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I want to talk about something real quick about something that is common for

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autistics, for children, for all of us essentially, and that's education.

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Autism and education is something that needs immediate action in my opinion, in

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my experience. There are a great deal of opposing forces upon the

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autistic phenotype within the education system, the classroom, and the school day,

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the structure of the school day even, which is likely the hardest. The easy

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ones to kind of understand are the social aspects of it, the social

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dynamics, the speech and language, and the sensory processing. The classroom is

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full of other students, of course, that is what it is. Some of the six are one-on-one

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or small groups, and that's great. We have to first understand that there are

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underlying feelings of wanting to help that are also driving forces against

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this. We have family members, loved ones, parents, brother, sisters, whatever the

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cases, and educators, school staff, support staff, special education teachers,

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principals, all those involved in the school district, in the school building,

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and they all want to help. What is lacking is their understanding of autism is

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foremost. So within that school day, or the classroom, the socialness, for human

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socialness is the most unpredictable thing that we can do. There are a lot of

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different things that could happen at any time, and they have various meanings.

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Some behaviors and actions have multiple meanings, so it's hard to

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really dissect this and interpret this in real time because of the the sensory

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processing problems and the way that memory works and understanding works.

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There's a lot to keep up with in the school building. The first symptom, I use

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symptom because that's what the DSM uses, the first kind of trait or phenotype

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observed in autism, or that is social withdrawal. This is for a reason. Whatever

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that reason is, is debated in science, and that's fine. But what's not debated is

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there is a social withdrawal. There is a lack of interest. So we're kind of forced

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into this environment that without this socialness, without that interaction, it

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doesn't work. And that's a problem. So how to really reduce the opposing forces

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upon the autistic phenotype needs to rest. People need to understand that they

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have these underlying drives and urges to help and tell the autistic person what

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they need to do, what they ought to do, what they can do, what they should do,

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etc. And this is a big problem. The classroom is filled with many

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students and there's a lot to keep up with. Whenever we hear things, whenever

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we're being instructed, the social sensory processing part is a little bit

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different. And if this isn't you, then you won't know. But Temple Grandin

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describes it very similar to my experience. If you're talking to me and

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you're describing something, be it something that I'm familiar with or if

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it's a brand new novel thing, I'm taking that information and I'm building, I'm

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building it up from these catalogs and samples that I'm already aware of in life.

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And I'm just piecing these things together and it comes into a visual

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form. Sometimes it's more like a movie where I'm seeing it play out. Remember

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the JD Barker episode, we talked about it a little bit, and the episode on the

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default mode network. I have to bring these things into this living arrangement

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in my mind. This is how we think and how we conceptualize it, bring things into

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abstract things into creation. And sometimes this takes time, especially if

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it's new. And what's not understood is by others, how long should that take?

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And how well are you developing this? Remember whenever I mentioned that the

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autistic phenotype, the autistic brain is similar to AI where it's just taking

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endless amounts of images and piecing them together to create this worn image.

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So we have to consider that. We have to consider that's likely, I don't know for

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sure, but likely much different than others. And you can also start to

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understand why the social withdrawal, because the outside world is unpredictable

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and there is a lot of sensory processing going on. So if we can just

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maintain a certain object, topic, or subject, now you can see why we prefer

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that. We should be able to see that by now. We don't really do relationships with

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other humans, even though there are times that there are desires for that. What

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we do is take this object or subject or topic and we can just dive into that and

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like no other. And this was all shown with the Canterkids in Asperger's as well.

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Asperger has his first paper in 1944. You can go to the episode on that,

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but he covers autistic intelligence and Asperger's little professors. This is

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because of what I'm describing here. Now, with this sensory processing like this,

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and it's really hard to keep up, especially for taking notes, especially

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if the professor or teacher has material to get through, has a goal to get

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through by the end of the period or the end of the day. Sometimes that's why the

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small group or one-on-one is very much a better scenario. But the biggest thing I

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want to mention is B3. If you don't know B3, the DSM breaks down the phenotypes

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or the symptoms into two categories, two criteria, criteria A, which is social

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interaction and communication and criteria B, restricted repetitive behaviors.

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You probably know that, but B3, and I've done an episode on B3 as well,

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restricted fixated interests that are abnormal and intensity or focus, how

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that was ever arranged in those that without wording is unbelievable to me.

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You can't say something is abnormal if it is an interest and it has such

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intensity or focus. Now connect that back to Asperger comments and our ability to

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just fixate on that subject or topic or object and just perfect that. What we are

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doing is building up that category or that catalog of information and then we

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can store it and then we have that. We are now equipped with that. I don't say

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that we exhaust it, but it does, we do perfect it. We do perfect things I think

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quite efficiently, but they're very limited. The number of them could be

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limited and this is where the school day is really, this needs to be addressed

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faster than anything with autism and that's the subject switching. You can't

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expect us to be in a school for seven, seven and a half or so hours depending on

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the district and participate in seven different subjects. It's not working and

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it will never work. We can't have a subject for 45 to 15 minutes and beyond

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that with everything I just explained and then switch to a different subject.

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45-15 minutes on a different subject and be able to conceptualize this, build

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this up, whatever the topic or discussion is and then switch again to a

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whole different topic. 45-15 minutes, be present in that, build up the category,

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the catalog, being able to conceptualize what is happening and just repeat this

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all day long for seven periods. It is not working. There's a big push as well from

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people that are not autistic. They don't know what this is like and say, we need

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to be in the general education classroom again. That's fine if you can do it.

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Most can't, but it's being forced because other people, what I described earlier,

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these educators, these people that have underlying urges to want to help, they

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think, they know what's best. There also could be underlying drives that they're

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career driven. They want you to show that, well I helped help include the

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autistics again. This is not working. B3, if you don't know B3 then you should

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just not comment on autism ever. This is very, this is a very tough thing with

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autism. Being able to switch tasks and not, and leave that behind, you ought to

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know B2 as well with the scheduling, the rigorous schedules and the sameness. How,

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how can you define criteria B and how can you define the school day in the

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classroom knowing that there are complete opposites and expect us to be

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able to move through education properly based off of social norms, based off of

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this pseudo criteria, the curriculum and think, okay you've made it through

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education, now what? Well I didn't make it through education because education

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sucks to me. If you don't take, if you don't consider B3, you're not doing

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anything. If you really want to understand an

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autistic's problem, you have to calculate how much we are forced into social

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norms and then consider our specific phenotype. I don't want seven subjects in

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one day. I didn't then, and I don't want it now, but there are still children being

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forced to do this and nobody seems to grasp this. What is going on in education?

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What is going on with the DOE and spending and the results suck? Why can't

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we be in an environment that fits our phenotype? As kids, they probably don't

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even understand that this is a driving force onto them and parents either

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because they're just trying to figure out things too. Until B3 is

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considered and understood, you won't do anything. So I hope I have a message of

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if the child wants to just learn a couple of topics and perfect those, then do

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that. Allow that to be good enough. You don't get to say what's good enough.