Category Archives: who says moving faster is better?

autism, learning disabilities, judgement

How Truly Inclusive Can A Tent Be?

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Many of us are hurting today after the Nov. 8, 2016 presidential election. We are scared and concerned. And we are looking at both a country and an entire world that is clearly expressing pain, anger and fear. Just like in the US political scene, there are so many countries around the world that have fairly recently elected new, extremely conservative governments, or have adopted separatist, divisive, exclusionary policies aimed at keeping out the “other.”

People who voted like me are in shock and afraid for what this means for the future. But at the same time that I feel exhausted and scared, I am very aware that this feeling that I have right now is likely the exact same feeling that those who voted opposite to me felt in 2008 and 2012….like the world as we know it has come to an end, and that the person elected to the office of POTUS does not and cannot represent me or the values that I hold dear.

But here I am, someone who strives to be an advocate for welcoming diversity and embracing inclusion. Someone who advocates for people to accept each other despite their differences. Someone who explains that autism is just like a different culture, and the same way that I would not mistreat someone because they were from a different religion or race, I must strive to understand, embrace, and include people with autism. Someone who strives to reach out to someone different than me, because at the very least we share the same humanity.

Last week I wrote about how my 21 year old with autism has been triggered over the last number of weeks by the bullying of the Republican candidate – how this has brought him back to lots of pain and anxiety from the bullying he endured throughout his school years. I know that many of us with children with special needs have been hard put last night and today to explain to these young people just what happened here in America. How come the bully won? How come the “good guys” didn’t win?

It’s so easy, so human, to divide people, to make things into the good guys and the bad guys. The people who are right, and the people who are wrong. Etc etc….we have all just endured months of a blistering election with just that tenor – us and them, whichever side you fall on.

But life, and people, are far more nuanced, at least a lot of the time! We don’t actually fall neatly into such well-defined categories. And this is something that I have worked long and hard to share with my son. It is much easier for him to see the world in “either-or” absolutes. I am forever speaking with him about the concept of “not but, and.”

Last week I wrote about “social-interaction difficulties” as one of the top signs of autism. Another classic symptom is cognitive rigidity. Life is black or white; there is no gray, no nuance, no place in the middle. No “and.”

So in many ways, it seems to me that our world right now, while experiencing a true crisis in the rise of the number of children that have autism, is also experiencing and expressing behavior that would be termed “autistic” by any therapist observing from afar. Rigid, divisive, black-white thinking. Afraid of change. Afraid of anything different. Afraid of the unknown.

I do feel the need today to put my actions where my mouth is. The world is divided between the folks like me who think that it is okay to disagree, that we can live together side-by-side even if we don’t see eye-to-eye. And about 50% of our world seems to agree with me on that. Then there is the other roughly 50% who say, “No, it’s either my way or the highway.” It seems that the two sides are incompatible, because while I may be willing to live with you despite our disagreements, if you are hell bent on telling me that your way is the only way, there isn’t exactly any room for compromise is there?

Ah, but that is where the parents and teachers and therapists and family members of people with autism come in. We all know what black-white rigid thinking is. We all know about someone being afraid of the new and different. We all know how hard it is for someone with autism to accept unexpected, unwanted changes. We all know how much someone with autism needs to be heard and understood, requiring us to listen in a new way. And we all know that there are ways around all of this. We all have experience in working things out.

The people that elected Trump have families and concerns and desires and values, just like me. They clearly see things differently than I do. That’s okay. We can work things out. We can listen to you, though it may require us to listen in a new way. We have to. We all have to widen our tent and make it truly inclusive. Not just for folks with disabilities. For folks who disagree with me politically as well.

Here’s a song called “Prayers.” For the hard days.

Is Addressing “The Elephant In The Room” a “Social-Interaction Difficulty?”

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Google the “signs of autism” and the very first thing that pops up on most of the lists is, “social-interaction difficulties.” As I have had the privilege to live in different cultures, and as culture determines what kind of social interactions are deemed appropriate, I’ve long wondered about how hard and fast this determination of autism can be, since social rules vary greatly from culture to culture. This was extremely apparent when we arrived in this country in 1998 when my son was 3. While I am not disputing that my son has “social-interaction difficulties,” the habits that he had that were inevitably identified as social issues were actually cross-cultural issues.

He was born in Israel, where culture, and therefore social norms, has certain obvious differences from mainstream American culture. For one thing, people in the Middle East are more emotionally expressive than in the US. When you greet someone who you know and like, you hold their arms and kiss them on both cheeks. So this is how my son learned to say hello. That was immediately flagged by early therapists as a “social-interaction difficulty.” I tried to explain that he was just being friendly in the way that he had seen people be friendly…no go.

The list goes on and on…he was too animated when he spoke, he was too physical when he played, he stood too close to people. All true, but only a display of “social-interaction difficulties” in the West…none of those things ever stood out as problematic when we visited back in Israel. Different cultures have different rules. (Autism, as a culture, has different social rules too, but I’ll leave that thought for a different blog.)

Another way his “social interaction difficulties” have always expressed themselves have been through his tendency to talk freely about the “elephant in the room,” whatever the elephant happened to be on a particular day. I always felt like he had a radar sense when something unspoken was going on in a room. Therapists always felt that he was woefully unaware of socially acceptable conversation.

