Summer Kinard's Blog, page 11
April 2, 2018
7 Ways to Act on Your Autism Awareness in Church
Even if a man be lame, or his eyes have been torn out, or he be disabled in body, or has fallen into the most extreme weakness, none of these things prevents grace coming into the soul. – St. John Chrysostom
Today is Autism Awareness Day. Many people of faith are wondering how they can welcome, engage, and serve with persons with autism. Here are 7 tips, from my faithful autistic family to yours.
Keep the format and ESPECIALLY the social routine for entering the learning time/space consistent and predictable. For instance, my Sunday school class always includes the children leaving their parents at the door, walking all the way across the room to the prayer area, and having the option of placing flowers or a felt candle in the prayer area. That routine eases the anxiety of children on the spectrum, because they don’t have to wonder what to do when they get to class. They have a built-in routine to participate. Another example is venerating holy icons and lighting candles, as we do in the Orthodox Church. When you come in the door, there’s a set pattern of things to do each time. In your church, the pattern might be to pick up a bulletin, sit, and look up and bookmark that week’s hymns. Some churches stand at the beginning of the service and bow their heads as a cross goes by. Whatever your pattern, pay attention to it, emphasize it, and help people enter into it no matter when they get to the service.
Teach deeply. If you want to encourage broad scriptural knowledge, give out or recommend a Bible reading app that follows your church’s reading patterns. Give out children’s Bibles. Send home children’s bulletins with scriptures. But when it comes to classroom teaching, repeat the lesson at least three times in a row and add a deeper layer each time. Familiarity breeds familiarity and calm when it comes to learning about God. In my lesson plans, I like to teach each holiday or lesson from several different angles, but with the prior weeks’ hands-on illustrations available throughout the series. This gives concrete thinkers and people who might have a different way of processing language time to take in and understand a lesson. The challenge is, of course, that you can’t cop out and teach a morality-only lesson. You have to teach the living faith.
Show your work. Faith without works isn’t just dead. It’s invisible. If you tell children to be kind to people who are hurt, show how. This can be as simple as acting out the Good Samaritan story and allowing kids to put bandages on dolls or volunteers, or it can be a planned event of showing compassion. Preferably make it possible for persons on the spectrum to act out their faith in ways that they can plan or prepare for in advance. If this sounds off-putting, remember that we actually say that we’re supposed to prepare to do good works and share God’s love. This is just doing so.
Stop sending letters to God. If you want someone who’s autistic to believe, stop pretending that God is far away and generally disinterested in human life. No one on the spectrum wants your Deistic god. Sometimes people err on the side of assuming God’s out of earshot in order to protect themselves from the pain of suffering. They think that suffering means God has left the building. But God is always, always in the midst of suffering. God is always with us, alongside us to help and to turn the suffering into something life-giving, even when it’s incredibly hard to see. When one of my autistic children is very afraid of a spiritual possibility like cursed mummies or creepy spirits, I coax him to look away from the fearful idea and toward the love of God. I hold his hand and tell him that God is always next to him. That means you can’t always see God, but you can see me, and I love you. Hold my hand and know that God is holding our hands.
You cannot be faithful alone. This is a hard idea for Americans to swallow, because we have been poisoned by the fantasy of the rugged individual. Our culture pretends that there is strength in doing whatever one desires without regard to others. This belies the reality of lived human experience. All of us, autists or neurotypicals, are social creatures who thrive in relationships with others. We rely on others for our lives, livelihoods, and well-being. The scripture is more to the point when it advises, “If you do not love your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God, whom you have not seen?” If you routinely abandon communities or community members or demonize others or spend more time blaming and judging than teaching about the universal and impartial love of God, you need to stop and consider that you are telling your concrete-thinking friends and students and community members that the faith doesn’t matter. They won’t see God in you at all, and that will mean that many of them won’t believe there is a God. You have to sacrifice your fear of looking weak to your desire to look like God. Start loving one another so that other people will know the love of God.
Teach to the goal, not to the detours. Spend your time teaching about virtue rather than ranting about vice. Spend your time showing examples of God’s love rather than engaging in fights for human power. Autistic persons are prone to anxiety because they have to work harder to sort out an overabundance of stimuli. They see far, far more than you do. Always. This means they see more spiritually, too. They don’t need to hear a rant that equates a politician or a sitcom or a behavior pattern with demons and evil. That will only confuse them, because you will be drawing their extremely acute attention and focus to something that will not better them if they study it. Instead, tell examples of human virtue and godly grace. Hold up holy images, examples of holy people, of kindness, love, the good of creation, the care that God gives to us and asks us to give to others. Then you will be feeding your deep-rooting autists with living water.
Metaphors work because they’re tangible. If you ever talk to me in person, you’ll hear me use metaphors for emotional and intellectual and social work and situations. I do this because I have a lifelong habit of translating my thinking, which is primarily based in images and music, into speech, which can get pretty abstract. If you can use hands-on examples and pictures and symbols in your teaching, do so. Also use metaphors to anchor abstract ideas to a tangible reality. Our faith was taught this way for centuries. Jesus’ parables are examples of this way of teaching, but you can faithfully use other metaphors. For instance, when one of my children gets frustrated with learning a new idea about how to sort feelings or predict the social effect of an action, I calm him by saying that he’s only learning skills just like when he first learned to build Legos. He doesn’t need to be afraid. For some skill sets, he’s on the first bag of 5 in a giant set, and he has to put the tricky pieces that don’t make sense yet together. But they will. That metaphor is calming because we know that we will eventually understand what we’re building. If you teach to the goal, metaphors are a great way to pave the path to godliness and love.
