A child with good verbal skills can often demonstrate excellent understanding when social situations or expectations are explained to them but as soon as they’re faced with a ‘real life’ situation where they need to apply this learning, it appears to ‘go out the window’.
An example of this might be telling a younger child why they need to try and sit quietly at the table in a café, but the next time you eat out, they’re running around, shouting, as if the conversation had never taken place. A teenager, on the other hand, might listen carefully to advice on choosing healthy friendships and give the correct answer to questions that test whether they’ve understood the topic. Despite this, the following week, they go to the park with a more streetwise classmate, get drunk and lose their phone.
It’s exasperating for families as well as the teachers and health professionals that support them. What, if anything, can be done to close this gap and help autistic youngsters to think before they act?
The ‘Real World’ Can be Overwhelming
Heidi Keeling is a member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists with more than twenty years’ experience working with autistic children and adults. She says it’s well-known that it can be difficult for autistic people to apply learning to everyday life and that there are a number of factors that contribute to this.
“When parents or professionals explain the theory of a situation to a young person, it’s probably in a calm, comfortable environment,” she explains. “The adult might adapt the learning to the individual, providing writing or visuals to support their understanding and helping them to manage their emotional stimulation. In this way, it’s easy for the child to process the information.
“But out in the real world, there may be a hundred, different types of stimuli to contend with,” she continues. “There may be sensory issues – noise, lights and movement – they may have to follow a conversation that jumps from topic-to-topic and have lots of social inferences to work out as well as dealing with their own internal state. There’s often so much going on that it is exhausting for the young person. It’s almost impossible for them to pause and think about how they might manage the situation.”
Accept That Your Child Will Make Blunders
In addition, Heidi says, some people with autism find it difficult to see links between different situations and apply the ‘template’ of what they’ve learned. A neurotypical person, she points out, might say, ‘Oh yes, I remember what I need to say now,’ but to an autistic person, each scenario is a completely new event.
On top of that, she adds, neurodiverse people frequently have difficulties with ‘executive function’ – that is, tasks that require planning, organisation and self-regulation, making it even more tricky for them to manage their own behaviour.
Even so, autistic people can definitely learn to negotiate social situations, she continues. The best way to help is to start when children are young and accept that they will make mistakes. However, it’s crucial, she stresses, that kids are not shamed for ‘getting it wrong’ but gently helped to think about alternative ways of behaving. There can be a lot of pressure for people with ASD to say the ‘right’ thing, which could be compared to a neurotypical person preparing for a job interview.
Share Different Points of View
“It can be helpful to think about the ‘Double Empathy’ approach (developed by author and academic Dr Damian Milton),” Heidi carries on. “It’s to do with viewing autism and the neurotypical attitude as two different cultures, almost like Microsoft versus Apple. The neurotypical culture is the dominant one but it doesn’t mean that one way is better than the other – they’re just different.”
With this in mind, she suggests, you can explain to an autistic youngster how you see the world and how other people might expect them to behave. In turn, you can allow them to explain their view of a situation and perhaps talk about a compromise.
For older children – with or without ASD – Heidi says it important to think about what might be driving their behaviour. If they’re hanging out with unsuitable friends, it may be because they need to belong and to appear ‘cool’.
