Therapeutic Adventures with Autistic Children

Connecting through Movement, Play and Creativity

Jonas Torrance

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781785924552
• eBook ISBN: 9781784508319
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education
• Index: Psychology

A vivid exploration of working with autistic children using empowering techniques from a range of creative therapies. Each chapter in this heartening book is the story of a child with autism and how therapy was pivotal in confronting his or her individual dilemma.

Covering many of the behaviours characteristic to autism, such as uncontrolled anger and obsessive tendencies, the therapies used range from drawing and dancing to meditation and martial arts, depending on the needs and interests of each child. The key message is that investing in the relationship between the therapist and the child - so that they grow, play and develop together - is transformative.

1

IN THE MOMENT

Stepping on Sunlight

David liked the school field; it was large and open. And whilst all of the other students were in class, it presented no social entanglements either. We walked and talked, circumnavigated this great feathery, green sea. When words ran out, we began to run, David slightly ahead, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The field was surrounded by trees, planted regularly around the perimeter. In the early summer they were all in leaf and, on this sunny day, they cut clear shadows on the green grass. The shadows were long in some places and short in others, and they had gaps between them. I don’t know exactly how, but between us we devised a game of stepping only where there was shadow and avoiding the sunlit grass. The game gained excitement as we both ran faster, leaping and racing from shadow to shadow. David always found routes that carried us on and on without delay. He was happy because he could move freely from shadow to shadow. He enjoyed the feeling of being like water running downhill, finding a way, opportunistic and unstoppable.

We gradually made our way around the large field. The angle of the shadows changed and the shadows became shorter, but David still found a way, dashing on tiptoe along slithers of shade. Looking up ahead I could see a problem: the trees stopped abruptly about 30 metres from the end of the field. The shade and the game was running out. I said nothing, curious to see what David would do.

David continued, concentrating exclusively on the shadows at his feet. When he suddenly reached the great expanse of open, unshaded grass, he stopped dead.

David’s mind was running on, bounding forward, but his body was motionless. I could see there was a struggle going on. He stood, unusually still, looking at the grass in front of him. He eventually lifted a foot and tentatively placed a toe onto the sunlit area of grass. He experimented with this, then, as he planted his foot down carefully. He murmured to himself, ‘There’s a shadow under my foot when I put it on the ground.’

David took a couple more tentative steps until he was sur-rounded by sunlight, then suddenly he turned and faced me. He was lit up by both the sun and some inner light of realisation. He smiled broadly and declared, ‘I can step where there’s shade and where there’s sun. That means I can go anywhere!’

David turned and, yelping with delight, he raced off across the wide open expanse of the field.

2

UPSIDE-DOWN
ELEVATOR RIDE

At five years old, Luke was new to primary school when I first met him. He had round eyes in the middle of a round face. His huge circular glasses goggled at people and toys, and were always on the move. On the top of his head was a buzz of feathery blond hair, which, with a firm, pouting mouth, tended to make him resemble a duckling. He had a pronounced lisp that didn’t stop him chattering enthusiastically about his ‘most favourite things EVER!’

Luke was also remarkably controlling, even by the standards of the other autistic children at the school. Toys were strictly lined up and moved in sequence, any formalised schoolwork was completely rejected and his diet was massively restricted to the couple of items that he allowed into his lunch box. Luke had a very engaged mother who was kind but also firm with him. She held the line, as did the staff at school, but still he would not give in to the many and varied demands of the school day. He had to be at the front of the queue. He often shot off in the wrong direction. He collapsed shrieking when asked to work and absolutely refused to go to the toilet, even though he was plainly desperate at times. It seemed that his cute, fluffy exterior was masking a toughened campaigner who was determined to win at all costs.

Chairs

We played in therapy and Luke loved it. He enjoyed immensely having an adult who joined him and followed his wishes. He was imaginative within his restricted frameworks and loved high-octane chasing and ‘I always win’ games. The problem was that, eventually, it had to end. He had a countdown towards the end of the session, but in some ways this made him worse. At first he tried desperately to construct the game in such a way that it was endless. Then he tried the ‘just one more’ technique, but when it became clear that I was stopping, he had what is in common parlance known as a ‘meltdown’.