Find more resources on faith and special needs in Special Needs Resources.
Don’t forget to follow my blog. This month, I will be sharing free resources, including a special printable on How to Make Your Home Autism Accessible.
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I’m speaking on “Concrete Thinking as a Model for Evangelism” this June at the Third Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference. This is my favorite writer’s conference, and I’m honored to get to lead a presentation this year. If you’re a Catholic or Orthodox Christian or want to attend an edifying conference steeped in historical Christian tradition, please consider registering. We’d love to see you there!
March 24, 2018
Church Bag Printables to Improve Focus- Holy Week Version
It’s been several months since my last church bag post. One of my children has started exhibiting strong sensory needs in church combined with an ability to be redirected. I made a new church bag set for her that I describe in the video below. Scroll down for free printables to make your own focus board. You can also use the free printables from my other Special Needs Resources. Cut out the images that you wish to use and arrange them on cardstock for use in directing focus.
Church Focus Printables:
Holy Week Focus Board 1 Holy Week Focus Board 2
Print these and cut out the ones that are part of your church tradition. Mount them using tape, glue, or laminate onto a piece of cardstock. Make cardboard tube view finders (pretend binoculars) to help your child look at the focus images and find them in the service.
Tip for Teachers: Tape the images that fit your service onto plain paper and photocopy them for each child to have a copy.
Note that these Holy Week focus printables include common parts of the services of both Eastern and Western Christian traditions. You may wish to cut out the ones your family or students will see in a particular service to aid in focus.
Amazon Shopping List: Snug earmuffs, velvet bags, resistance bands, coloring book. These links are Affiliate links. If you shop through them, your prices will be the same as usual, but I will receive a small percentage from Amazon for referring you.
I’m speaking at the 3rd Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference this June! Join us for this encouraging weekend of fellowship and strengthening skills and craft.
March 23, 2018
Flexible Orthodox Liturgy Visual Schedule
Over the past couple of years, I have had the joy of seeing the visual schedule I made for the Orthodox Liturgy in use. Since I made the original version with the goal of avoiding the standard visual schedule need for cutting out squares, laminating, and using velcro, it lacked the flexibility to work perfectly across local customs. Taking into account my experience and conversations, I have made a new, flexible version of the visual schedule for the Orthodox Liturgy.
Click to view slideshow.
To use this schedule, print out the blank, numbered pages where you will attach the squares you need. You will find that the schedule works best when printed on cardstock or on paper that is laminated. If you choose to laminate, you will need to cut out the squares, laminate, and cut them out again. I like using these Velcro pads from Amazon (affiliate link, two sets needed per project), but you can use any hook and loop fastener that you prefer. Once you have the basic schedule for your community in place, I recommend making photocopies to use on usual occasions. That way you won’t have to start over every time the people using the schedule remove or replace an item.
Note: This schedule does not cover the intricacies of altar boy service. If you have a child with autism who is preparing for altar service, check out Maura Oprisko’s blog series, which includes safety tips and a social story.
Download the Flexible Schedule Pages Below:
Sequence Pages:
flexibleliturgy1 flexibleliturgy2 flexibleliturgy3
flexibleliturgy4 flexibleliturgy5 flexibleliturgy6
Images:
flexibleliturgy7 flexibleliturgy8 flexibleliturgy9 flexibleliturgy10
Stay tuned for a post with special Holy Week focus aids!
I’m speaking at the Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference this June on the topic, “Concrete Thinking as a Model for Evangelism.” If you’ve ever wondered how you can better share your faith with your concrete-thinking friends and children, wanted to experience God more in daily life, or wondered how your story fits the patterns in salvation history, my workshop is for you! I hope you’ll join us at the conference for an edifying and encouraging weekend of fellowship and skill-building. Registration is open now!
March 7, 2018
Rearing Charles Wallace
How the Murry Family Taught Me to Parent My Children with Autism
The gift of great stories is that they are there when you reach for them, laying a bedrock of trust in an uncertain world. When I first read A Wrinkle in Time, I gaped in disbelief at the kindness, competence, and acceptance displayed by Meg’s mother. Though I thought at the time that she was more fairy tale than role model, Mrs. Murry quietly took up residence in my aspirations.
Here was a brilliant woman who was also a dazzling mother, never giving into the temptations to let the children fall prey to their weaknesses or to let them hide or waste their strengths. Parenting was Mrs. Murry’s heart work as much as science. She wouldn’t let go of the truth of her gifted daughter and her beyond brilliant son.
For the first six years of my son’s life, I had no idea that his strong and unusual sensory needs and brilliant but difficult-to-understand speech were signs of his autism. In the vacuum outside the enclave of diagnosis, I could find two loud options: Join the braggarts in the competitive parenting camp, or, Join the complainers in the parents-first camp.
One set of acquaintances was forever boasting that their child ate peppers and broccoli. The other was forever whining that their child’s snow days messed up their plans for day drinking. I withdrew from these parenting circles, not feeling as though my child should earn his keep with accomplishments nor that I should numb myself to his childhood.
