This is not my idea; it’s my husband’s because fashion chic is not my forté.  The color has to feel right.  The fabric has to feel right.  The fit of the clothing has to be right.  Ten minutes or three hours later, I rip those clothes off because they don’t feel right, and my breathing slows down because I was frantic about the feeling.  Matching clothing, which is the barest essential of fashion sense, gets ignored in favor of “feeling right.”

Right now, I am wearing a dark blue t-shirt with a complex art piece on it in yellow, red, mauve, and baby blue and my red, pink, and white plaid pajama pants and my pink and purple fuzzy socks.  Today, when I went to work out, I wore that outfit with my brown and pink Etnies (fantastically comfortable skater shoes).  Evidently, my color and pattern choices do not constitute an outfit.  My daughter can attest to this when, as a teen, she started saying, “You’re going to wear that?  Um, I think you had better change, Mummy.”

My husband joked that I need an adult version of Garanimals, which has animals on the tag so the wearer can easily identify which animal top goes with which animal bottom.  Comfort and wearing the right-feeling color are huge issues.  Maybe Garanimals and Soft Clothing need to collaborate to develop a line of adult Autti/Aspie clothing.

I will be an expert adviser for free clothing!

One last tip:  Do get skater (skateboarding) shoes.  I have a pair of black VANS and a pair of brown and pink Etnies, and both are über comfortable.  Also, since with my sensory processing disorder, I wear the skater shoes because they are flat and stable on the bottom with good support on the inside so I don’t lose my balance as often.  Mind you, I still never put my shoes on near the stairs.

“When you hear a sound, your brain responds.  When the child with autism hears a sound, their brain responds too, but a little bit later.  What we’re seeing is a…split-second delay in recognizing that sound,”  Tim Roberts says.

Ms. Chetry asks, “How does that play out in how children with autism learn and communicate?”

“What happens is that as speech becomes more complicated, we have more and more sounds building up, and these delays cascade on each other leading to a difficulty in perceiving or recognizing the word.”

Can you imagine how long it took me to transcribe the above sentences from the video?  I had to see, hear, understand, translate into a visual of the word in my head, type what I saw, while still hearing more, and more, and more! going in.

I was lost after three to five words each time I tried, so I played the video in a different window so I could just listen and type without seeing the heads moving, but the delay in my mind was just too much, and it all became garbled in my brain.  I didn’t understand the sentence and didn’t “see” the words in my head.  I had no clue what they were saying.  I was so quickly lost.

My typing speed is not the issue.  My preferred form of communication is email, and I write every day, so my typing speed is incredibly fast.  So, I tried another approach based on my experience.

One Source of Input

Only so much input at once, is my rule.  So, say the bare bones of what you have to say, then stop–unless you are communicating with facial expressions, tones of voice, and hand gestures.  Then you will have to state those unvoiced messages because I didn’t receive them.  They are visual distortion of the message.

This is why I tried transcribing without looking at the video to rid myself of the moving heads.  The moving distraction was enough that I lost understanding of the message very quickly.

The Next Try

Playing the video without watching while trying to type didn’t work either.  Without the visual, the delay wasn’t as slow, but I was quickly tripped up and way behind what was hearing.  It all turned into a mess in my head and my agitation increased in a millisecond.  I raced to the mouse to get to the video window so I could click “pause.”  I breathed out.  I had freaked out inside.

But, I have a Great Visual Memory

This time, I watched the video to understand a complete thought and paused the video.  Then I clicked to this window I am typing in and wrote the thought word for word without error.  I waited to let it integrate and to anticipate what they would say next, then I switched back to the video and repeated until the transcription was done.

I “saw” what they were saying.  I literally see the words in my head as they are talking.  The words have time to form into a visual then when I stop the recording, I see the whole sentences.  I worked at my usual fast typing speed because I was literally copying what I saw.

