if the kid was merely a little patchy on the greeting and a little patchy throughout. Other kids can work with that. Some other kids. Some other kids can accept differences, some can't.

I think it would be better if these teachers taught a play session with a beginning, middle, and end. With their current method, they're kind of teaching the meta-lesson of perfectionizing social skills, and that's also the mistake. The real social skill is to allow imperfections, to go with the flow in a generally positive direction, or to take it to the side, or to let a person have space who needs space.

And the student-teachers were young people who seemed young hotshots who wanted to get it exactly right. That is, they were kind of ideologues and true believers. They were kind of the polar opposite of older, experienced teacher who could leaven even good theory with some common sense (or some healthy interchange between theory and practice).

I would really recommend you request to observe at least some sessions. If they don't want parents observing, that in itself is information.

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PS I AM NOT A PARENT. But I am someone who has lived life on the spectrum and I try to be a pretty good guy. And these videos were potentially just too good not to share.

Both these videos were on a post which began last night.

Autistic Intelligence video
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4354798 ... t=#4354798

The college-aged ABA students I observed seemed like the equivalents of new converts to a religion.

Or, like someone trying to play poker by book, and playing a very clumsy, clunky game and not understanding what they're doing wrong.