I tried natural parenting groups, but they tended to fall into the organic version of the competitors, Magical Thinkers (there’s an oil for that/you are sick because you ate or thought something wrong) and the whiners, Boundary-free Parents (parenting is so hard, so let’s not and say we did).
I managed to find a few middle-of-the-road parents in those early years, and they were kind to us and loved us even though we were weird.
Did I mention? We were weird. So very strange. So very different from our friends in ways they never saw.
They were sleeping through the night years before my children got down to only one nightly wake up each. They were upset over 5 minute fits of pique while I tried to find a safe and compassionate way through my preschool son’s two-hour screaming meltdowns. They were calming down after instituting consequences while I was rejoicing that we could get the screaming down to 10 minutes if we mirrored our boy. We didn’t know he had autism then, but we knew that he would not accept anything less than total unconditional love from us. He was born with a swift intellect, a discombobulated sensory integration system, and the world’s keenest bullshit detector.
His sister had early signs, too. She could read at 3 without being taught and without realizing she could do so. She was profoundly sensitive to sound. She was generally sensitive and kind and emotionally fragile. The slightest hint of disapproval broke her heart into ear-splitting wails. A loud toilet or microphone feedback led to screams that any opera singer would envy.
Then there came my twins, whose classic symptoms led us into the world of autism, where we found the language to name our dear children’s needs and the tools to help them flourish.
Suddenly the ways we had changed to accommodate them stood out in relief– the cotton clothes, the sensory bins, the interest-based learning, the concrete thinking, the singing games and dancing and water play and swings and charts and careful, slow naming of emotion– as building blocks that had helped them grow beyond what they might have done otherwise. Embracing our strange life had saved us.
The tendencies that bring both gifts and challenges to a life of autism become exaggerated without loving, intelligent intervention. They pepper a neurodivergent disability with handicaps.
Disabilities (and gifts) might be lifelong, but handicaps needn’t be. Rejection causes a great many of the handicaps in an autism life. If a parent rejects an autistic child, or even hints at it, the pain bounces in on itself, redoubling and buffeting the senses and causing meltdowns and shutdowns. We had avoided many handicaps simply by avoiding the parenting camps.
As I have grown in understanding of my children’s autism, I have realized that the way between the front lines of the parenting camps was prepared for me by the Murrys.
Mrs. Murry smiled with me when my firstborn seemed to mirror my thoughts. She was with me, steady and firm, when I told my brave, gifted girl that she was good so that she knew that I meant it. It was the Murry and O’Keefe families that sang with us around the table and taught our children touchable faith. They’re the company I keep when I expect that real stars might visit and when I sing over my children the protection in the great love of cherubim.
As autism awareness grows, some of the voices stepping forward are less kind and less faithful and less selfless than my children and I need them to be. The voices of parents playing to the base camps in a parenting performance skew the story towards unmitigated sadness and misery on one end or lack of will to empower their children to overcome handicaps on the other.
There is a better way to talk about parenting autistic children, and that way is modeled in the bedrock of love and acceptance in A Wrinkle in Time (and more broadly in the Time Quintet). Children with autism are good and beautiful and guileless and human. We are good, too, and beautiful and human. Each person deserves compassion. Love is not contingent on a checklist, and it does not deny differences and gifts. Love just is, and you can always find it in our home when you reach for it. It’s what makes us brave like Meg and Charles Wallace.
This post contains Amazon affiliate links for your shopping convenience. If you choose to shop through an Amazon link on my site, your costs will remain unchanged, but I will be given a small percentage for referring you.
February 18, 2018
The 5 Differences of Autism Homeschools
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Learn the 5 differences between regular homeschools and autism homeschools.
Starting any homeschool is a matter of looking up your state’s requirements and setting up your school. But once you have a homeschool registered, how do you teach your autistic child at home?School has different goals for kids with autism than for neurotypical kids. A regular school will seek to inform children with academic skills, with some coping skills added as supplement. An autism school will be first and foremost therapeutic, with academics supplementing an autism-specific curriculum.
Neurotypical kids will focus on acquiring a set of academic knowledge. Autistic kids will focus on healing their brains and connecting to the world around them. They will also pick up the academic knowledge they need, but taking care of that special brain and body comes first.
Why the reverse order? Won’t your child fall behind academically? No. Because the autistic child has an immensely plastic brain. Autistic people can learn more easily than others — when they have their needs met and when information is presented in a way that acknowledges their strengths.
What are those strengths? How can you give your child what they need at home (with the help of a competent speech therapist and other therapists as needed)? Here are my top 5 tips for building an autism homeschool, based on my experience homeschooling my 5 autistic children (ages 3-10).
5 Tips for an Autism Homeschool
1) ATTENTION!
The primary goal in engaging with and teaching kids with autism is to develop joint attention. Joint attention is what it sounds like. Paying attention to the same things at the same time. (Ask your speech therapist about this. It will be very helpful.)
You have to find ways to engage your child so that you gain their attention to yourself, transferring it from objects/activities of interest to you so that you can teach.
You have to find ways to engage your child’s attention in thinking about the same things as you so the child can learn how to learn from others.
You have to build on joint attention to learn social thinking. (Go look at the amazing resources at the {Social Thinking website}, and ask your speech therapist about this.)
