Susan Senator

I was not surprised that there were many feelings among my readers about Nat’s conversation program. Educational approaches are always a bit controversial, and autism education approaches are even moreso. Plus it is the first time most of you have ever seen Nat in action. I understand the feelings people have expressed to me, both in private and blog comments. I even agree that there is a bit of a canned aspect to the program, an artificial feel to the conversation, which can be frustrating to watch.

But I stand by Natty’s teachers and this work that they do, because the staff there fulfill my primary requirement for educators: they understand him, and they love and accept him. They take the time to figure him out and within the parameters of their Behavioral training, they come up with programs that will provide the building blocks of a particular desirable skill.

The conversation program that I YouTubed was the very beginning of teaching Nat attending and responding skills. The content is not necessarily important, although in all the programs featured on the Nat DVD (and there several more) the teachers have picked subjects that will catch his attention (movies, family pictures, ocean). Some readers were upset by the bizarre feel of the conversation, repeated several times exactly the same way, the teacher’s tone of voice, the apparently boring aspect of the entire thing.

I believe that Nat might sometimes find schooltime to be all of these, and perhaps a little bizarre as well, but this is so far the technique that has worked best in getting Nat to understand how the world works. Incidental learning, the osmosis-style learning most of us are capable of, does not generally work with Nat. Also, he is long familiar with his school’s approaches and he by now understands that this is how he learns new things at school. All children have to accept that the school is the boss, after all. That’s how it works when you’re a kid. Benji is struggling mightily with this concept right now, as a third-grader. And Nat figures out extremely quickly what it is these NT teachers want from him and he gives it to them. He ends up enjoying some of these new skills — like working at his several (paying) jobs, reading, and playing interactive games with a peer — and other skills he does not like, such as math or using the telephone. For Nat the rewarding thing is figuring out what the expectation is and fulfilling it as soon as possible, moving on to the next thing. He is a total overachiever, classically so; a perfectionist. I don’t mean this pejoratively. I admire his follow-through and I wish I had more of it myself.

The Behavioral/Discrete Trial Training Approach is not perfect. Some may utterly hate the trained-dog aspect of it. But I think it is a good tool for giving one building blocks and steps to a skill, particularly a learner like Nat who spaces out easily and requires repetition and consistency to capture his attention and make him feel comfortable. Some things we learn are just not that easily picked up on naturally or incidentally — a good example is Benji having to use flashcards to learn his math facts — but they must be drilled for acquisition. I think that once Nat gets the hang of listening to a question and answering, he will be able to branch out and come up with his own topics and responses. He will even become more comfortable with saying, “No talking,” which is what he says when he absolutely can’t take any more. But he is too good a student to do that to his teacher.

But even more than the merits of DTT/ABA, I think that Nat is surrounded by teachers who care about him and start from where he is linguistically and help bring him to new levels. This is what education is all about.