Book>Interview with the Author

Interview with the Author, Sibylle Janert, 18.03.00

Who is this book for? There are so many books on autism around, how is this one different?
This book was written specifically for adults who spend time with autistic under fives, i.e. parents, nursery and playgroup workers, early years teachers and SEN support workers. But health visitors, Groups and others working with families with a young child on the autistic continuum would also find it useful.

What is different about this book?
This book is very practical, with almost every chapter describing a game, activity or strategy, together with a child-centred perspective on why these may work. There is an emphasis on what may be going on inside the child’s mind and internal world, on the idea that even in the most autistic child there will be non-autistic aspects which we want to tap into and encourage, and on the importance in this of a playful approach from the adult.

But autistic children don’t play.
Yes, but we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater: not knowing how to play does not necessarily mean being unable to respond to a playful approach. Playfulness is seen as crucial for the development of the very early and most fundamental communicative skills. All the autistic people I have met did enjoy and respond to a playful approach! In fact they loved a little joke, a playful approach, a kind gentle ‘tease’ that played with shared assumptions: after all this is the foundation of social communication.

But autistic children have such problems with social communication.
They do, and the result is usually that the adult feels extremely lost and at sea. This also includes professionals, who are of course often in a very difficult situation, e.g. being asked by desperate parents what to do about challenging behaviours, or having to diagnose a child after 1 or 2 visits, who confounds all our common sense and normal human communication skills. There is this 3 or 4 year old who just does not respond, - and the adult feels completely out of their depths.

Yeah, I know. But what can you do about that? That’s just autism, you just got to ignore it, steel yourself against it, be very strict and give lots of structure and clear instructions. And the rest is: you just got to live with it. You can’t be playful about that, can you?
Yes, there is no doubt, that it is very tough being with an autistic child, and I agree with all your thoughts about the need for clarity, structure and boundaries. It helps so much, and in the last few years there’s been tremendous progress on developing methods that provide structured programmes for autistic spectrum children to be used at home, in school and elsewhere, such as TEACCH, Lovaas, PECS, etc.. Personally I can find bits that are great in most approaches, and people come round more and more to feeling free to mix and match, and to use whatever works with a particular child.

But does that not contradict what you said about a playful approach? You can’t be playful and at the same time structured and strict, can you?
That seems to be the prevailing attitude, but I am not so sure: you can have clear structure, rules and boundaries, and deal with enforcing them by laying down the law in a harsh way, or by ensuring these are kept to in a much more relaxed, friendly way including a sense of humour. Take for example a drawing-activity: it is possible to sit with a child and be determined to carry out this activity, but to do the insisting in a playful, lively, cajoling way or in a very clipped and detached manner, that to me sometimes feels almost non- communicative from the adult’s side. I think there is often some confusion around between ‘what’ and ‘how’, between content and process, between structure and personal attitudes. I believe some people don’t make enough use of how we apply the programmes, the structure, the rules. In particular people sometimes don’t make enough use of their aliveness, their human capacity to intrigue and to draw the child into a ‘together-activity’.

Can you explain a bit more what you mean by the different approaches, or attitudes?
The most important difference probably lies in some of the basic assumptions about what it is to be a human being, and in the ideas about what is the human mind, e.g. is the human mind simply (or even complicatedly) a cognitive mind to be taught and programmed, or is it an internal world made up of traces of real experiences mixed with ‘home-made’ fantasies, ideas, fears, wishes, anxieties, and generally greatly imbued by feelings, and a complex unconscious network of relationships between all of these in one’s inner world. It is with this kind of model of the mind that I approach the autistic child, i.e. trying to understand what goes on inside not only his/her cognitive mind, but the mind as an inner world.

Can you give an example?
There’s that story about Maria, a wonderful support worker in a nursery who wanted 5 year old autistic Kevin to do a posting box, as part of his daily activities-routine. She’d just been on an autism-training course, and was trying to use what she had been taught. So she tried to be very clear, which ended up as ‘Sit! - Put in! - Put in! - Kevin, put in!!! ...’ But Kevin was not taking any notice, was giggling and trying to swish the shapes onto the floor, resulting in ‘Pick up! Kevin! Pick up! ...’ But he just flopped around on the floor, and it felt as if he was taking the mickey, - and she was getting really fed up.

Yeah, that happens a lot, - it’s really hard work. Eventually I just go on automatic pilot.
Yes, and I believe that’s the danger. It is meant to protect from feeling so terribly helpless, or irritated and angry. But instead it deadens things, which actually makes it worse for the adult, - and it does not help the autistic child. In fact it is similar to what he does already, just shutting off, withdrawing his emotional availability and interestedness, - and more of that would not appear to be good for him. We don’t want to end up copying him, when our task is to help him learn other ways of dealing with the world!

But what else can you do?
Well, if we look carefully at the autistic child’s level of communication, we tend to find that it is age-appropriate to a much younger age, usually that of a baby under 9 months. Both do communicate, but without language and in ways that rely very heavily on making the other person feel certain ways, i.e. they communicate by ‘trading feelings’ rather than talking about things. It is a useful mental exercise, for example, to wonder whether Kevin was really fed up, and this fed-up feeling communicated itself to Maria, just like when a baby is crying and his parent somehow ‘knows’ whether he is hungry or bored or upset or angry. It’s like the baby ‘parks’ his feelings inside the other person (provided they are receptive to this), because he has as yet no means of processing them, and in the hope that the adult will digest them for him.

