A plea to treat autistic children with patience

Having grown up autistic, I’ve learned to drop into a defensive crouch whenever non-autistic people start to discuss children and disciplinary issues. There’s a terribly specific subgenre of horror stories about how autistic children supposedly behave: temper tantrums in museums, failures in the classroom and more.

These are the narratives that tend to be pulled out when we have the temerity to talk about how we’re happy adults or aren’t sold on some dubious treatment.

That’s why it was such a pleasant surprise to read Lynn Kern Koegel and Claire LaZebnik’s “Hidden Brilliance: Unlocking the Intelligence of Autism,” a book that uses the tool kits of academia and child development to highlight the importance of meeting autistic children at their level, even in the case of seemingly insurmountable behavioral issues.

The authors bring a simple thesis to the table, much of it conveyed by the title: The flip side of autistic behaviors that may trouble parents is often the kind of hyper-specific ingenuity that traditional testing and education tend to miss. In one anecdote, they describe a child who was distraught at being interrupted while constructing a toy and sent the pieces flying. While observers took notes on the “disruptive behavior,” they missed him meticulously reassembling everything with the skill of an artisan. His actions may have registered as disruptive, but they made perfect sense to him – the key was to meet him where he was and communicate with him from there.

Some of the book’s most practical advice comes in its chapter on how standardized testing can leave autistic children behind, often in ways that shape their academic path for years to come. The authors cite the case of one child who rolled on the floor throughout his IQ test, rhetorically asking how testing in that format accurately assessed his intelligence. It’s all very evocative of that adage, often misattributed to Einstein, that if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

This is not a book about how parents should simply tolerate or explain away their kids’ behavioral issues – or, worse, expect others to. Instead, the authors delve into how meaningful correctives to those issues must address communication difficulties – not just so a child will know why a behavior is being punished, but so a parent can understand what a disruptive behavior might be seeking to communicate. This isn’t a book about letting your kid do whatever they want, but Koegel and LaZebnik also understand that behavioral correctives should, simply put, correct behavior.

While Koegel comes from an academic background, the writing style in the book is eminently accessible and unpretentious, never losing sight of the fact that the intended audience is parents in search of answers rather than those in the clinical space. (LaZebnik’s background as the mother of an autistic child is probably an influence here.)

But even those outside of that audience would benefit from reading it, including autistic former children (present), parents of autistic adults and, for that matter, autistic adults who have thought about having children. As an autistic person with no children of my own, I started the book wondering how much there was for me to learn practically from it, but, as I read, I found it stirring vague memories of childhood that make perfect sense in hindsight. My parents have, for example, told me many times that my first word was “bus,” and the book’s description of how autistic children’s first words are often about a desire or interest made a lightbulb go off.

Koegel and LaZebnik make the interesting choice (explained in the book) to use terms like “autistic,” “on the autism spectrum” and “person with autism” interchangeably to account for the diversity of opinion in the community on which term works best. That rationale makes sense, but it unfortunately undercuts the text’s cohesion and may leave readers wishing they’d simply taken a firm position. To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, not to decide is a decision.

That’s a small quibble, however. Reading the book, I was reminded of something Charlie Stern, with whom I co-host the podcast “Stim4Stim,” once said: “You’re not broken, but you have to practice.” It’s a sentiment the book offers too: Not only is your child not broken, neither is your bond with them or your means of communication. And both of you have to practice.

Zack Budryk is an autistic journalist who covers environmental and energy issues for The Hill. He also co-hosts Stim4Stim, a relationship podcast by and for autistic people.