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Home › Articles › Special Needs › From Their Point of View

From Their Point of View

Getting Inside the Head of a Child with Autism

By Jenn Director Knudsen

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Kori Bardige of Owings Mills, M.D., who holds a master's degree in special education, spent five years working with more than 200 preschoolers with ASD and agrees with Notbohm. "Every child [with autism] has something unique and special about [him or her]," she says. "And if you can take away behaviors to get to interaction, you can get to where they can shine."

Inside the Head
In Chapter Three "Please remember to distinguish between won't (I choose not to) and can't (I am not able to)" Notbohm writes, "All behavior is communication." In a conversation, she describes a student who seemingly inexplicably kept getting up from his seat in a public elementary school classroom. He simply would not could not stay in his chair. Children with autism often are proprioceptively disordered; they cannot accurately sense where they are in space. This student's brain literally couldn't ascertain where the edge of his seat was. So he kept bobbing up and down to rid himself of the fear of falling right off his chair.

"How frustrated would you be if you couldn't tolerate your environment and can't communicate about your environment?" Notbohm says. "If they can't tolerate their very environment and can't communicate their wants and needs, cognitive and social learning will be very difficult."

The student in this example was lucky; a well-trained and perceptive member of his school's early childhood intervention team, an occupational therapist, recognized the reason for the behavior. She fastened a strip of pipe insulation around the edge of the student's seat so he could better feel its edge. He stayed in his chair. Both he and his teacher probably learned something in his classroom that day.

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