What are transitions?

What's a transition? In short, it's the moment when we move from one activity to the next.

Some of us find this process pretty simple, and don't think much of dropping what we're currently doing, in order to take up a different task. But for people with executive functioning deficits, sensory, anxiety, attention and/or autism issues, transitions can be hellish propositions.

Imagine you're reading your favourite book, or watching your favourite TV show, writing an essay, drawing a picture - any task requiring your concentration. You're deeply engrossed in what you're doing, and you might even be having fun. Then someone pops up in front of you seemingly out of nowhere, demanding your attention, requiring you to focus on what they want. This can be rather startling, and is usually at least mildly irritating. That person then demands that you instantly drop what you're doing and take up something different, something they have determined to be more important. They won't allow you to finish the paragraph you're reading/writing. If you were baking a cake, they won't let you take it out of the oven. You must stop what you're doing right now, and move on, regardless of your internal dialogue. It happens to all of us at some point in our day.

Doesn't the very thought of that scenario irritate you? Do you feel a little bit of anxiety? Maybe you're imagining how you'd like to tell that person to take their instructions and shove them... well, you know where! ;) So now, take that discomfort and multiply it by a very large number, and you might be coming close to describing the difficulty faced by the student with an ASD. I'll try to explain further.

So, imagine it took you quite a while to settle down to the task you were doing, significantly longer than the average person. You had to fight off distractions, sensory sensitivities/overload, and various anxieties related to moving on from the previous task. Structuring and organising your thoughts, and building up the focus you've been applying to the task took immense effort. And now, when you finally are settled into the task, it feels like you've hardly had any time to get anything done.

Imagine it's your favourite thing to do in all the world, and you are now expected to drop it to take up something much less favoured, or at least less important to you. Then consider that it's very important to you to finish what you started, otherwise everything feels out of control, but you still have a little more to do and the person asking you to drop everything has not considered this fact. Letting go of that thought requires an incredible effort, and the anxiety is consequently building in your stomach. How are you supposed to be able to stop when you're not finished?! Why can't they consider your feelings?! Why should they get to determine what the priorities are?!

Add to that the distracting buzz of people around you as they begin to pack up, thus making it more difficult to organise your panicky thoughts and manage your intense feelings. Next, take into account the enormous effort it will take to get organised for and then settle into the next task, the difficulty of which is only exacerbated by all these feelings! Your mind is racing, your heart is fluttering, your stomach is churning, your work isn't finished yet, you want to please the person who is making demands of you but you are simultaneously furious at them for their lack of caring and overwhelmingly anxious about how you are going to get through this moment.

Now imagine you have no names for those feelings, no way to express your fears, frustrations and fury. It's so overwhelming that words simply escape you; your mind is screaming; your voice box seems to be frozen solid; your muscles are rigid. All you have left in your armory is to cry, or throw something, or sit there frozen, shaking your head, trying to block out all the expectations and demands of people around you, or maybe even attempt to plough on and try to finish the task despite the fact that you are likely to be disciplined for not following instruction.

Once you've moved on though, that initial task is still not complete, so you're utterly stuck on that thought, like gum boots in concrete, unable to budge. Even when you can manage all the anxiety and move onto the next task, you might take quite a long time to let go of that thought, and relax enough to settle into the next activity and get some work done.

And so the cycle repeats, in the end, with very little work commenced, and hardly anything actually completed.

So the recommendations for teachers to assist with transitions are:

1. Patience, Patience, Patience. And take the recommended daily dose of compassion. If you put your cranky pants on this morning, go home and get changed. They are the wrong pants for teaching anyway.

2. Give this student smaller chunks of work to do at a time, taking into account that they might not be able to complete what you have planned for the whole class, and they will have added distress if they have work incomplete. So you might hand out a worksheet with ten questions and tell this student to complete questions one through three. Then if there is time remaining, you can suggest that they might like to do more, but beware of added stress this might cause. Sometimes it's better to simply rejoice that the smaller task is completed.

3. Give advance warning to this child that a transition time is getting closer. This will give them the opportunity to mentally prepare and manage anxiety. You might need to give them a five minute warning, then three minute and again at one minute.

4. Upon giving them the transition warning, take note of how much work they have left to do. Reduce/modify if it doesn't look like it will be achieved. If adapting expectations on the fly helps your student to complete their work, then you should do so. You are naturally better at adapting than they are, so the onus is on you to make that effort.

The key point here is: make it predictable, achievable and adaptive and the stress levels will fall. 

5. Once the current task is set aside, provide visual aides and/or verbal prompts to assist the student to prepare for the next task.

What is Sensory Integration Dysfunction?

This is a tough question to answer with a short number of words, because it's a complex issue, but here goes an attempt to keep it brief:

We interact with the world via our seven senses - sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, vestibular and proprioceptive awareness. (I will give more details about these in other articles).

This sensory input is vital for survival - it gives the information upon which we decide on fight or flight. It tells us if we're too cold or hot, when we're being loud, if someone has just touched us in a caring or savage way. A healthy sensory processing system does this effectively.

Someone with Sensory Integration Dysfunction can have a few challenging things happening instead.

- overload - too much sensory information going in for the brain to tolerate. Usually represented by a meltdown.

- mistranslation - light touch can be painful, broken bones might go unnoticed, talking loudly can be misunderstood as angry yelling and in some less common cases the senses get totally jumbled (e.g.: sounds might have colour!)

