Teaching Children with Autism
Two young siblings with autism and a variety of physical challenges, and one of them died. But therapy must go on, mustn’t it? But how can you teach when your client is so depressed that she looks as if she were suffering from miasma? (Miasma – perhaps you remember the orphanage children that Spitz wrote about. Provided with having their physical needs cared for but not their emotional needs, they turned their faces to the wall and died. Miasma.). Well, there are more life lessens to be learned than are included in your ABLLS-R or VB-MAPP curriculum, and perhaps the most important just now is that you can be a source of comfort rather than a source of demands.
As you know, I am not a fan of RDI; but, at least, Greenspan was concerned with relationship issues, and some IT’s (instructor therapists) seem to forget that relationship needs to be a priority, as reflected in the shift in autism diagnostic criteria towards social communication, reminding us that the purpose of teaching communication skills is to further the development of social relationships.
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