Page 26 - SEN116 January-February 2022

Autism
We all think differently!
Alex Robinson, Nicola Williams and Dr. Rebecca Docherty describe their work on the key issue of developing an awareness of self.
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Noticing differences
It’s hard to make sense of people having different thoughts and feelings... especially if you’re not sure what thoughts and feelings are.
Toby is an adolescent young man at Kisimul School; an independent special school for young people with severe learning difficulties, many of whom have autism. A lot of people with autism have differences in how they make sense of thoughts and feelings. Taking on board different perspectives and points of view can be a challenge.
Toby had started to become aware of some differences between himself and other people. He has autism, but was not sure what this meant. After seeing a person on television with additional needs, he apologised to his family for having differences. This prompted his Mum to raise the question of how Toby could be supported to feel comfortable with his sense of self and the wonderful person he is. The in-house therapeutic team, together with colleagues from Educational Psychology, Speech and Language Therapy, along with class staff, collaborated to work with Toby.
Developing a positive sense of self
The intention was to help Toby develop an integrated sense of self, feeling at ease with differences between himself and others. It was hoped he could start to feel okay about his own way of thinking. This looked at first like it might be tricky. We were not sure whether he understood the concept of ‘thinking’. Some groundwork was needed.
“He apologised to his family for having differences”
What is thinking?
It is hard to discuss what people ‘think’ if young people are not clear what we mean by ‘thinking’. This was the starting point for work with Toby and a small group of peers.
The language of ‘thinking’ was introduced with visual symbols on talking mats. The students explored a range of physical items, focusing on a different sense each week. They were asked to decide what they ‘think’ about the item by placing the symbol of it onto a talking mat of either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The talking mats had each student’s photograph, along with a symbol of their brain reading ‘Toby thinks...’. In this way, students could see differences in what their peers thought about items.
Sentence strips and symbols were used to clarify the emerging concept.... e.g. “Toby thinks rain/orange is good/bad”.
Generalising the concept
The language of “Toby thinks...”, “I think...” “Louise thinks...” was modelled by adults throughout the sessions, with reference to having thoughts in their brain. This helped move the concept from the structured intervention into real life language
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes
Being aware of your own thoughts is one thing... imagining what someone else might think is another. The talking mats were used in subsequent sessions to help students articulate what their peers thought about a range of items, using the same sentence strip structure, e.g.
“Louise thinks rain is good/bad”.
Toby would then give the item to a peer and see if they still thought the same today. The language around peers thinking the ‘same’ or ‘differently’ to Toby was again modelled throughout and actively encouraged.
A new Concept emerging
All young people during the sessions used visual sentence strips to scaffold language around thinking. Toby grasped this well and began to use this sentence structure to comment
■ Toby’s likes and dislikes.
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