- difficulties filtering sensory info - someone with auditory sensitivities in a classroom will hear the cacophony of these things: the fan on the ceiling, the clock ticking on the wall, the teacher booming, Suzie whispering to Kate, paper rustling, pens and pencil scratching, the terrible sound of textas, the chattering from three classrooms down, the birds tweeting outside, and any number of other sounds. Blocking out the unnecessary noises comes naturally to the rest of us because our brain's filtering system works, but it's impossible for this person. So focusing on just one of the sounds as more important than the others (such as the teacher's voice) requires a huge conscious (exhausting) effort of concentration. (Imagine doing that all day at school - now imagine the same degree of bombardment of information through the other senses at the same time!)

- modulation problems - hyper- and hypo-sensitivities to sensory stimuli. Sometimes these will flip back and forth without notice, seriously affecting behaviour as the individual seeks or avoids various sensory input in an attempt to manually modulate.

- anxiety - it's almost impossible to avoid any anxiety when living with SID, and usually the more anxiety an individual has to manage, the more difficult it is to deal with SID (and vice versa). Teaching anxiety management techniques is imperative, as the two things necessarily interact.

How is Asperger's pronounced?

Asperger's Syndrome is named after Hans Asperger, a very clever fellow who, in 1944, recorded a set of notes about the behaviours of some boys he had as patients at the time. These boys presented as meeting some, but not all of the criteria for a diagnosis of Autism.

Hans Asperger's name is pronounced with a hard G (as in gory, gross and green, NOT as in aubergine). So is Asperger's Syndrome, as it is named after the man himself.

If you have trouble remembering this in the moment, think to yourself,
"Ass Burgers" - then smile, and pronounce it properly. I can tell you on behalf of my child with Asperger's, who identifies with the title with great pride, it drives him crazy that so many people say it incorrectly.

It's a very small thing, but it matters more than you probably imagine, so thanks for taking the time to make an effort with it. :D

What is Aspergers?

People ask me this a lot - they hear terms like Autism and Asperger's bandied about, but they don't really know the differences, and unless they have had experience with people on the Autism Spectrum, they don't really have a field of reference other than the "Rain Man" extreme.

This is what I tell them:

We are all born with varying skill sets - different strengths, weaknesses and talents. Some of us are fantastic at sports, some are good at maths, others are good at drama. Some people have a talent in music and can learn any instrument effortlessly. Some people have a penchant for languages.

On the other hand we all have areas we are weak in as well. We might need a tutor for maths, or we might avoid the stage. We can choose not to dabble in languages, and we can seek support in other areas of academic weakness.

People with Aspergers/Autism are no different in that regard. They are born with different skill sets just like anyone else. They are not all the same as each other, any more than neurotypicals are all the same as each other. The brain is wired differently, and there are some commonalities in thinking processes, but every person on the spectrum is also an individual with their own specialties to offer. They have some common areas of strength or difficulty, and also often have talents not seen in neurotypical people.

Aspergers includes but is not limited to:
- being utterly honest and committed to the truth
- having a wonderful sense of humour
- creativity
- unshakeable loyalty
- having a unique world view
- valuing non-conformity
- having absolute compassion for others who need it
- enjoying a different way of thinking
- attention to detail
- capacity to spot the micro
- an extraordinary ability to focus for long periods on areas of special interest
- enjoying a vivid imagination

I actually personally object to the word Disorder, because in my opinion it's all relative. A person on the Autism spectrum doesn't see themselves as disordered any more than you see yourself as disordered. Just because the typical person has a basic skill set which can be considered somewhat across the board, and the 1% who are on the spectrum have a different skill set, doesn't mean that they should be considered to be "disordered". It's arrogance beyond the pale, IMO.

In my view, the only reason people consider Asperger's to be a disorder, is related to the fact that social skills development doesn't come naturally. While the neurotypical child begins to naturally pick up on social cues by about three years old, people with Asperger's need constant monitoring and tutoring and assistance in this area as an ongoing process.

The pleasant reality for the neurotypical person is that we can choose not to do languages at school, or to get a tutor for maths, and once we've learned those skills (or rejected them), we don't need to re-learn them in order to survive. However a person on the Spectrum needs to constantly work on their social skills in order to survive in a world full of neurotypicals with high expectations.

The truth is, if it wasn't for the existence and demands of the neurotypicals, the person on the spectrum wouldn't have a problem at all. In fact, I challenge you to consider, they don't have a problem or disorder. Rather, neurotypicals and our expectations are the problem - we expect a lot from people socially, and we encompass the majority of the population. Therefore people with Asperger's/Autism suddenly develop a "problem" because they are different to us.

As Tony Attwood says, people with Asperger's are "different, not defective."
Tony Attwood: About Asperger's

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While it is not necessarily useful to split hairs over the differences between Autism/Asperger's/High-Functioning Autism, people do ask, so to clarify a couple of the simpler technicalities:

Tony Attwood is well known for reminding us that the difference between Asperger's and High Functioning Autism is, very simply, how they are spelled.

In simple terms, Asperger's and Autism are usually separated in the diagnostic process by the presence of delay in language development. Language delay is common with Autism, whereas with Asperger's, vocabulary is often more advanced than in the average child (although comprehension of and appropriate use of these advanced words isn't always apparent).