Advice for Teachers, Bosses, Parents, and Spouses

1. Public speakers use dramatic pauses to let a point “settle in.”  All people need pauses, not just the ASD people, so they can catch up with what is being said and integrate what they have heard.  Do the same for your loved one, pupil or employee with Asperger’s or autism.
2. One of my children summed it up best when this child said, “Okay, okay.  I get it, now stop talking.  You don’t have to keep explaining!  Stop talking!”  This child’s frustration level escalated rapidly if I didn’t “talk, stop, talk, stop,” so that day it resulted in a door slamming.  I understand the frustration completely, yet I forgot to start with a short summary then stop completely.
3. If you notice a person on the autism spectrum watching your lips when you are talking, it is a sign that you are talking too quickly and not pausing or not letting any silence hang.  Related article…
4. If you like to make a lot of facial expressions, body and hand movements, to make your point or “drive home” your point or “communicate what you are saying,”  don’t; it will muddle the message.
5. It is the easiest for me to understand speech in the morning, so my meetings and phone calls are generally in the morning.  In an afternoon meeting, I often have to get people to repeat points they are saying.  So, afternoons, I usually focus on a task with little environmental distraction.
6. Teachers, your autistic students may have more trouble writing in the afternoon because they are thinking of “what to say.”  Subjects such as math, graphic design, art, physical education, cooking, reading, or computer programming are relaxing in the afternoon.

Did You Notice how I Wrote This?

Some sentences, which make them more difficult to understand, have thoughts split.  Some sentences run on explaining point after point and linking thoughts thereby diluting the one necessary thought.  Some sentences are concise.  Choose the latter, then stop.  Believe me, it will be much appreciated.

I'm not weird. I have SPD by Chynna Laird

Talk about echoes of my childhood and my present with my Sensory Processing Disorder (a.k.a. Sensory Integrative Dysfunction).

In the book, I’m Not Weird, I have SPD, author Chynna Laird uses descriptive words like:  hurt, screamed, pain, and scared. Those are words that I use to this day as an adult with SPD.

Sensory overload still erupts in a flight or fight response that makes me want to scream and run away.  What validation and relief I would  have felt if such a book had been written was I was a girl.

How lucky her daughter is that she has the SPD diagnosis.  In the book the fictional girl goes from the hurting words to words of relief.  Her parents are able to help her, and they accept her the way she is.  In my heart, I know that had there been an SPD diagnosis in my childhood, my mother would have read this book to me.

As a parent of a child with SPD, we hadn’t known about it in “his” younger years.  (My child does not wish to be identified.)  “He” hated to be touched.  Like in the book, he had to be taught to accept a hug, but only a certain kind–the very tight ones.

Later he learned that touch can soothe also, but always hard touch like a massage when I push my palms hard into his back muscles and neck.  I had to do that every night for years so he could get to sleep.

This book is too late to read to him, but it is perfect timing for so many parents who wonder what is wrong with their children.  It’s as much of an education for them as it is for the child, since, in parts of the book, it is written from the child’s perspective, so parents may be able to relate to their child a little bit more.

I must admit that when I first read it, I was sad–very sad.  I remember the pain, literally and emotionally.  One event stands out in my mind.

Forest Park Elementary School was a radical idea in the 70’s.  It was an open concept school, meaning children could move from class to class depending on their skill level in a particular subject, which my mother thought would be better for me rather than skipping any more grades.  But, the classes had no walls; it was literally an open concept.  The 360-degree noise burned my senses until one day, I freaked.

I ran to the bathroom and sat in the corner and leaned against the wall.  With my fists clenched and my body in a tight fetal position, I rocked.  The breath coming into my lungs hurt.  My head hurt so badly that my vision blurred.  A teacher found me and carried me to the front office where my mother picked me up.  At home, I hid in my room for hours until the pain abated.

After this happened many times, I was dubbed as having migraines.  Now I know that I don’t have migraines and likely never did.  It hurt; I screamed in my head for help; I was in pain; and I was very scared.  Yes, I did get teased.  My mother was mystified, and I remember her face looking scared too.  The doctors said there was nothing they could do.

If you know a child who screams, hits, hides, runs away, or has other unexplained outbursts, read about Sensory Processing Disorder.  If the child is diagnosed with this disorder, buy I’m Not Weird, I have SPD so the child can feel a sense of relief too.

Chynna Laird’s Website
Chynna Laird’s Blog

Related posts:
360-degree Noises
Family TV Watching and Autism

You can help your child with autism lower their stress level with some simple rules about family TV watching.