Anyone who has witnessed an autistic child in full ‘I’m not having it’ mode doesn’t forget it. Luke’s version of this well-worn pathway involved shrieking, slapping and charging around the room. His distress was genuine. Tears shot from his eyes in jets and his circular glasses became completely fogged up as, from the neck upwards, he went a deep salmon pink. He had also, at some point in his short life, acquired the technique of throwing chairs.

At first he threw one or two, but when he got no response from me, he threw every chair in the room. As luck would have it, we were in a disused classroom, and there were a lot of chairs. He was only little, so he wasn’t heaving them across the room (although that would only be a matter of time if the behaviour wasn’t addressed). He was actually quite artful with the chairs: he would flick them and spin them so that they crashed in specialised ways.

I decided to get interested in Luke’s diversity of chair throwing. I commented on the way he turned and toppled them. He quickly caught on to this and started throwing to order, developing his style. As this continued, he became calmer and started to talk about what he was doing. At what seemed a hiatus, we managed to bring the session to an end and I was left with nothing worse than a pile of chairs to pick up.

I made sure I prepared carefully for future sessions. I arranged the timetable so he could stay a bit longer if need be and shifted some of the chairs out of the room. I still gave him a cue that the session was going to finish, but I didn’t give him an anxiety-inducing countdown. I also shortened the length of our play period. The main focus became the ending, to the extent that at times the ending period became longer than the main session itself.

Gradually, we worked on two things: different ways of ‘flipping’ chairs and how to pick them up. We played a game where he had to flip them over as fast as he could whilst I had to try to pick them up. The shift came one day when I flipped a chair. Luke was outraged; he said in his best parental voice, ‘NO! You must not do that.’ I said, ‘I AM going to do it,’ and immediately flipped another one. Before long, we were both laughing and racing around the room as he desperately tried to pick up chairs after me. From then on it was relatively easy to get Luke to help tidy up at the end of the session. Even when he was distracted or unhappy, he would still replace one or two.

I wondered where this chair game was going. Would we be stuck in an endless loop of chair flipping and replacing? To my surprise, one day Luke came to the room with an idea already in his mind. He lined up two rows of chairs in the middle of the room and asked me to me sit down. He then sat at the ‘head’ of the rows and suddenly we were on a bus! Once the dry kindling in his mind was lit, it quickly caught fire. In no time I was playing different characters getting on and off the bus, whilst he, the ever-patient driver, kept me exactly informed of the route and what adventures were in store.

The destination of the bus was always the same. The seaside resort of Burnham-On-Sea occupied an almost-mythical place in Luke’s mind. His holidays there (he did not allow his family to go anywhere else) were internally catalogued. He had a ‘mind map’ of the whole seafront and he carefully introduced me to every attraction. But the attractions were not necessarily the same as those that the tourist board might specify. Luke was keen on the bus depot, the train station and the jewel in Burnham-on-Sea’s crown: the elevator in the shopping centre. In the corner of the classroom was an empty walk-in cupboard. This became the Burnham-on-Sea elevator. Once we started to play in the elevator, the chairs were left behind. From that day on, Luke never flipped a chair in our sessions again.

Elevators

In Luke’s imagination, we rode the elevator up and down the building. He worked an imaginary panel beside the door and we emerged out of the cupboard onto new floors and new surprises. I was curious about the possible new lands that the elevator might take us to, but Luke always wanted us to return promptly to the elevator. For him, it was the journey. We scaled the imaginary building, rising and falling through ever-increasing numbers of floors. It wasn’t long before Luke’s control panel became more sophisticated. He controlled the speed; often the elevator would crash and things began to take a more manic and wild turn. The elevator became ‘The Crazy Upside-Down Lift’, which sent us hurtling in darkness through all directions around the cupboard and landing in a heap on the floor. Sometimes Luke asked me to physically lift him off the ground and to spin and turn him upside down.

When we played in the elevator, I started to notice that Luke often hopped and twisted in the way that children (and adults) do when they need to go to the toilet. By now Luke was able to wee in a school toilet, and, as luck would have it, there was one right next to the classroom. But his movements and smells were suggesting a more significant event. Of course, I asked him if he wanted to go, but he grimly said no and sometimes bent double to try to hold it in. Unfortunately, the game he was so keen to play was not helping. As soon as we returned to the imaginary up and down of the elevator he found himself crippled with internal movement.