One thing I have learned from raising my children was that so many things in life are a case of and/and, not either/or. Yes it is important to think before we speak, yes it is important to consider other people’s feelings, and yes, often it is really helpful to be the one to be able to point out the elephant in the room. The act of stating the elephant in the room is not a “social-interaction difficulty” in and of itself. The sensitivity involved in social interaction and mature communication takes a lot of thought, and one needs to figure out whether or not each particular elephant should be pointed out, or not.

As we all know, we are currently living through one of the most bizarre presidential elections in American history. One candidate prides himself on saying whatever he feels like. He scorns “political correctness” and doesn’t seem to care who he hurts. Perhaps he thinks that he is doing a good thing by talking about all of the elephants in the room that he thinks no one else is mentioning. On the other hand, perhaps he never learned the lesson, which should precede talking about the elephant: that of thinking before we speak and considering other people’s feelings.

Educators and researchers have written numerous articles over the course of this campaign season about the effect this type of discourse has had on school children, and have watched in horror at what seems to be an uptick in incidents of bullying, racism and hate-speech in schools. Others have reported that people who have been bullied and abused in their life feel traumatized anew in watching a presidential candidate behave this way.

My son was badly bullied throughout his school years. In his inimitable manner of pointing out the elephant in the current room, he left me this voice message yesterday as he was on his way to college for the day: “Mom. I just want to tell you that I am really tired about Trump. He reminds me of all of those people that bullied me a long time ago. I know that I shouldn’t hold on to those memories, but it’s hard to let go, Mom, it’s hard to let everything go when something hurts you. Especially because he is a bully, it makes me remember being bullied and it really hurts. I’m sorry Mom; it’s just hard to hear things about Trump. I hope he doesn’t win Mom, because bullies shouldn’t win.”

That would be a case, in my humble opinion, of just one of the many elephants in the current room that should be addressed. Long live my son’s ability to name the elephant in the room. Because thankfully, he has come a long way in learning how to think before he speaks and consider other people’s feelings. In his case, naming the elephant in the room can no longer be considered a “social-interaction difficulty.”

 

Enjoy this song! Please tell me your thoughts!

Yom Kippur – A Day To Assess How We Relate to Others, Or, Don’t Judge!

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Last night was the beginning of the observance of the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, when we traditionally ask for forgiveness from those we feel we have wronged.

Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, always falls 10 days before Yom Kippur, and the New Year is a time of self-reflection about one’s own behavior through the past year, and how we might like to work to improve things.  Yom Kippur, on the other hand, is a time to reach out and try and clear up misunderstandings with those in our world.  It is a time to acknowledge the mistakes we have made in our relationships with people near and far, and apologize for hurts that we may have caused.  (The parallels to the current election season and the endless list of wrongs NOT being apologized for cannot be ignored of course.)

So, at Rosh HaShanah, we think of how we want to repair our relationship with ourselves, and at Yom Kippur, we think of how we want to repair our relationships with others.

At the afternoon service of Yom Kippur, we traditionally read the story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet.  Jonah was asked to go tell the Ninevites that they needed to change their ways, but he didn’t like the Ninevites.  He had already judged them and decided that they weren’t worth saving.   Jonah believed that he had legitimate reasons for not liking the Ninevites, after all, they were enemies of his people, the Jews.  Yet, to his actual distress, they heeded his words and changed their ways.  They also proved to him that his judgement was unfounded.  He still didn’t like them, but eventually he came to respect God’s reasoning for saving the Ninevites. One would hope, though the story ends so we don’t actually know, that Jonah then changed HIS ways and became more compassionate because of the lesson he learned.

This is one of the main reminders that I “get” annually from Yom Kippur: not to judge others.   Maybe I do not actually know what is happening in another person’s world, or why they are behaving the way they are.  Maybe I don’t see the whole picture, so I cannot understand their behavior.  Yom Kippur is a reminder that I want to treat others the way I would like to be treated, that golden rule of so many cultures and one of the basic tenets of Judaism.

But what about all these people that make us uncomfortable, like Jonah felt towards the Ninevites?  Maybe we don’t see the whole picture?  Maybe they have an invisible disability, like autism, or anxiety, or depression?  Maybe they have a sensory processing disorder, and the tension and discomfort that we feel from them is because they are trying valiantly to keep it together in a confusing world?

Yom Kippur also reminds me of the story of the 36 Righteous Angels, or the “Lamedvavniks”, the Yiddish term for this phenomenon.  This is an old Jewish legend, which tells that a “spark” of righteousness is always inhabiting 36 people around the world at any time.  It doesn’t stay in any one person permanently, but rather travels from person to person as needed.  But the person who currently contains that spark also doesn’t know that they are a “lamedvavnik.”  The saying goes, if you think you are one of the lamedvavniks, you definitely are not, but just because you don’t think you are one, doesn’t mean you aren’t!

Perhaps that person who is making us uncomfortable is one of the lamedvavniks?  Perhaps they are currently helping keep our world from going over the precipice, and we all know they have a heck of a job right now!

Since we never know who contains the spark of righteousness, we could potentially treat everyone as though they are a lamedvavnik, because they might be!  How different our world might be if we were all carefully respecting each other.

People with disabilities suffer from constant bullying and teasing, often because they are socially uncomfortable.  Many adults with invisible disabilities struggle to keep employment, despite laws supposedly protecting them.  But maybe one of them is a lamedvavnik?  Maybe if we tried just a little bit more we could find a way to include them rather than exclude them….

Here is my song about the Lamedvavniks.  May we all treat each other with respect, kindness, compassion and tolerance this year and always.  Certainly, as the odds go, many people we know will be carrying that spark of righteousness at some point during this year….