Depending on the child’s autism severity, you might be able to jump in at different points in the attention game. But attention is far more important than conformity. It is the absolute basis of healing the handicaps of autism and learning to thrive with this disability.
Understand that autistic kids will have profoundly uneven skill distribution as compared to neurotypical kids. It’s possible to be a high IQ teenager who does well academically but who also lacks the joint attention skills of a typical toddler. But no worries. That amazing autistic brain can pick up the new skills as soon as they’re taught. (It might just take a different approach and more hard work later.) See the BONUS! tip below for more on uneven development.
2) Piggybacking: Building Cross-Brain Synapses
When your brain is weird, there’s no quick fix. But there is good news! While autistic brains present challenges like overstimulation and an overabundance of random thoughts/feelings/sensory data, they are also very, very awesome at learning. Your goal is to form connections between different parts of the brain so that other connections can follow suit. In other words, you will have to focus on healing the things you can change so that the brain can heal itself on the things you can’t change.
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What??? One of the easiest ways to build brain connections is with movement across the midline of the halves of the body. If your child lacks physical ability to do this on their own, have their physical therapist or occupational therapist show you how to incorporate these movements into your routine.
Swinging, building Legos, drawing, scooting on scooter boards, rocking in rocking chairs, bending, dancing, balance boarding, teeter-tottering, painting, finger plays (Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Little Star with moving stars, Little Bunny Fu-Fu, the Hokey Pokey), dress up, and other activities that use both hands/both halves of the body and cross the front/back, side to side and up to down body hemispheres have to be a part of your homeschool curriculum.
Yes, Legos and swinging are school. So is dancing. These things are not optional, but necessary for your autistic child to form the connections they need to learn other things.
A bit about why [nerd alert!]: Autistic brains have fewer of the cells that help form long chain synapses that stretch from the back to the front of the brain. Basically, your autistic child has impeccable local roads but needs help building interstate highways. Once a highway is in place, it’s easier to connect other highways to it, and soon (ok, it takes years, but this is a long game) your child’s brain can get the ideas it wants sorted where it wants.
3) Videos are good.
There’s tons of research out there about how neurotypical kids shouldn’t engage in very much screen time, which I’ll leave every parenting magazine ever to fill you in on. But few people know that for autistic kids, certain types of videos actually help their development! The evidence-based practice is called video modeling. (Learn all about it here, but you will have to create a free log in account.)
Basically, it’s easier for kids with autism to learn when something is exactly the same each time. That’s why video modeling, and more broadly for homeschooling, documentaries and educational videos, are so effective for teaching kids with autism. It’s easier to factor out all the “noise” that you get from a hyper-sensitive brain & body, when the subject matter you want to focus on is exactly the same each of the dozen or more times you watch it.
Repetition is your friend in autism teaching. Get used to the idea that you can go deeper if you cross the same ground many, many times.
This doesn’t mean you can leave your kid in front of a screen all day, but it does mean that they will probably learn some things more easily via videos you’ve carefully selected and educational apps where the rules are predictable.
After trying to teach our older, higher functioning autistic children math on a whiteboard, we found that they exceled at math apps like Prodigy, Dozens, and the DragonBox series. We still use the white board and paper to talk them through logic, but they love to practice using these interactive apps.
Many autistic children also suffer from dyslexia and dysgraphia. Though our family has not found a great app for dyslexia, we love using an electronic pencil and tablet to let our dysgraphic son free draw on photos of characters he likes. This plus swinging a lot have helped his writing become legible over the past six months.
Apps and videos are not for every subject or all the time, but they really do help. (Good old Sesame Street is actually really amazing at video modeling for kids, if you want a place to start outside something targeted just to kids with autism.)
4) Social Thinking is a School Subject.
For my most severely autistic child, social reasoning is basic. We are trying to teach him to ask for help by tapping our arms and/or saying, “help, please.” We are trying to teach him to show us things that interest him.
For our higher functioning kids, social thinking helps with issues of interoception (hunger/thirst/potty/tired/comfort), emotional regulation, communicating with others effectively, and being part of groups.
Sometimes you can spot a group of autistic kids facing different directions, talking to different walls, and wondering why no one is listening. That’s a sad/funny because we’ve been there situation that shows the need for teaching social thinking.
I highly recommend that you work with a speech therapist who can teach social thinking. Many occupational therapists trained in working with autistic children will also be able to help with the Zones of Regulation part of social thinking.
When people ask about our formal curricula, the only things that are a steady presence in our household are the social thinking books and aids and our Explode the Code reading set. That’s because social thinking is not intuitive for autistic kids. But the skills can be taught!
No matter the age of the child, these skills can be taught and practiced and integrated into daily life so that the child can flourish and build up friendships in community.
5) Love and Safety are Priorities.
Of course you will find that public and private school teachers and classmates also love your autistic child, but this point pertains to the feelings of love and safety your child experiences when their school (your home) prioritizes their sensory needs.
A strong, thorough, and adaptable sensory diet is vital to your child’s ability to pay attention and learn well. (I talked about sensory diets in this post.)
One of the advantages of homeschool for autistic children is that we don’t have to go through an IEP/504 meeting every time we learn something new that helps. We just change our daily pattern to accommodate the new best practices.