You mean, the autistic child is like a 9 month old baby? But my boy talks, and climbs and is very active all the time. He’s not like a baby at all.
No, most other areas of his development are probably age-appropriate. But his social communication is likely to function at a much earlier level. If you watch carefully how you communicate with a young baby, and then try that with an autistic child, you’ll be surprised at his response. Having this as a mental model often gives you an almost fool-proof way of being able to get into communication with an autistic person. The trouble is that some people don’t talk much with babies, - so when they meet a person whose communicative development is like that of a much younger baby, they are stuck.

But I can’t treat my 5 year old as if he was 6 months or so. At that age they are just lying around doing nothing.
Well, not quite nothing: at 6 months babies are incredibly interested in the world, they want to see everything and have and suck and bite it, if possible. Your 5 year old is running and jumping all the time, and in that he is not at all like a 6 month old. But when he won’t hear you, when he turns his head away, when he keeps banging something all the time: try to think what you would do, if this was a 6 month old baby, and try if it works with him. If that baby turns his head away, many adults who are successful baby-communicators would move their own head back and then do a ‘nose-dive’ of ‘hellohello helloooo!!!’ If a baby keeps banging a toy for too long, a tuned-in mum is likely to take it away saying something like ‘Ooh, I think you’re bored with that now, shall we do something different?’ And she does not really expect an answer to that, but will probably make a suggestion, perhaps ‘lets go and do some cooking’. And she does not expect the child to understand her words, but there’s something a baby understands when mum then picks him up and carries him into the kitchen and to the cooker where pots are cooking and steam coming out, ...

I must try that. None of the other books I have read, talks about that.
There are many other excellent books around, and I have tried very hard not to replicate anything that is available already.

So, will I get confused when I read your book, after the other books I have read? They were talking a lot about behaviour modification and boundaries and structure. Does that kind-of contradict what you say about being playful and talking like to a much younger baby?
Boundaries and a clear structure are absolutely vital for and with an autistic person as well as for babies), and I don’t think anyone can do without some of the excellent behaviour techniques described in detail in many of the autism books. The playful approach which I talked about is meant as an addition to these, perhaps as an underlying attitude for the adult.

Can you explain that?
Yes, let me come back to Kevin: having watched them getting increasingly fed up with each other, I then suggested to have a go. I sat next to Kevin and, thinking of a 9 -12 month old, I held the posting box for him and a round shape, saying ‘Where does that go, Kevin? Can you put it in?’ in the kind of playful excitement-generating tone of voice with which adults tend to help young babies focus their attention onto a shared task. He seemed surprised to be spoken to like that, and posted the shape easily. I singled out another shape on the table and said ‘And another one! Can you do another one?!’, again as if I was talking about the most exciting thing in the world. He was now totally engaged, or rather: we were both totally engaged with each other. My next objective was to get him to use his own mind as much as he could. I therefore kept my hands folded, so he would have to listen and use his mind to try to understand rather than just watch and copy. And he did. He did all the shapes, and not once did he try to swish them down, or flop around. When one fell down, he just picked it up.

Why do you think it was so different with you?
I think it was a lot to do with my tone of voice, which was a combination of firm and determined, while at the same time child-centred, playful, lively and excitement-generating, which in turn made him interested and therefore motivated. The whole combination of these helped him to focus his attention, and the nice feel of the 2 of us doing something together made him want to stay, and therefore to do the activity. But now it was no longer a boring activity to be done. Now it was fun, and we were both having a game together, and a good social time, with real communication going on.

But they told me you shouldn’t talk to them too much.
I think this is again a matter of the underlying approach and attitude. I think why Kevin’s support-worker had not been successful, was that he did not like being talked to like that. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the feel of it, with what it made him feel. And in fact I said to her ‘Don’t ever ever speak to me like that!’: it had felt sharp and cutting, like razor blades. I believe no human being (or animal) would like to be spoken to like that, it was sort of severe army-style (or worse), and I think she had misinterpreted what the people on the training course had meant (and really she is a wonderful tuned-in resourceful worker!).

So what was different about your way of talking to Kevin and hers?
The word I find most useful here is what I call ‘containment’. Having in mind how one normally talks to a person who has no spoken language and does not understand lots of things, but still has a human mind, gave Kevin a sense of containment that made him feel safe and comfortable. At the same time it ‘tugged’ on his human potential, and he liked the togetherness and the emotional communication that went with that. My feeling about Maria’s approach at that moment was, that it treated the autistic child like something to be trained and programmed, so her speech sounded somewhat automaton-like, cold and uninviting. But in reality Maria is a very warm and sensitive person. So after we talked, she became more animated with Kevin, less afraid to rely on her own instincts on how to talk to him, when it was appropriate to talk to him in a clipped and even sharp, or icy, way, and when a warm, coaxing, friendly tone and manner were more conducive to engaging his interest and cooperation.

Did you tell Kevin’s parents about this kind of thing?
Yes, I did various home visits and tried to exlain and show them. But I think that was both in some ways too late (he was 4 by the time I met them, which is a very long time for communication difficulties in the family to cause chaos), and not enough. They would have needed at least a weekly visit, and something they could access independently, like a book. Which is really the reason, why I decided to devote several years and thousands of hours to write this book.

Thank you very much, that’s been a very interesting interview. Can I contact you in any way, if I have any more questions?
Yes, you can email me on the email address given below and I will try to answer questions as best as I can, or suggest others who may have helpful things to say.