Compassion?

How about I teach a way to think and learn about compassion?

Nurses have advocated teaching about pain management.  It was thought that if someone had pain, they would tell you about it.  Not everyone can communicate pain.  A very real way to think of it is that if you told me you had a headache. If I could not see your pain, it must not be very tangible, maybe its not real since its not real to me?  You are able to continue talking with me and don't seem to be in pain.  It was through nurses intelligent observation and sensible logical measurements pain became measurable.  The 0-10 scale combined with clear descriptors of qualities of pain, that it became a tangible thing to manage.  

How about anxiety?  It is a type of mental pain.  If you have never experienced a moment of panic, how would you know or empathize?  Here is an extreme way to think about it.  You have just consumed a whole pot of coffee.  Some people are acclimated to that much caffeine so think about enough to feel jittery.  Then go into a closed small dark closet, sit down and will yourself to be still.  Remember there is caffeine racing through your veins, its small and dark.  Soon enough you need to go to the washroom, but the door is jammed, it will not open.  Try being calm and serene, its not happening.  Now all that urge to urinate is creating bowel cramps from the pressure of sitting with a full bladder, but that damn door will not open.  It is not just the anxiety that is the problem, it is the compounded symptoms.  Now the door bursts open and relief is imminent.  Oops, you had an accident on the way to the washroom, you are now embarrassed and no one can understand why.  You are very flustered, you cannot tell them why since you don't want to admit to being silly enough to be locked in a closet.  Maybe you are more jittery, breathless, talking more excitedly (hyper-caffeinated) in attempt to divert attention from your oopsie moment.  Don't you think you are coming across kinda strange flapping your hands around talking mile-a-minute?  Kinda looks like stimming now somehow.  Stimming is a way to relieve anxiety, directs it, and is repetitive thereby calming, something controllable.  

There are ways to relate and teach all emotions in this way.  I've been trying to identify feelings and talking about them with MrD as if they are individual people.  Anxiety comes to town, sometimes accompanied by Scared and Mad.  Mad and Angry are similar but one is stronger than the other.  Sad, Lonely, and Bored are often related, but confusing to decipher.  Happy, Silly, Content are welcome.  Start with the extremes then the subtle becomes more and more clear.  We all learn by starting simple and building on it.  Treating these things this way makes it more logical and then when feelings pop up, it is easier to identify the cast to figure out the story.

Another's shoes

A big part of being Mom to MrD is to be aware of his perspective.  This goes a huge way into figuring out why he struggles.  Sometimes its not enough, but at least I'm trying.  Perspective taking is something I have had to be creative about in teaching my son.  Owning pets really helps, pets have feelings, ideas, and most importantly rights.  If you doubt that, you just need to read about animal abuse stories and think about the atrocities committed.  Animals can go a long way to helping teach compassion.

Perspective is important, so is compassion.  Then there is a line that is overboard and we are ripe to be taken advantage of.  I have found that teaching extreme polar opposite ends of why we have manners and why we do things a certain way helps form a framework to fill in the subtleties that create grey areas.  It seems that the big details help to make it make sense, with time.  Teaching why rudeness is unacceptable means talking about why you would not wear your muddy shoes into another's home, sit at their table and then swing those filthy feet up onto their table.  That shows why feet should never be on the table.  Building on that, sitting on your chair rather than waving your butt at your table-mates while you lean over & kneel badly in your chair picking something up is also rude.  See how the rules and rationale build with concrete examples.  Temple Grandin openly spoke of learning table manners and her mother's frustration with her eating with her mouth open.  It wasn't until Ms Grandin went to a friends home for a meal and was horrified to see others talk and eat with their mouths open.  She told of telling her mother that it was like looking into a open garbage truck and it was aweful.  Only THEN was it real for her mother to complete the teaching of why it is rude.  These types of lessons are everywhere to talk about and learn from.  They are commonly referred to as "teachable moments" and are often more valuable than instruction or formal lessons.

