It’s the Climb
When you’re kid is diagnosed with developmental issues, it also has some upsides. One of them is close monitoring and guidance by professionals, funded by the state, who help work through the early developmental challenges. It’s usually a hassle to go to – Michelle, G-d bless her, took Ray to 95% of the Physical Therapy sessions he needed – but at least you have someone to show you the ropes and consult with, so you know you’re not missing anything in those early stages.
In our case, Ray needed help working on his motor skills at ages two and up, both fine and gross. Things like crawling, jumping, crab walking, buttoning his shirt and tying his shoelaces were all things he had trouble doing. In these sessions, you get to see something quite interesting: how these professionals take something that you and I do naturally, and help break it down into atomic steps that the kid can gradually follow.
Seeing them do this opened my mind as well to other things that Ray needed help with, and walking up the stairs was one of them. Actually, he was able to go up just fine – it was the way in which he did this that got my attention. Despite being tall, he would climb the stairs one at a time like this: 1-1, 2-2. Meaning –
- Right foot goes up to step #1, then left foot joins it at #1.
- Right foot goes one more up to #2, then left foot joins it at #2.
And so on. For some reason, it was hard for him to alternate the steps and the feet, going up 1-2-3-4, meaning right foot at #1, left at #2, right at #3, left at #4.
At first, we tried to just tell him what to do. Explain what we wanted. It didn’t catch. He would do it for two steps, then revert back to what he was used to.
Next, we tried to be more physical: we supported him at the waist, held his feet above the ankles, and tried guiding them, moving them in the patterns we wanted him to emulate. This too did not help, and he was getting frustrated. It’s not fun to have two hulking parents manhandling you like that, I’m sure.
We could have just accepted it, you know. It’s not the end of the world if a person goes up stairs in a slightly different way. But we knew it was not really a technical limitation, but a conceptual one. There was nothing stopping his body from doing it “right”, it was a mental block. We just needed to figure out how to deliver the message to him in a way he could absorb the information. And indeed, we found it.
The Copy Game
Instead of trying to tell him what to do, or force him to do what he should do, we came up with a way to do it with him. We called it “The Copy Game”, and it went something like this: Ray and I stood at the ground floor, and the rules were that whatever I did, he had to copy me.
First, I went up the stairs like he was used to, 1-1, 2-2, standing on the right side of the stairs. He copied me on the left side, holding on to the rail. We had a blast, and did this a few times. After all, it was quality time with Dad, and it wasn’t anything he could not do, right?
Then, it was time to shake things up – I climbed the stairs again, this time in the new way, 1-2-3-4. I did it slowly, one step at a time. I could see him looking at me, trying to figure out exactly what I had just done, and translating that into what he needed to do with his body. But once he moved he copied me like a champ! Eventually, after a few sets of these, he figured it out, and since then, Ray walks up the stairs like he was born doing it 🙂
Sonic Voice, Pony Voice
This was a good success story for us as parents. We had helped our kid with a challenge he had, but more importantly we found tool buried in the sand that could be used for other things as well. Over the years, I’ve been trying to expand it’s application when new challenges arise. I want to share with you now one of the highlights of my career as a parent, when years later I stumbled across a deeper version of the Copy Game.
It was a few years later. Ray was probably eleven or twelve, and he was given a school project: to read about a place in the world, and write an essay giving a tourist the background of the place, what there is to see there, and finish up with a recommendation – why this place would be a great destination for a vacation. Ray, always the lover of geographical trivia (to this day), collected the info and wrote it out clearly. We only needed to give him a few pointers, and the rest he did himself.
The only difficulty he seemed to have was the closing paragraph, the one where he needed to put his own stylistic stamp on the essay. He simply repeated dryly that it’s a nice place to be and what it has, instead of focusing on the emotional thrust he wanted to give his ending.
As a budding writer myself (not sure if you can tell…) I didn’t want to ignore this issue. I tried a few things, explaining to him what he should do, asked him to think what kind of feelings he wants the readers of his essay to experience – but to no avail. I mean, he understood in principle what I was getting at, but that didn’t translate into knowing how to write it. To be honest, that’s not just an issue that someone on the spectrum might experience – just because we have a good story to tell does not mean we know how to tell a good story.
I sat there with him, trying to think: how do I get through to him. And then – it came to me.
“Ray,” I said to him, as we sat together at the dining room table with his essay laid out before us, “you know how you love Sonic the Hedgehog?” I was referring to the famous comic book character.
“Yes!” he said. He was a huge, huge fan of the series.
“Well, imagine if Sonic was writing this essay. How would he end it?”
It was like I had tapped into a rushing stream of creativity. Ray gushed out a hyper-excited sequence of praise about the site he had just described.
“And now, if you were one of the Ponies from My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic”, I continued, “Say, FlutterShy – how would she write it?”
Again, he responded instantly, with a calmer, more relaxed tone. I pitched him a few more ponies and sonic characters, and each got a slightly different “voice”. Finally I said to him – “OK, so just choose one of those – whichever you feel like – and end your essay with their style”. And that’s what he did, and it came out great.
I assume you can see the connecting tissue between the stair-climbing and this story. Once more, I didn’t try to tell him what to do, but rather encouraged him to imitate something. In this case, he didn’t yet know what his “voice” was, but he had watched enough TV and read enough comics that he could copy the voice of others. He could reach into himself, find their voice, embody it and reflect it out.
(Don’t ask me how I thought about this idea. Moments of inspiration like these will just come to you if you spend enough time thinking about what makes your kid tick, and Pay Attention. As the scientist Louis Pasteur notably said, “Chance favors the prepared mind”)
Final Thoughts
And this takeaway is relevant for all parents. You are parents. It’s your job to use your skill and experience to guide your child through life. When they are young, you know much better than they do what they need and what they should strive for (e.g., toilet training). But as the saying goes – “Babies speak many languages before they find the one grownups understand”. Knowing what needs to be done is the first step – you still need to put in the effort to learn your child’s language to get the message through. With each breakthrough, you will be able to teach them more things, teach them sooner, and have more fun on the way. 🙂
GoodEnoughParenting 