If you decide to homeschool your child with autism, you will probably want to find a way to incorporate swings into your home or daily routine. The back and forth motion of swinging is very soothing and regulating. On the deep pressure end of the sensory diet, you will probably want to find a crash pad/floor mattress/bean bag where your child can jump safely. Coming soon, I’m releasing a free ebook on this site that will tell you my tips on an autism-accessible home. Lots of those tips apply to autism homeschool, too.
BONUS! Growth Spurts are Weird.
Because of the uneven development in autistic children/teens/adults, you will sometimes meet a milestone MUCH later than typical. That means that your child/teen could suddenly act out the same way a neurotypical child acted when they reached the same milestone. This is vitally important to understand so that you don’t think your child had a psychotic break when they actually met a milestone.
When sensory needs have been met, meltdowns or shut downs are a sign of progress.
Basically, your autistic kid might suddenly get exam brain like you had at the end of finals week, and they will be just done with talking/attention/interacting. Treat them kindly, just as you wanted to be treated back in the day. Give them easy, preferred food and drink, a dark and quiet room, a favorite book or video, and plenty of time to rest and relax for a day or two. That’s what brains need when they ran a marathon! (brain-a-thon?)
Your autistic kid might be making excellent progress in joint attention and social thinking, then suddenly lose his schtuff, yelling, seeming out of control of his body, freaking out, and sensory seeking in ways that may not be entirely safe. If that happens, remember the Terrible Twos that neurotypicals go through. Those meltdowns come at that time for NT kids because they’re going through major brain developments and changes.
Congratulations! Your big kid just met a milestone! Try to keep them and yourself safe, and engage sensory soothing techniques. If you can get them to swing, do so. If you can get them to swing in a dim and quiet room, do so. If you have AAC (augmented and assisted communication) techniques in place, use them to engage the older part of the brain. Your goals are safety and soothing. That’s it until they calm down. Don’t get ticked off at them or yell back. They can’t help it, and you can be inwardly happy knowing that they just leaped forward in development.
About that brain & body: Remember that we feel first, see second, and think third. When your children are making progress, or if you want them to do so (you do), make sure to follow the lead of how they’re made. Take care of their sensory needs, give them appropriate visual input with visual supports, AAC, and video modeling, and take the thinking calmly, slowly, and socially.
I’m putting together a more in-depth look at our homeschool this year that I hope to share in the not-too-distant future, but I hope that these tips help you as you approach your decision about homeschooling your child or children with autism. Make sure to talk with your therapists and local support services as you make your decisions, and run my ideas by them if you have questions. Feel free to comment here to ask for examples or share your experiences!
Did you know that I’m writing a book on welcoming families with disabilities into the church? With my co-author Charlotte Riggle, I’m writing Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability for Ancient Faith Publishing. Make sure to follow this blog and my Facebook page to receive free, related tips and printables.
January 8, 2018
A Sensory Diet Checklist for Your Church
It’s okay to laugh.
A sensory diet isn’t a weight loss program. It’s a way to describe the activities and stimuli you provide for yourself or your special needs child to help regulate and integrate your physical (and therefore emotional and cognitive) experience in the world. The professionals at THIS LINK describe it much more fully and clearly. (Bookmark that link! It’s awesome.)
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In your home, a sensory diet might include heavy work options like pushing a lawn mower, pulling wet laundry from a machine, or lifting a trash bag, as well as soothing movements like rocking in a rocking chair, swinging, or bike riding. But what about your church?
Ever notice that children tend to melt down more often in church than at home? Unmet sensory needs are likely to blame. The sensory environment is likely extremely different.
We can help with sensory soothing at church by going through a sensory checklist for our churches. Here’s the Sensory Diet Checklist (linked above as well, because it’s one of the most useful links I’ve found). I encourage you to go through it and brainstorm opportunities in your church environment, rituals, and routines that meet the different areas of sensory needs.
Write down your list and share it with families and persons with special needs, the pastor or priest, Sunday school teachers, and other advocates.
Having ways to self-soothe and get sensory input in a “normal” way can make an amazing difference to one’s ability to stay engaged in a faith community.
Here are the additions I made to the sensory checklist relevant to my church. I share them in hopes that they’ll help you notice sensory diet opportunities in your faith community.
SAMPLE CHURCH SENSORY DIET
Heavy Muscle Work (Proprioceptive):
Carrying a church bag filled with books and quiet items
Pushing/pulling open the church door or Sunday school door
Weighted lap pad available in Sunday school
Big bear hugs with godfamily and special, trusted church friends
Pushing on the ground while kneeling
Altar boys carrying lanterns
Carrying heavy toy/activity in Sunday school
Lifting heavy service books/placing in or out of pew holder
Oral Motor (Working the Mouth):
Crunch snack in Sunday school class (we always have gluten free pretzels in my class)
Water in a quiet sippy bottle in church (with priest’s permission)
Kissing holy icons
Tactile (Touch):
Sunday school lessons with sensory bin elements (my Autism Friendly Sunday School lessons – coming soon – feature lots of hands-on options)
Dressup (Bible character clothes for classroom skits, fleece costumes for pageant)
Fleece and faux fur for lessons dealing with biblical animals (sheep)
Soft, all-cotton clothes for those with strong sensitivities, with less formal attire explained to priest/pastor ahead of time
Silk or cotton headscarf
Church bag items: squishies, velvet pouches, mermaid sequined notebooks, silicone spiky slap bracelets (see the Church Bag Tour)
Vestibular (Movement):
Making the sign of the cross over oneself
Prostrations
Metania (bowing and touching the floor during some prayers or before icons)
Standing on tip-toes and leaning for veneration of icons
Swaying while holding a child or swaying gently to the chanting
Sunday school lessons that have children act out big movements such as small and tall/reaching to sky
Download This Sample Church Sensory Diet Checklist Here:
Sensory Checklist for Your Church
November 15, 2017
Simple Prayer Printables
For the next 40 days, I’m posting on my Facebook page a brief word of encouragement for people living with autism (in themselves or their families).