Being compassionate is not the same as being another person. It is the understanding that their experiences are similar but different than our own that is a milestone with Auspergers Autism.  From there we learn about lying, which is another milestone.  You have to understand other people have different perspectives or lying is irrelevant. Then begins discussions about lying, white lies, blatant lies, and trust, or erosion of trust as a result of lies.  The children's story about "Henny Penny, The Sky is Falling" is now relevant again.  The trick is finding less juvenile examples that are equally interesting.

CopyCat

I have noticed that mimicry is a favorite way of learning social skills for my son.  He can repeatedly and accurately recite things that he thinks are hilarious from TV's The Simpsons and The Big Bang.  I make sure to watch some with him & we can talk about wether it is appropriate or rude.  The truth is that often rude things are funny, BUT we have to know why it is rude to appreciate the context.  We are human, sometimes we laugh when we see a stranger fall down, or when someone bends over & their pants split.  Misfortune is fodder for comedy.  If we can't laugh, we'd be crying all the time!  Sometimes it is healthiest to step back from a day of misfortune and laugh at it rather than rolling over & showing our belly and wallowing in it indefinitely.

Mimicry is how we learn to retell jokes in a funny way, or to tell a story without killing it with boredom. Mimicry is the oldest form of flattery.  Mimicry is learning, and so is repetition.  Repetition builds familiarity and memory.  We learn musical lyrics, times tables, tying our shoes with repetition.  Often saying we can't do something is a lie we tell ourselves, maybe we just don't want to do something.  This is exactly why I have forced my son to join into social situations when he doesn't want to.  It is like trying new foods, you have to taste it first to know if you will like it, sometimes repeatedly.  Occasionally I feel like a Bad Mom forcing my son to step up and do something himself like paying for a dollar store item.  I can see and feel his anxiety building.  I do prepare him in advance & we talk through the steps.  Talking about something is not the same as doing it.  Many of us have similar anxiety in driving situations.  I used to have anxiety about parallel parking, merging, and driving with a median on my left.  With practice and repetition skills gets better and the anxiety backs off.  Social skills are like that too.

Understanding Anxiety is key to succeeding the job of controlling it.  It is a huge misconception to say we can beat anxiety, or overcome anxiety, it never really goes away.  Anxiety isn't a bad thing unless it is uncontrolled, it is linked to our "fight or flight" survival instincts.  Do we run & hide or do we fight.  Anxiety has to be toned down, beaten back, owned in order to control it.  Everyone has to learn to do this themselves.  Anyone that goes through life avoiding anxiety often ends up with more severe punishing circumstances like hoarding, addictions, being housebound, panic attacks...  I strongly think that anxiety is a root of many labels in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders manual that doctors reference to.  That book is also known as DSM-IV-TR, is a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that includes all currently recognized mental health disorders.  People that live with mental disorders are not at fault for their problems, they are just different and need help and acceptance.

Meditation or relaxation techniques are essential tools to control anxiety.  Many times I have had to step into a surprise situation and tell myself, "OhshitwhatdoIdo...take a deep breath."  Taking-a-deep-breath-blowing-it-out-slow, repeat, gives a pause long enough to let my brain help me deal with the surprise.  It also enables oxygen to be available to my brain to make decent decisions.  Hyperventilating begets oxygen overload with full adrenaline charge which feeds anxiety and horrible physical symptoms (heart racing, slightly dizzy, feel lousy, feel scared, paralyzed and numb with overload).  That's great if a tree is going to fall on you, it gives you immediate energy & strength to try to jump out of the way.  Not so good if a neighbor dog confronts you aggressively, or a stranger in a parking lot comes up to your car screaming at you crazily.  It takes time to learn skills, learning to identify our issues is hard.  If life were easy, we would be bored.

