"To live is so startling"

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."  - Emily Dickinson

Humility is...

Humility is making space for another's perception.  Carol Gray has a wonderful story about a boy who peed on his teachers lawn after getting in trouble at school.  How dare he retaliate!  Carol took him aside.  Why did you do that? 
"Well," he said,  "it's like the time we went Lama Trecking." 
"Do tell."  Carol Gray leaned in.  The student went on to explain how his whole community went camping and lama trekking.  He refused to pee in the woods because he knew pee belonged in the toilet.  After one night and the following day, it was decided everyone would pack up and go home because it was not healthy to never go to the bathroom.  As they were packing up, he went behind a tree and peed.  Everyone cheered, and they were allowed to continue with their journey.  So here again, when he didn't have acceptance and wanted it, he did what worked last time.

Remember: These sweet folks don't distinguish between context.  They have likely heard or experienced this before, and they are just recreating it at a time when we wouldn't.  Before you get frustrated, consider at what point there perception has held water, because most likely at some point it did.

"Never argue perception." -carol gray

"Never argue perception."  This is the number 1 point Carol Gray wants us to take away.  She's worked with autism for 20 years.  She invented and spreads the concept of social stories, and she wisely says, "Never argue perception."

You can see the point is a logical one, but when a child says to you, "I didn't" when you just saw they did, another part of your brain jumps to the wheel, and it's not the logical one.  It is the loud mouth who has to be right, who saw what I saw.  Don't argue perception  Even if there is no WAY they could be right.  Remember the comic, "Never try to teach a pig to sing.  It just frustrates you, and annoys the pig."  Arguing perception is much like this.  Nobody wins.  And in this analogy is could just as likely be that we are the pig, and the child is trying to explain it to us, but we just don't get it.  In the event we are humble enough to see their perspective, we may learn more about how they are piecing the world together. 

"The energy of Being Real" -mark nepo

"What Jung speaks to is the fact that the energy of being real has more power than outright persuasion, debate, or force of will."

Mark Nepo wrote, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.  On page 106 he writes about "The Energy of Being Real.

I find the reason I'm successful working with special needs kids is because of my ability to be present, show up, and hold the space for them to have their experience.  I am super grounded and peaceful.  I am slow in a way.  I am slow the way being conscious of holding a sponge to a bowl and moving it across one circle at a time, makes you slow.  I move at the pace of my awareness, and in order to really tune in, I can't be distracted.  I have to be fully present and attending to this one other person, and in a way sometimes I move more slowly.  It feels present, and I can have quick reactions in this space, but it has a different quality to it. I am attentive to their expressions, movement, moods, but my role is not to rile anyone, but rather to create a container where they can feel safe to look out of themselves, and be in another's company, or not.  Either way, I'll be there holding the space.  This is how the "real" me shows up.

The brain wants constant stimulation

A neurologist said to a father of an autistic girl, "The brain wants constant stimulation And it wants everything to be the same."  Well this is a bind isn't it.

Does this explain my constant inner dialogue?  I ask a child to be quiet to stop his ambiant vocalizations that are constant, but is this his internal dialogue made external?  How long can I remain totally silent?  Probably about 10 seconds which matches his ability to be quiet and not self stimulate by vocalizing.

This also reminds me of my Grandma after the stroke.  She'd ask us, "What am I supposed to do?  Fix my feet.  Brush my hair."  She lost the ability (bedridden) to ease her mind.  Her only stimulation could be gotten through receiving our external input.  Huh?  In my experience it seems true, our mind seems to crave constant stimulation.

The added complexity is if you are engaging in the world, it is not probably the same.  But we all sing along, we all take the same path to work most of the time, because if it is the same we don't have to think about it, and it grows comfortable.  The larger reality is as you engage in the world you will be experiencing change, and this can be very hard to handle.  You can see where hand flapping, or looking at your hands inches from your face does create "the same" everywhere you go, amongst all the change, and it stimulates.

Truth, still small, ever big

A child outrunning the wind exclaimed, "Daddy! Daddy! If you run too fast, you can't tell what's real.  Amazingly, there is great insight in children.  And great innocence.  They carry a wisdom they often live but seldom know."  Mark Nepo writes in "The Book of Awakening" (p.330).

The sentence that strikes a chord in me is, "They carry a wisdom they often live, but seldom know."  We the keepers of children, Know a lot, but at times we lose sight of our wisdom.  As an adult you have to "know" if a child is hungry they need food.  You need to know how to get the food, how to hold down a job to pay for the food.  These all function for the benefit of all.  But don't forget the still small wisdom that comes naturally to our children.  "Neruda writes in the poem Poetry, " I wrote the first faint line, pure non-sense, pure wisdom.  My eyes were blind, and something started in my soul."

The children may not "know"; they may not cognitively understand, or be able to explain it to you.  BUT they Are their experience.  There is not such a divide between what they experience and how they react, as we grow to hold as adults.  As adults, we lean back over the divide to try to understand our children.  (Fair enough, with our experience and in an attempt to see the world through their eyes, we may need to lean in, bend backwards, see it from their angle.)  But remember, they hold wisdom we have often lost sight of.  Still small, ever big.  They are truth.  They are not separated from their truth as we have been conditioned to do (for all our practical purposes.)  Celebrate the authenticity of your child, allow a spark in your soul when you hear their truth.  We can all learn from each other here.

Thank you Mark Nepo for sharing your life's work in these pages.  : )
Love,
Alisha

Beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing

"Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there."  -Rumi

Everybody is a genius.

"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."  - Albert Einstein

Language can be far away

"At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door,
and open the love-window."
-Rumi

I notice sometimes intense play with jets or trains, can bring a child further from their language centers.  Asking them to answer a question might be hard for them.  Similar to if you ask me a question right when I wake up.  I'm far from language.  I have heard myself think, "Turn off...camera...noise."  But it was the alarm clock making the ruckus.  I've also done art and dancing for 3 hours silently, and found it hard to form a sentence at the end of it.  I think these kids are so embodied, that it may be language is far away for them most of the time.  The good news is love is conveyed without words.

It can be hard to tell

I am with a typically developing brother to pick up his special needs brother from a soccer camp.  Afterward there is pizza and punch in a standing cooler.  After the cups run out, the typically developing brother bends down and turns his head up under the spigit of the cooler.  Now, red punch is streaming down the front of his shirt.  Sometimes it's hard to tell which of us have the "special needs".  ; )  As one Mom said, "I have one with special needs, and two with constant needs."  : )

The Boys

On this journey, I feel I am Wendy, in the company of Peter Pan, and his band of Lost Boys.  Not on account of actually being lost, more on account of being a band of brothers on an island few can understand, and although they have each other, they kind of don't.  Each boy is on his own in an important way.  So it is with autistic children, their experience is all their own, and often they can't relate it to another.  I also love the innocence of these boys, and just the pure fun of it.

As an only child and a girl, this boy energy is very new to me, and something I'm learning a lot more about since more special needs kids are boys.  In my current classroom it's 8:1.   That also makes it feel like a band of brothers.  Typically, developing brothers are just as intriguing and will be mentioned here as well, and sisters when I meet them.  : )

Welcome, to the Land of the Lost Boys.  Not so lost, not so alone, and yet in the paradox that we all face, they are at once connected, interdependent, and alone in their experience of it.

All my love,
Wendy
(a.k.a.  Alisha ; )  )