The role of family and environment in raising autistic children
To help your child get out of this "cocoon" outward, you need to start, of course, with the family. After all, it is the family that is the inner circle that is able to create optimal conditions for establishing contact between an autistic child and other people …
- Part 1. Causes of occurrence. Raising a child with autism
- Part 2. Motor stereotypes and excessive tactile sensitivity in a child with autism: reasons and recommendations for parents
- Part 3. Protest reactions and aggression of a child with autism: causes and methods of correction
- Part 4. Life is illusory and real: special symptoms in children with autism
- Part 5. Speech disorders in autistic children: systemic causes and methods of correction
In the modern world, the number of children in whom specialists diagnose autism spectrum disorders continues to increase every year. If even 30 years ago these were isolated cases, today there is one such child for almost every class of secondary school. Such statistics inevitably raises the question of how to educate, educate and adapt such children to society as a whole.
But how do you approach this issue? After all, the main problem of autists is that they are immersed in their own inner world, and their ability to perceive the world outside is significantly impaired. How to establish a connection with a person who himself does not seek to establish it, but often tries to avoid other people altogether?
Family as a connecting link
System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan explains that autistic children are carriers of the sound vector. By nature, they are given a very sensitive hearing, their ear is susceptible to the slightest noise and meanings of speech, while screaming, negative, offensive meanings literally hurt the child. A child with such properties, receiving mental trauma in childhood (for example, from too loud noises or quarrels in the family) closes inside his own world, and acquires an autism spectrum disorder.
To help your child get out of this "cocoon" outward, you need to start, of course, with the family. After all, it is the family that is the inner circle that is able to create optimal conditions for establishing contact between an autistic child and other people.
At the training on systemic vector psychology, the importance of the emotional connection of such a child with the mother is repeatedly emphasized, and practical recommendations are given on creating a special atmosphere in which a small carrier of the sound vector will feel as comfortable as possible.
We are a sensual and conscious life form
Working in the Special Child project since 2008, together with the project manager Elena Perelygina, we paid special attention to the family of an autistic child. Being mothers of special children ourselves, we managed to feel from our own experience that if a child does not know how to adapt within his own family, does not establish contact with his parents, his further socialization will be in great doubt.
Therefore, we took the newly admitted children to our classes only after the parents passed a special course of seminars. They provided not only theoretical information about autism and methods of its correction. We paid special attention to playing "live scenes". Then I was not familiar with the SVP, but now I can already generalize past experience from the position of this knowledge.
At his training, Yuri Burlan emphasizes that we are all a sensual and conscious form of life. In the case of an autistic child, it becomes very clear and understandable that such children have a disrupted sensory (emotional) connection with other people, especially with their mother. Also, most of them have significantly impaired conceptual connection with the outside world, that is, the ability to assimilate information through speech.
However, most parents had difficulty understanding and accepting such features of the child. This often caused them despair, powerlessness, and sometimes even anger and irritation at their own child. In the course of playing live scenes at seminars within the framework of the Special Child project, we gave parents the opportunity to feel in the place of their baby.
Experience sensual empathy
From the group of listeners, we chose two at will, one of whom played the role of a child, the other as a mother. The rest of the group was a society, that is, "the world outside." This conventional mother-child pair was taken out the door. The "child" was blindfolded and lightly, loosely tied his legs (thus, we artificially created some restrictions, like the inability to act independently). “Mom” was given instructions that, having entered the door, she needed to lead her “child” across the room and sit on a chair near the window. A certain time was allotted for this. It was forbidden for mother to communicate with her “child” through speech (as an imitation of a child's impaired ability to perceive speech), but she could hum a song without words or simply intonate meaningless syllables softly and calmly.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group in the room did the following: rearranged furniture, creating artificial obstacles for movement, and stocked up with all sorts of "noise" toys (rattles, pipes and balloons that were supposed to be pierced at an unexpected moment). While the "mother" led the child through all the obstacles around the room to a chair by the window, the group occasionally created unexpected noise effects. After completing the task, the "child" was untied his legs and eyes, and we let all the participants speak, analyzed. The conditional "mother" shared her feelings, the conditional "child" hers, and the rest of the group commented on how this couple looked from the outside.
Summarizing that experience from the position of system-vector psychology, I can say that the most difficult situation developed when a woman with a skin vector in a state of stress played the role of a mother. Such a "mother" literally dragged the child across the room, shouted and urged him on, trying to be in time. She often reacted inadequately to the society around her, which prevented her from achieving her goal.
On the other hand, when the role of the mother was played by the anal-visual woman in a calm and balanced state, a completely different picture emerged. She seemed to be indifferent to the time. She calmly hummed something to the child, carefully leading him through the obstacles. Interestingly, due to her calmness, this couple, as a rule, made it on time.