Because our God is with us, concrete thinking is not a barrier to faith.
Because our God is with us, we can ask God for help.
But how do we teach these truths? Like all lasting things, as simply and as concretely as possible.
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That’s why I’m offering these free printables for you to download and use this Advent (and hereafter) to encourage prayers.
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Using the simplified prayer board is easy.
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Print out the cards. Cut them out. Use them to pray.
The raised hand is “help.” The ear is “listen” or “hear.” The two hands together are “more.” The red palm is “stop.” The starting page is labeled and includes: like, don’t like, thank you, please, and safe.
Point to these in combination with the images of Jesus and the Theotokos to express thanks, like or dislike, say please, ask for or express safety, ask for help, ask God to help you hear wisdom on the right way to go, to give more of something, to stop something unwanted.
If you’re a parent or teacher, model this simple way of praying for your children/students by pointing/moving the cards and speaking simple prayers out loud as you do so. In this way, you will communicate to your concrete thinker a way to prayer that they can access even if they have cognitive challenges.
Like emotions, images are processed pre-cognitively. That means you can feel and see something before you even think about it. It also means that children who have complex challenges can still pray with their hearts and – using aided language assistance – with their minds.
Simple Prayer Board darker skintone PDF
Simple Prayer Board Lighter Skintone PDF
Simple Prayer Board Starters PDF
Download the images above by dragging them to your desktop, or click on the links for the PDF versions.
Don’t forget to follow my 40 Days of Hope With Autism series on my Facebook Page.
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I’m writing a book about the theology of welcoming families with special needs into the church. Make sure to follow this blog in order to receive news and access free printables and curricula to help your child with communication challenges enter into the faith.
November 8, 2017
Advent with Autism Guide
Autism is our normal. Though we adapt to help everyone thrive as much as possible, our priority is joy when it comes time to celebrate special seasons. I’m sharing these tips on how we embrace Advent as a family with autism, and you’ll probably appreciate this Advent Guide even if your family is neurotypical.
“Wow” Books
I’ve been curating a collection of Christmas books since before our firstborn arrived. We bring out the Advent book bins for roughly two months each year from the beginning of Advent (November 15 for New Calendar Orthodox Christians) through the Old Calendar Feast of the Theophany of Our Lord in mid-January (also known as Epiphany). Though we have a few so-so books in our Advent bin, the priorities are: beauty, bright colors, and humor.
Here is the first part of our Advent Book Tour. I’ll post the next one here once it’s up, too.
By reading picture books that communicate through art, physical comedy, and interaction, we give even our nonverbal children emotional access to the joy of the season.
Baking
As most families with autism know, food allergies, sensitivities, and aversions play a big role in setting our menus. That means that many of us do not follow traditional religious fasts, since we are already fasting by coping with our family’s struggles. Even when we restrict our ingredients to “fasting” foods (no meat, dairy, or eggs, for instance), baking is still a warming, educational, and comforting part of the season of preparation for the Nativity.
Our family uses baking as an opportunity to practice strengthening exercises, turn-taking, motor planning, sequencing, and introduction to new foods, flavors, and textures. Making brownies or cake can be a major therapeutic win for our children with autism. But most of all, it’s baking together as a family. The feelings of closeness, warmth, and fun are still available to us, even if some of us have to take breaks more often (see below).
Shopping Tips: My favorite cake mix that’s allergy and fasting friendly is the Cherrybrook Kitchen Gluten Free Chocolate Cake (affiliate link). We love cooking with the Nutiva Organic Shortening, which is soy-free as well as Vegan.
Here’s a recipe I’ve modified from tradtional methods that meets most people’s allergy and fasting needs:
Gluten Free, Egg-free, Dairy-Free Banana Bread
4 medium very ripe bananas, mashed
1 ½ cups gluten free flour mix (any variety with xanthan/guar gum already added)
½ cup red palm & coconut shortening (Such as Nutiva brand), melted
¾ cup brown sugar, lightly packed
½ cup coconut milk (not low fat)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
Optional: up to 1 cup chopped dates, chocolate chips, or chopped nuts
Preheat oven to 350•F. Grease a bread pan with coconut oil or shortening and set aside. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until well combined. Add in dates and nuts if desired, and stir to incorporate. Pour batter into the bread pan evenly. With wetted fingers, smooth the top of the batter slightly. Place pan in the oven and bake for 55 minutes to 1 hour. Bread is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out free of gooey banana bread batter. (If you used chocolate chips, the toothpick might have chocolate on it. If so, get a clean toothpick and try another spot or two until you can tell if the batter has baked. If it’s still sticking, uncooked, to the toothpick, add 5 minutes to the cooking time and check again.) Remove bread and pan from oven. Let the bread stand in the pan to cool for 10 minutes before cutting it or turning it out on a plate. Serve warm or room temperature.
