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His Daily TV - and Video Bath

How much is good for him?

We have become a video- and TV-culture, and many people spend hours 'in front of the box'. Everyone does. The autistic child wanting to watch TV all day seems to be just like any other 3-year-old. Parents often see this with relief. Surely, he too will learn something from watching TV and videos? But then doubts begin to creep in. He never talks about it. It does not seem to affect him. He does not play-act what he has seen like his age-mates. He only wants to see the same video. On closer inspection, it actually looks like some kind of addiction.

Harvey wants to watch the same video every day. He screams until his parents can bear it no longer and give in. It’s been the same video for months now. “At least it keeps him quiet”, they explain,- which allows them to get on with their daily chores.

Tim does not seem to mind what he is watching as long as the TV is on. Lolling somewhere on the floor or settee, chewing on his t-shirt, he appears to be asleep, was it not for his eyes, which are open, but do not follow any movements on the screen.

Because of the autistic child's difficulties with communication and making sense of perceptions, his experience of what goes on in a film is likely to be very different from ours. If he lets his mind fall apart or is unable to pull his senses together into one single meaningful focus, then whatever he is watching will not make sense. If it does not make sense, then we are faced with the serious question: what is he getting out of this passive ‘activity’.

It is a good idea to watch carefully what the child seems to be looking at on the screen, and whether this is accompanied by any changes of expression on his face in line with the story. Although the changes are subtle, it is possible, to a certain extent, to see on a person’s face, and from other bodily reactions, whether they are following and understanding a story or not. Mothers and teachers do this all the time when telling a story or looking at books with children. With some practice it becomes increasingly possible to tell the difference between someone whose eyes simply follow the movement that is going on in front of them, and the person whose eyes follow movement and focus on the main-aspect of the story for as long as is appropriate to the story. This person gives other signs too of emotional involvement with the characters: being upset, excited or happy in response to the characters, - often lacking in the autistic child.

Making sense of the story-line in a film, although so immediate and natural to you and me, is really a complicated mental process, which is impossible without a good grasp of speech and comprehension. Essentially it requires the ability and the desire to make sense of things, to understand what things ‘mean’ and to let them affect us, - the autistic child’s blind spots. But what is left of the TV or video experience, if we take away the story-line and the meaning of what is said and shown on the screen? A purely sensuous sight-sound-experience, a ‘sight-and-sound-bath’: a constantly changing colourful display of movement with an ongoing noise-background of patterns of sound, or tunes.

To help us understand and think of the best ways of dealing with the childs’ TV-addiction, a useful exercise is to experiment watching TV without attention to the story or what the programme is about:

With the TV on, focus your eyes into the far distance, so that your vison becomes blurred and your awareness dispersed. Focus your attention instead on the patterns of movement on the screen and let these drift past you without trying to make sense of them or matching them to what is going on in the story. It is possible to listen to the patterns of sound without listening to the meaning of the words, just letting yourself be carried away by the ongoingness of the rhythms and the music of the sound-patterns. Letting the world go by in this way, as if nothing to do with you, creates a timeless experience, - bathing in the sensations of sight and sound, a ‘video-shower’.

But without meaningful seeing, there will be little learning. Most young autistic children do not learn much from watching TV or video. They use the 'sight-sound bath' to envelop, to wash over them in a comforting way allowing them to cut off, to let themselves drift off passively. Surrendering to that sensual and essentially mindless experience means that much of their mental functioning is switched off, with brain-activity, and learning, probably minimal. Periodically, his attention is activated by the catchy attention-grabbing jingle of advertisements, before ebbing off again into the more soothing, or hypnotic, lullaby-like flow of sounds.

The autistic child needs our help to make his TV watching into an educationally valuable experience. Perhaps he can learn that there are other ways of watching TV than the way he does it? Perhaps we can show him that other ways of watching TV are fun, perhaps even more enjoyable than his habitual ‘sight-sound-bath’? Bearing in mind his developmental level, i.e. that we are watching TV with someone less than 1 year old, we may sit with him and describe and name some things we are seeing, in order to focus his attention. Such ‘running commentary’ has to be most simple, initially focussing mainly on movement, sudden surprising movements especially, which attract attention by their suddenness alone.

We may say a surprised "Uh! It jumped!" or a dramatic "Gone!" when something disappeared from the screen, and then “there it is!”. Whether this 'something' is a person, a dog or a thing, the main-character or the end of the film is irrelevant to any child at this early developmental stage. It helps to point out all those ‘things’ that would be of interest to a baby, i.e. basic concepts such as "there - gone", “hello - byebye”, “in - out”, "up - down", "round and round", etc.. We want to keep claiming his attention to help him focus his senses on one main event which you can both see, hear and share. It also helps to make links with other things you know he knows, just as one would with a 1-year-old (and in the same ‘baby-language’): “It’s gone ‘bye bye’,- just like daddy this morning.” or “Look! He’s eating corn-flakes! Harvey likes corn-flakes. Yum yum cornflakes, says Harvey.” Sometimes we can also make links with nursery rhymes the child knows, adding a bit of song to our joint TV-session.

A huge amount of thoughtful and one-sided effort is required from the adult with the aim to establish ‘shared attention’ in an experience that is shared between adult and child. By making his experience into a shared and interactive one, the adult can inject moments of meaningfulness into the autistic child’s sensuous experience.

However, what has been said so far does not address another important function of TVs and videos in a busy family: that of a reliable cheap baby-sitter, giving an exhausted mother a few minutes respite, in which to do something for herself, which is so important. But the danger is to overuse this ‘babysitter’, - as it may reinforce exactly the kinds of anti-communicative habits we so want the child to overcome. If sitting in front of the TV means he practises precisely those mental habits of cutting-off and going vacant that we are trying to discourage, then we are sawing the very branch we are sitting on. Using this kind of cheap babysitting-service may cost us dearly, if it means that he practices his autistic sensual states of mind daily to further perfection.

Billy had spent most of his babyhood in front of the TV. His mother had spent little time playing with her easy-going baby and Billy never complained about being left alone with the TV. It was almost as if the TV was his mummy, always there, always talking to him, making him feel contained with its sights and sounds. When he later learnt to speak, aged 6, he spent most of his day reciting bits from videos or TV, as if his mind were made up of video-images.

In some ways, the TV reflects precisely what the autistic child thinks of life and communication: a barrage of sensory stimulations, of sights and sounds, that have nothing to do with him, do not affect him, go on entirely according to their own agenda, without regard for what he is doing and feeling. In this sense it is as if 'the box' is just as uncommunicative (and autistic?) as the autistic child: neither engages in a dialogue with the world around them, both are unresponsive and expect no responsiveness from their environment (including interactive TV). A video can be seen as just as echolalic as the echolalic autistic child, echoing fragments of text and undigested, indigestable, bits of language. Both need a thoughtful alert person to make sense of what goes on. The autistic child needs the help of a sensitive adult, who can inject moments of meaningfulness, and regulate the amount and quality of TV he watches.