{"id":58,"date":"2009-12-30T08:37:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T08:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2009\/12\/just-dance\/"},"modified":"2009-12-30T08:37:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T08:37:00","slug":"just-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/just-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been using a new dance DVD<\/a> given to me twice this holiday season — by Ned and by his father — and it is the best yet. Blanca is a wonderful teacher because she is very human, very real. There is a sweetness and warmth about her, an unrehearsed quality to the way she instructs on the DVD, that makes you feel relaxed and open to learning.<\/p>\n

Dancing with this new DVD made me understand something about the way I learn. Sometimes Blanca breaks down a dance step or move, and other times she practically mumbles what to do, very quickly, and then right away moves into it. This forces me to do the same, in order to keep up with her and the music. Yet I feel no anxiety when doing so. Sometimes it is just right, and I can do it without having anything broken down into smaller steps. I just dance, and then, there I am, dancing!<\/p>\n

While falling asleep last night, noting with satisfaction the sharp benign pull of my leg muscles, I thought about the breaking-down of things done in many forms of education, in particular, Nat’s education. Many of us learn that — ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) style<\/a> — if you break things down for autistic people like Nat (as if they are just some big, uniform group), they will be able to learn many new skills. Especially if you reward each small step gained.<\/p>\n

I am not trying to belittle this popular educational approach; I believe that ABA-style education works for many people in general. It is positive reinforcement. It is breaking down complicated new concepts into more familiar, manageable ones. I have seen Nat respond well to this very sensible, structured method and I feel that it has a definite place of respect in education.<\/p>\n

However, my heart and soul have always revolted at this style of education, particularly as a parenting style. When Nat was little, like 4 or 5, and we were being trained in ABA along with him, I remember feeling such a loss — the loss of my own intuitive, holistic, maternal approach to teaching him. The warm exciting flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants approach that comes naturally to me. I was told time and again that this more consistent, structured, mathematical-logical approach went along with Nat’s mind better. That he is different from me. But what it felt like to me sometimes was I was being asked to “civilize” him, to squeeze out his natural tendencies towards stimming and other things autistic, and make him into something he was not.<\/p>\n

Of course this has been my own lifelong struggle as Nat’s mother: to figure out how to separate what is me, from what is him. So, not only to figure out what is Nat and what is the autism, (and therefore what can\/should be changed\/refined), but also: what is about me and my needs — and what is about my child. From the moment I was told to put him in a full-day, full-week school program at the tiny tender age of 3, my wispy little toddler who seemed much much younger than that. To the moment I was taught how to teach Nat to play with cars like the rest of the kids his age (“Put man in car. Push car. Make ‘vroom’ noise. Good job!” Check off plays appropriately.). To the time I was advised to let him try living with others in the school’s group home, at the tiny tender age of 18. I feel like I’ve always basically been doing it wrong, according to the experts. Because I have been told to approach him from this logical standpoint, this step-by-step, dry, neutral point of view.<\/p>\n

The reality is far more organic. For the truth is, the best teachers Nat has ever had are the ones who connect with him first, and operate by feel. Sure, they follow their training and their researched curricula; but what makes them effective with Nat is that they are getting to know him as he is<\/span> and loving what they learn about him. Nat’s current teacher is a great example. Even when she reports an outburst — the required language of the ABA teacher, the signal that there is an aberration in the smooth, flowing data — she will see in it something positive. She tells me that this outburst actually means he was trying to advocate for himself; he was using his words, but the other person simply could not understand. That kind of thing. She sees him the way I do, in other words: with compassion, love, admiration, and yet also with discernment. The best teachers do that. The best teachers are not technicians. They do not follow their training solely with their minds; they also involve their hearts and their intuition.<\/p>\n

Over time, I have learned that it is okay for me to teach Nat the way I do. How often could someone like me really use ABA-style techniques anyway? Where the hell is that chart with the velcro rewards? Where’s the pen when I need to mark down the data? So often I have had to grow very still and find my way to Nat, and hook into what’s going on with him. I have to feel what to do. I have had to connect with him and go from there. I think that what I do is just dance with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been using a new dance DVD given to me twice this holiday season — by Ned and by his father — and it is the best yet. Blanca is a wonderful teacher because she is very human, very real. There is a sweetness and warmth about her, an unrehearsed quality to the way she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}