Jesse Tree
Jesse Trees are a great option for teaching concrete thinkers. A Jesse Tree is supposed to be a daily practice where children learn a little about Jesus’s ancestors, the creation of the world, and general background for why we needed Him so desperately and hoped He would come. Sounds sweet, and it is.
Let me tell you a story about our Jesse Tree attempts.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of lovely variations on the Jesse Tree theme. Here are the ones that did NOT work in our household, and why:
Chalkboard Jesse Tree :: My children eat chalk.
Felt Jesse Tree on Wall :: My children like to take felt things apart and throw them in the yard or trashbins.
Sticks tied into a tree shape with twine :: This looks like a ladder, and my children love to climb.
Chrismons added to the actual Christmas tree early :: All I remember is how many hours of needle felting were wasted when they painted over the ornaments with tempera paint and added playdough.
Cardboard ornaments :: taste like chicken — or something desirable, because they were eaten.
Posters :: are made to be torn off the wall to get a closer look, even if that means they’re torn and cause accidents and get trampled to oblivion.
Hanging ornaments from the windows :: will not stop my children from stacking a diaper box on a chair to pull the ornaments down.
If you’re not laughing, maybe you haven’t been there. If these ideas work for you, great. They might work for us one day, too. For us, here’s what works: lighting a candle and telling a brief story along with a song, and hanging the ornaments from the actual ceiling. I found a sapling today that lies fairly close to the ceiling (about an 8″ clearance), and I’m hoping that it can be our Jesse Tree frame this year. I’ll let you know.
Change the Light
If you’ve been around any Montessori-inspired teaching, you’ve probably heard this phrase. For our children with autism, light levels are always a big deal. We’ve installed dimmers on the lights in our main learning rooms, and the bedrooms have combinations of darkening curtains and different brightnesses of lamps.
We find that lowering the light levels in a room helps the children calm themselves.
In Advent, we start adding Christmas lights and more candlelight to our daily routines. We have some family members who are averse to flashing lights, so we avoid that setting. (You might find that the flashing feature works for your family, though.) By adding a little more candlelight and a little more Christmas (fairy) lights each week, we teach concretely about the beauty of the season and the Light coming into the world. On Christmas Eve, we add a large star light above our dining table over the creche. The coming of the light is a concrete metaphor that helps open the truth of our hope in God to children who struggle with abstractions.
Shopping tips: Our grocery store brand of LED Christmas lights is less expensive than comparable lights from other stores. Check to see if you can find a deal at yours, too. Beeswax cools faster and burns cooler than paraffin or soy wax (and it doesn’t irritate allergies). Search at your local craft or farmers market or online for a few beeswax candles to add to your evening routines in Advent.
Singing
I like to sing one or two simple Christmas carols every day throughout Advent. Sometimes the children join in, and sometimes they only listen. We have music lovers in our family, but even so, it’s nice to quiet other sounds when it’s singing time.
Our family’s two carols are: Angels We Have Heard On High and I Parthenos Simeron (On This Day the Virgin Gives Birth). I sing them so the children can hear them, and we spend some time learning the music together. Usually this is soothing, but we pause for another time if one of the children becomes overwhelmed. The simplicity of repeating two central songs helps to keep the overwhelm at bay. These songs become the theme songs for Advent and Christmas, another accessible way to experience the love of God.
Cozy Spots and Away Spaces
With the extra stimulation of preparing for Christmas comes a strong need for quiet time. We’re spending this Advent rearranging our children’s rooms so that each child has more quiet, cozy space. You’ve heard about hygge, the practice of intentional coziness in the winter months? It’s a major factor in happiness for families with autism, too.
For our family, this looks like: soft throws on the living room couches, repurposed crib mattresses under their IKEA mini loft beds for sensory caves, mermaid sequined weighted lap pads, mini flashlights, extra access to sheets for tent-making, living in their cotton pajamas most of the time, sensory bins out in the therapy room for easy access, yoga swings available in the kitchen, hammock available in the boys’ room, HABA tent in the girls’ room, soothing and visually beautiful paper crafts for quiet time, an abundance of lovely Advent books, reading aloud at the table, family tea times with baked goods, letting the little ones hide in their toy box (without the lid), clearing an area so that their foam chairs can be used as crash pads for jumping.
Survival Kits
Since we spend more time at church and around friends, it’s important to bring a portable sensory soothing kit with us. Here’s a basic kit, with links (Amazon affiliate links):
Tote bag or backpack (one you already have is fine).
Noise blocking headphones.
Squishy toy.
Sunglasses.
Lollipops or other simple, quiet food.
Visual Schedule if available. (Such as the ones available here for church.)
A snug undershirt or fitted vest/jacket.
Sleep
Seriously, moms, I’m looking at you. It’s ok to rest. You need it, they need it. Schedule sleep if you have to, but enjoy the opportunity afforded by the longer nights. Keep your lights warm and dim, draw the cozy near, and prepare by resting.
A Joyous Advent to you!
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Note: I’ll be adding new items to the Awetism shop later this month. Watch my sidebar or Instagram feed for updates.