As a child and now an adult with autism and sensory processing disorder, I know that TV can be stressful to the point of jumping, tears, anger, confusion, and other reactions.   As an adult, I have learned to contain some of my reaction in front of others, but children don’t necessarily have that regulation built in yet.   Also, while watching TV, I will start to feel upset. I often don’t realize what is bothering me early on, but I have learned to identify my own signs.

When my hubby and his kids are talking and watching sports, I have to leave the room, close the door, and go away because my aggravation from the sound continues to elevate until it boils.

A child may not know that they can leave the room to a quieter place.  A family member may even tell the child to stay in that room or the TV may be audible throughout the house, so the child has no escape from the sound.  With the noises from the TV, the child’s irritability can climb all day.

Here are some TV rules that could make your child’s life much more relaxed:

1. No talking while the TV is on. More than one source of sound is not merely aggravating; it feels like a hurt in the brain.
2. Mute the commercials. The sudden jarring sound of a blasting commercial bashing into the ears can make your child jump, sweat, reathe fast, or make sounds.
3. If your TV has the capability, lower the treble. The higher register noises are more painful.
4. Put the TV in an enclosed room and close the door so your child does not have to hear it.
5. If you are not watching the TV, turn it off.
6. Have your child look away from the screen during commercials so the fast-moving visual stimuli don’t make it worse.
7. Turn the volume down.
8. Learn to make TV more bearable for your child by doing a brushing protocol first. Your child can also lie under a weighted blanket while watching TV.

Cozy Calm Weighted Blanket

Children and adults with autism benefit from weighted blankets because they calm the nervous system so they can relax and sleep. Melatonin is the chemical in the brain that helps us sleep. The science of how a weighted blanket leads to melatonin lies in the body and brain’s sensory processing.

People on the autism spectrum often have Sensory Processing Disorder (a.k.a. Sensory Integration Dysfunction). Sensory Processing Disorder is a neurological disorder involving smell, hearing, pain, body position, taste, visual, temperature, and the body’s position and movement. In short, the brain receives all this stimuli but can’t make sense of it so it can react normally.
One type of sensory stimulation, rather calming, is proprioceptive input, which is pressure on the muscles and joints. Proprioceptive input sends signals to the brain that cause serotonin to be released, which is the neurotransmitter in the brain that makes people feel happy. A lack of serotonin being used properly by the brain is one of the causes of depression.

Further down the path we get to melatonin. Some parents give their children melatonin pills to help them fall asleep. But, an increase in serotonin causes natural melatonin to be released in the brain.

This is where the link happens: weighted blankets cause the serotonin to be released, which is calming, which in turn causes melatonin to be produced, which causes a feeling of sleepiness.

So, a weighted blanket helps people with autism, Asperger Syndrome, PDD, ADHD, and ADD will help them fall asleep and stay asleep.

Deceptively difficult for people with sensory processing disorder

I feel like I’ve been drinking.  I am tipsy.  My brain is in a fog.  My eyes are seeing funny.  I have a headache like the morning after.  All I did was go to my Sensory Integration Therapy today.

I’m going to bed, then tell you about it.

Well, that was a long sleep.  I always sleep after SI therapy because it feels like my brain is overloaded.

Today, we did the inner tube swings.  The occupational therapist and I each straddle a swing and then swing back and forth bumping the inner tubes together.

As usual, I said, “Oh yeah, I can do this.”  I did, but wow.  My balance was way off compared to sitting on a swing the usual way.  Then the swings bumped into each other so I had the visual coming at me and the sensation of falling off.  Then I got a bump which jarred my system, while having something visual coming at me and the sensation of falling off.  I started gripping the tube harder and watching the ground.  I started getting a mild headache between my eyes.

Why do I go there twice a week to get worked over like this?  It helps.  What I did this week, among other things, was work on my vestibular system, which is the sense of balance and perception stemming from communication between the inner ear, the eyes, and the central nervous system.

In short, my physical self is off balance, I hold on to things sometimes, walk into door jambs, hit my legs, shoulders, and every other body part on just about anything in the house.  I have to focus on my feet when I go for walks so my feet are landing the right way so I don’t feel like I’m going to fall.