Later, those who played the role of a child had special insights. It is no coincidence that we tried to take on this role those participants who experienced the greatest problems within the family with the acceptance and understanding of their autistic child. Most said that “mother” remained the only support, “beacon and beacon,” which helped to cope with absolute powerlessness and their own inability to navigate the world around them. And if a woman with a skin vector in stress appeared in the role of “mother”, the conditional “child” felt colossal pain and a sense of guilt towards the mother.
In this way, parents of autistic children (especially those who have been in the role of a child) were able to sensually realize what kind of helplessness, vulnerability and powerlessness their children experience. For many parents, this was an amazing experience that radically changed the attitude towards their own child.
Attempts at conscious comprehension
Another significant problem for the adaptation of an autistic child with mental retardation is the limited ability to assimilate the meanings of speech. And the point is not only and not so much whether such a child will be able to speak (a non-speaking child can master flashcards, sign language and other aids of communication). The main task is the formation of a passive vocabulary, as the ability to understand the speech of other people.
From the experience of our own motherhood, being mothers of special children, the project manager and I noticed that autistic children first of all perceive the brightest stimuli of the environment for them. Now, having knowledge of SVP, I understand that for children with a visual vector, it could be bright colors, for a child with a skin vector, tactile sensations, etc.
At our seminars, we offered parents the following task: a lemon was drawn on a flip chart. A brief description was given of a situation in which a mother is trying to teach a child to understand the word "lemon." The situation might look something like this: “A mother and child are in the kitchen, they smell like fresh soup, there is an oval yellow lemon with a delicate citrus aroma on a round orange plate. Dad in the hall watches TV and shouts “Goal!” To the whole house, and the child at the table has served his leg and at the same time his skin itches from woolen tights”. It was assumed that in this situation the mother wants to teach the child to understand and remember the meaning of the word "lemon".
First, the group and I identified the signs that are essential for a healthy person. It is logical that the brain of an ordinary person rejects other stimuli and highlights the main properties of the object "oval, yellow, with a subtle citrus scent." However, for a special child, the situation could have been completely different.
So, for an autistic child with a skin vector, the most powerful irritant could be the sensation of uncomfortable tights or numbness of the leg that he served. For a visual child, the orange plate could be the most striking stimulus. And the soup on the stove gives off a brighter and stronger smell than the delicate aroma of citrus. There is nothing to say about the sound stimulus (father’s shout "Goal!" To the whole house), because all autistic children have a primary trauma in the sound vector.
Therefore, if you select the brightest stimuli, you will get an image that has nothing to do with lemon. With the help of this exercise, the parents of a special child began to understand: in order to teach an autistic child to understand speech, he needs much more presentations of the same object (for example, a lemon) in different situations - both on the shelf in the store, and in the refrigerator, and on the kitchen table. For many parents, this became an experience that helped them stay patient and continue teaching their child, despite the seeming lack of results at first.
It concerns not only the ability to perceive speech, but also to learn other skills. Typically, an autistic child needs much more experimentation before a lasting result is formed. For example, my own son, having quickly mastered the alphabet, for a very long time could not learn to connect two letters. It took us two whole years of seemingly fruitless attempts to cope with this. Imagine my surprise when one day he himself began to connect absolutely any letters, and absolutely unmistakably.
Hope for the future
As a result of this experience, we were able to notice that those families in which the parents tried to sensually and consciously comprehend what was happening to their child received much better results in teaching, upbringing, development and adaptation of their child in society.
At the end of 2014, I first came to the training on system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan. Both as a specialist and as a mother of two children, I realized that SVP provides a unique opportunity to accurately and accurately determine the innate properties of the psyche of our children. Having received this knowledge at the training, parents no longer have to move blindly, they get an absolute understanding of what features their child has, and how to create an optimal environment for his development and learning.
Of course, this is of particular relevance for the parents of a special child. Realizing the innate set of vectors of his baby, the parent is able to organize the educational and upbringing process in such a way as to limit or eliminate the factors that irritate his child as much as possible. This will allow not to waste precious time, and the child will be able to acquire the necessary skills and abilities much faster.
Door to the big world
Almost every parent of a special child sees a global task for their child to enter the world, that is, the ability to live among other people, to be a full-fledged member of society.
Of course, the optimal situation would be the reciprocity of this process - so that society would also lend a helping hand towards such children and their families. Therefore, I strongly recommend not only teachers and psychologists working with pathology to undergo training in system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan. This knowledge should be mastered by absolutely everyone working in the field of education. After all, there are more and more autistic children every year, and there is an urgent need to adapt them to ordinary kindergartens, schools and other educational institutions.
However, it certainly takes time to create a harmonious social system. Therefore, at the moment, the key link in this process continues to be the family of the autistic child. By taking on conscious responsibility for the fate of their baby and armed with the knowledge of the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan, parents can significantly help their child in the maximum development of all the qualities and properties assigned to him by nature. On the portal on system-vector psychology, there have already appeared some results on the complete removal of the diagnosis of autism from the child.
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