September 28, 2017
Thin Places
MacLean’s Cross on Iona marks part of the ancient pilgrim way. My husband took this photo on one of the afternoons we spent admiring the wind-raked ruins of the grounds around St. Columba’s Abbey. You’ll recognize the cross from the cover of The Stone Pillow, as well as from a scene of a pivotal conversation in the book.
The most common reaction to the divine presence throughout history has been terror. Love is a consuming fire. We cannot embrace the Christian God of love without great consequences.
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Here I am in a ruin on the edge of the world. The ghost of the Church still haunts St. Andrew’s Cathedral, and you’ll see how it haunts Ariadne and Angus in The Stone Pillow. St. Andrew’s Cathedral was once the largest church building in Scotland.
We have a name for the places where people have tended to run into God: thin places. They are sacred sites frequented most often by people who are drawn into the divine flame of love.
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The relics of St. Andrew the First Called Apostle lie in a quiet side chapel in a church in Edinburgh. I didn’t write about the current shrine of St. Andrew in The Stone Pillow, but two of the former shrines are featured in the book.
When my husband and I went on a pilgrimage to ancient holy sites in Scotland back in 2007, we walked in many such thin places. The draw toward the love of God felt nearer there, like kindling ready for the fire, especially on Iona.
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St. Oran’s Chapel is one of the settings in The Stone Pillow that almost becomes a character. There’s a feeling when you pray in places that have steeped in prayer over the course of centuries that reminds me of the way that trees seem to listen in on stories told around campfires in the forest. It’s the sense of coming full circle, of purposes growing and nascent and revealed. I found this photo from our Iona trip in 2007. None of the photographs we took inside, did justice to the sense of vastness that enters that small chapel when you pray. I’ll leave you with this image instead: a small, ancient chapel under a vast sky, the secret gateway to time beyond times that can only be opened with a prayerful heart.
At its best, marriage is a thin place, drawing us closer to God in the dailiness of work and families and bread and tea. It is the hearth, where fire turns our efforts into food and drink and warmth.
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In St. Oran’s Chapel, praying in the light that recalls the unfading Light. When you hold a candle to an icon, the gold rewards you with a reminder of unfading beauty. I felt the loss of the icons dearly in St. Oran’s Chapel on Iona when we went there to pray. Back then, we sang our prayers to Western chants, with their symmetry enclosing each call and response like two hands clasping. The chapel drank up our singing like parched earth. One night we found that someone had lighted candles. The chapel was mostly dark, even while the sun was out, but the candles were a reminder of light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome.
In The Stone Pillow, Angus and Ariadne pray just where I’m standing in the photo. They bring the ancient faith along like way bread.
Today, I am releasing a story of God and a woman and a man, a journey through grief, love, and mysticism in places worn thin by the footsteps of saints. The Stone Pillow is set on the isles of Mull and Iona, where evidence of saints’ lives lie hidden in the open air. I hope that the story will embolden you to walk the thin places in your life and to be not afraid.
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The Stone Pillow is a clean Orthodox Christian romance novella, a story of God and a woman and a man, a journey through grief, love, and mysticism in places worn thin by the footsteps of saints. It’s available now on Amazon.
Legend has it that any maiden who rests her head on St. Tredwell’s Stone Pillow will see the face of her true love.
Ariadne runs from love all the way to the edges of the world. Her work as an elite scholar of medieval Christian artifacts allows her to shelter her heart behind the stones she studies – until she meets Angus, her equal in everything but fear.
Together they’ll discover if hearts with room for legends have room for love.
{ Purchase now for Kindle. }
{Purchase the Paperback on Amazon.}
{Purchase the Paperback on CreateSpace.}
August 25, 2017
5 Sensory Fidgets That Are NOT Spinners
The fidget spinners are all the rage…everywhere but in my house. I prefer quieter fidgets that engage more of the senses and make the person do more of the work for the input.
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These mermaid sequined weighted lap pads give visual, touch, and pressure sensory input. Right now I’m filling a bulk order for a special education classroom, but these will be in my Awetism Etsy shop soon!
Here are some QUIET sensory toys that you can pack in a church or school bag:
Mermaid Sequins. These sequins show different colors depending on which direction you brush them. You can probably find notebook covers or pillow covers in your local Walmart or other discount stores, but for maximum portability, try this {Mermaid Sequin Bracelet}.
Silicone Slap Bracelets. These are great for a variety of sensory input. My kids have very different sensory styles, and they use these to snap onto wrists, rub over fingers, and even touch to their mouths.
Rosary Rings : These stainless steel rings help keep track of prayers and can bring sensory comfort without being as obvious as prayer ropes or rosaries.
Scratch N Sniff Stickers : These are the sensory input devices many of us remember from our childhoods. They give a lot of bang for the buck: scratching, sticky, colorful, and smelly. Depending on your child’s motor ability, they’re silent or near-silent as well.
Velvet Pencil bags : These fit standard sized pencils and crayons, but they give a lot of touch and visual input without making a sound. Bonus: Since these are a useful stationery supply, the user can get a sensory fix several times a day unobtrusively.
Do you have a favorite quiet sensory toy or everyday object to help calm down in public? Post it in the comments so we can all add it to our sensory toolboxes.
This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. If you shop through the links, I receive a small percentage for referring you, but there is no additional cost to you. We use funds from the Affiliate program to improve our children’s sensory environment.
