Autism and 5th Grade

Frog has a hard time with social situations.  He wants friends, he just doesnt know how to relate to them.  One thing we have done to help him is we invited one of the school therapists to discuss Autism with the class.  Here are two anograms she used to help the kids understand what Autism is and what it means.  I love them because they help me explain it to other people too.  The discussion was created for a class of 5th grade highly gifted students.  It is a simplified explination, but it works! 

 We talked about how social skills are like a language (Greek, Hebrew, etc.) that a child with Autism doesn't speak but we do ( well most of us!  No one is perfect).  For now, Frog watches others, smiles, jokes, follows what he thinks he is supposed to do, but will often act in ways

that they (the students) think is unusual, odd, or just annoying.  Without the rules of the language, they cannot expect him to fit in seamlessly.    We also spoke about how within a language, there are different dialects that can confuse someone who is new to the language.  There were comments like: 

"Wow, that's going to be hard for him to learn all those rules."

 "He needs the Rosetta Stone!"

"WE'LL be his Rosetta Stone!"

I spoke to the class about their role.  That while we were happy they wanted to help, their job wasn't going to be to teach Frog the rules, their primary task was to help the class run well so the day is as predictable as possible, as well as offering some grace / flexibility with Frog as it's going to take a LOT of practice to learn that many rules.  They will need to understand no one, even someone as bright as Frog, can learn an entire language in a week.   We spoke about creating a "Rule Book"  with Frog that would act somewhat like a translator's dictionary.  They thought that was great and offered some suggestions. That led us back to the conversation about not expecting someone learning a new language to try to memorize the foreign language dictionary overnight and then expect them to speak fluently the next day.  Even with rules, it's going to take practice.

We talked about how having a label doesn't excuse Frog from rules anyone would need to follow (refrain from cussing or hitting others, must listen to his teachers, etc. ) just as being gifted doesn't excuse them.  There were a couple of students that didn't quite grasp the foreign language metaphor so I tried a different tack.

"Say someone was blind.  How would you explain something is blue."

 "I'd tell him its the color of the sky",

"But he's never seen the sky".

"Oh, right.  This isn't going to be easy."

"Exactly.  Try to remember that when Frog is trying to figure out what color is blue --- remember that for EACH of you when I say blue you are probably not thinking of the same color.  Some think aqua, some periwinkle, some navy.  For you, these differences are small and can easily be explained, but for now, Frog still needs to understand blue.  Close needs to be acceptable for now.  Shades of color will come later."

Thank you to a great teacher for presenting this in a way the students can understand!