How do we

Question:  How do we know what we know?
Answer:  We learn

Isn't that the simple truth of humanity?  It doesn't matter our ability or status, if we want to know something, we learn about it.  We can read about it in a book, an encyclopedia, or an internet search.  Historically people sought out others with expertise & traded or bartered for learning skills. If we were exceptionally fortunate we could learn first from our family.

We learn social skills, by experience and imitation.  We learn why a joke is a groaner or funny by our experiences.  I recently was reminded that sometimes we just can't tell someone how to learn something, we have to show them.  It is so very important to be aware of learning styles and strengths.  A good example is to learn to walk through a crowded area.  Children are taught or figure out to get out of the way or they could be stepped on.  As we grow older & taller there is a transition point where we have to learn to maintain our space, or "hold our line."  When we give up our personal space, we are crowded out, pushed aside, or become part of the background.  Or people walk into us, or they can even touch us inappropriately.  If we don't learn to hold our line, other people go ahead of us in lineups and we don't get a turn.  We learn the value of our personal space by experience.  Recently a stranger was walking right into my son's space in a crowded store and I saw him dodging out of the way.  That is only one strategy to deal with that situation.  I taught him right then that is is better to call out loud and clear, "Excuse me!" to make the stranger aware that they are needing to pay better attention & someone is there already.  We also learn to stick out our elbows slightly in a crowd.  This is not to harm another person, but to serve a gentle reminder to others to pay attention when they walk into us, that they do not have a right to all the space either.  More often than not, they apologize for bumping us, sometimes even if we did the bump.  That is manners in action, they are so very important.  Manners keep us civilized, sooth misunderstandings, and keep rudeness from multiplying.  Rudeness can promptly become misunderstandings, shouting matches or even physical fights.  Parents have to be vigilant for opportunities to teach the abstract concept of manners, regardless of autism spectrum.

Music has influence

Having noise as part of background environment is fairly normal for most people.  I've gotten back into having music using "SHOUTcast - Songbird" free from the internet.  The music selection is phenomenal!  For a long time we needed quiet because TV & Radio cause fractured attention with the screaming-sonic-boom-volume commercials.  Its hard for regular people to enjoy media with jacked up volume interruptions, try being a little more sensitive to sensory stimuli and wah-la, an instant recipe for frustration.  There are two enviroments we can control to some extent; internal and external.  (More blog posts upcoming about environments)

Sometimes when problems arise you have to go all the way back to the basics to figure out where is the hijacker that is making a problem or behaviour so maddening, or just contributing.  There have been numerous studies about music popularity and it is now known that top-40music follows recognizable patterns.  I hear more and more overlap in music genres now than ever before.  Patterns are identical or tweaked to be faster, slower, mechanical, interrupted, or enhanced somehow.  A musical brain would be fascinated by the myriad of facets of musical patterns.  A musical brain is often a mathematical brain, or one that recognizes patterns.

Motivational upbeat music has a tempo of about 80-90 beats-minute.  High octane exercise music has a tempo about 100-130 beats per minute.  Relaxing calming music has a tempo 60-70 beats per minute.  Ever noticed sleepy music is never on the radio in the morning?  Thats intentional.  It is a challenge to play with this information.  Afternoon lag?  Time to crank up the music and do something active.  The boost lasts longer than caffeine & sweets without the dehydration or energy crash.

Today I cranked up the Dance tunes, and getting up was easier for me and MrD.  I intend to experiment with music in our environment during meals, homework, and of course bedtime.

Change is transition

September brings grade 8 into our lives for MrD.  Its exciting and scary.  I remember vividly certain things about grade 8, the chaos, the newness, the anticipation, then the eventual, "that's it?"  I'm a generation X gal, apathy was the flavour for everything.  Much Music, neon colours, Goth, heavy metal, bubble-gum-pop-music, and more advertising than any generation before.  This and a family with heavy influence in critical thinking and social games, not much was a surprise it seems.  Now I see it was full of so much extremes and contrast, but it was normal.