Eventually, I stopped him and said, ‘Luke, I know you really need to have a poo. If you go and have one, I promise you that as soon as you are finished you’ll feel much better and then we can carry on playing the game. I will wait for you.’

Luke seemed to be almost torn in half, but eventually he conceded. He insisted that I came with him and he was experiencing such pain and fear that I was required to talk through the door to him. He had quite a ritualised way of going to the toilet and I verbally had to take the place of his mum or dad, helping him get through it. On our return to the elevator, he was ecstatic with relief. Two barriers had been broken: the first, that he had gone to the toilet at school without his parents’ help; the second, that his game was not irretrievably lost. The interruption was an inconvenience, but no more than that. The chain of events and thoughts had not been broken; we could restore the game.

From then on Luke tended to have a poo most weeks when he came to see me. Even at home it was a rare event and I often had to pass a message to Mum: ‘Yes! He’s been!’

Toast

As time went by, I began to think more about Luke’s highly restrictive diet. There were two aspects to this problem. The first was that he only ate a couple of items at school: Peperami and crisps. This obviously was having an effect on his bowels and indeed his general well-being. The second problem was that he absolutely only ate food that came from home. He refused anything from the school site, such as biscuits made in cookery or birthday cakes sent in by other parents.

For someone who was so restrictive in terms of food, Luke enjoyed eating, and he particularly enjoyed playing with the idea of eating. One of our destinations in the elevator was an imaginary café. We set up tables and chairs and I served him whilst he ordered sumptuous imaginary meals, pretending to eat all manner of interesting foods. One week, I brought in a drink that I knew he liked and included that in the game. He was very pleased to pour it out and I joined him. He said happily, ‘This is the best drink EVER!’ as we both sat with plastic beakers. He watched me very carefully as, after saying ‘cheers’ several times, I drank. He put the cup to his lips, but the liquid no more than touched them.

We continued the game with no reference to the success or failure of the drink, but each week I started to bring more ingredients. I focused on drinks and toast with various spreads. Luke absolutely loved making toast and preparing a table; he even curtailed his beloved elevator games in order to play this new café game. Each week we worked together to prepare a meal as he chattered excitedly about the process. After some weeks of Luke paying close attention to me eating and drinking, I noticed that he was drinking small amounts himself. The toast was a bigger hurdle. He liked choosing different spreads and spreading them himself. He even held the toast up to his mouth saying, ‘Mmm delicious toast!’ Then, in the same way as the drink, slowly but surely, the toast started surreptitiously to go into his mouth and down.

From start to finish in this process, I ensured that I did not praise him. I stayed in character; we were two friends making and eating a meal. I made no comment at all about the amount he ate or didn’t eat. I wanted him to feel completely at ease in the game with no pressure whatsoever. It was a kind of trick…in plain sight.

In time, toast and Marmite became a staple for Luke at lunch-times. When the other children got their lunch boxes, he went to the kitchen and made himself toast. Once the barrier was broken, he was able to sample other foods available in the school. He still remained faddy about food, but with a lot of work from his mum and the teachers, his diet was able to broaden out from the beginnings of our ‘café’.

POSTSCRIPT

Dreams

I continued to work with Luke throughout primary school. At 11 years old, he moved to secondary school and I felt it would be good for him to move on from therapy at the same time. Over the next couple of years, I still continued to see Luke in passing, and the news was good. He was doing well, attending classes, learning and making friends.

When Luke was 13, I received a message from his mother: was there any chance I could give them some advice about dif...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. In the Moment: Stepping on Sunlight
• 2. Upside-Down Elevator Ride
• 3. ‘Teach Me to Meditate’
• 4. Through the Swinging Door of Autism
• 5. Into the Woods
• 6. OK Computer?
• 7. In the Moment: Dancing at the Edges
• 8. Puppets to the Rescue
• 9. Artist in Residence
• 10. The Way of the Warrior
• 11. Yoga: Going Inside to Get Outside
• 12. Time Off from Myself: Anxiety and Mindfulness
• 13. In the Moment: The Big Question
• References
• Further Reading
• About the Author
• Index
• Join Our Mailing List
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Of Related Interest