MrD doesn't always handle transition well.  "Front-loading" helps, in which we talk about what's coming up next, sometimes in great detail.  With enough preparation he does quite well.  If we're going to the mall, he knows that is  a big busy place with lots of people milling around.  It used to be I'd have to remind him of the environment, which stores we needed to go to, and what we needed to do or get while we were there.  With practice it is enough now to know, we're going to the mall.  Familiar transitions are almost always easier than new experiences, that seems to apply to everyone.  Strangely we have transitions every day to get out of our house to go out that have resistance attached.  I still haven't figured out if its anxiety fueled or control or rebellion.  Its getting to be the same way to get out of the car once we're home to go into the house.  Its a mystery to me.

The elementary teacher-aid & high-school counsellor have done a phenomenal job of front-loading the high school experience.  MrD has had numerous tours of the high school at different times of day, seen the layout, walked the halls and learned what he will be navigating.  There have also been discussions about crowded hallways, awareness of body space, how much space a backpack takes & not to club people with it accidentally.  There have been giggling conversations about farting in busy halls, so there's definitely an awareness of noxious odors!  Then there's the daily schedule, students go to the teachers, opposite to how most elementary school programming is.  Time also has to be measured and judged.  "I forgot" or "I got lost" aren't excusable for very long.  MrD accepts these new big transitions quite well.  I suspect it is because he has not had a traditional one family upbringing with the same friends in elementary school and high school that I was so bored with during my education.  Then there's the interesting remixing of friendships & enemies, strange alliances that aren't obvious, and the ever present hormone soup swirling around.  That there is the monkey in the system, the mystery to why locker slammings, stuffings and bullying in general appear.  Kids know the rules, so they're subtle, they do things when adults don't generally catch them.  That's the big dread of grade 8.  Unpleasant events once, or repeatedly are enough to make anyone snap.  I'm hopeful the grade 8 year will be a success, yet I do not have much faith in the school system after all the subtle bullying episodes from elementary school.

Spreading positive energy

Recently I have been challenged with several sources of difficult thinking people and situations.  I mean that it is difficult to meet their level of thinking and agree 100%.  Most people are aware of their viewpoint only & are really conflicted when presented with another viewpoint that doesn't match theirs.  Everyone likes to think that they are right, they are okay, and that their way is best.  In fact, because of this it is very easy to fall into patterns of complaining, constantly even.  I'm no "Pollyanna" type of person, I know life is full of hard things, awful things, full out excrement things.  I just get tired of everyone complaining, its oppressive.  It is getting to the point where it could be a cliche, "to be human is to complain."  

Complaining is not the same as having an opinion.  The differentiation becomes blurred when one negative opinion is broadcasted, repeatedly, beyond its purpose.  Negative energy breeds negativity.  Have you ever gone to a meeting in an okay state of mind & walked away grumbling?  It seems as contagious as yawning, and just as insidious.  After thinking about this and the mind body connection, I wonder.  Can we make ourselves sick by fixating on the negative?  Another cliche is to "fake it 'til you make it."  I have re-interpreted that to mean: the lousier I feel, the better care I must take of myself.  Even when I don't feel like smiling, sometimes it helps to trick myself into it by looking at silly youtube videos, sharing cheezy jokes, or playing with my cat.  Once I choose to change my mind, if feels like throwing off a big heavy blanket, or basking in sunshine after being indoors all day.  

I know that when there is a lousy mood in our home, it feels oppressive.  I don't know how else to describe it, like a black rain cloud right over my home.  Everyone reacts to it differently with different coping.  TV, computer, video games, naps, swearing, fights, yelling matches, competing for attention...  When Negative comes to visit, it is getting better to acknowledge it, and deal with it.  Ignoring Negative seems to generate more.  Thats my rambling thoughts right now.  Here's a prayer that resonates with me & stimulated this post.

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
Mother Teresa