Guest Blog: 5 Ways to Authentically Connect with Your Autistic Students
By Jamie Burch, MA CCC-SLP
This week I’m sharing a guest blog for teachers from my colleague, Jamie Burch, MA CCC-SLP. Jamie is a neuro-affirming speech-language pathologist who helps parents and professionals better understand and connect with autistic children. Even though we’re in the home-stretch of the school year, ideas for connecting with autistic students are helpful all year round!
Just a reminder: my on-demand professional development course The Neurodiverse Classroom for PreK-8th grade educators is on sale through June! Parents, you can gift a teacher this training by entering the teacher’s email at checkout. More info at the link:
Now, on to Jamie’s helpful blog!
~Dr. Emily
As educators and therapists, we work hard to help our autistic students acquire new skills. We jump right in, building upon skills they already have and helping them grow, but we often forget the most important piece- connection.
Our autistic students long for connection and to be understood; that authentic connection lays a solid foundation to build upon. Without that, your ability to keep building is limited, as you cannot build on a weak foundation.
Here are 5 tips to help lay the foundation and better connect with your autistic students:
Learn their glimmers and triggers
Triggers are sensory experiences that cause discomfort, distress, and dysregulation, while glimmers are the opposite; glimmers are anything that brings little moments of joy and comfort. Understanding these, before even meeting the student, can be extremely helpful in supporting them. This is where we can lean on the parents’ treasure trove of knowledge!
At the beginning of the school year, sending out “Get to Know You” pages for parents to fill out can be helpful, but you need to ask the right questions. We need to know what causes each child to be distressed, as that can negatively affect their day at school, but the glimmers are just as important. Understanding these little sources of happiness can lead to shared joy between you and your student.
Don’t change their play
We know that children learn best through play. We hear it all the time, and yet, too often, well-meaning educators and therapists are changing how autistic children play daily. Psychology researcher and scholar Peter Gray states the five most agreed-on characteristics of play: It is self-chosen and self-directed; intrinsically motivated; guided by mental rules; imaginative; and conducted in an active, alert, but relatively non-stressed frame of mind. That means that if we are changing how an autistic child plays to look more neurotypical, then what they are doing no longer falls under the definition of play! (Mind-blowing stuff, right?)
Embracing how they play by playing with them, imitating their actions alongside them, is a phenomenal way to create a space for shared joy. Our autistic students know how to play. It may look like acting out scenes from Bluey, categorizing objects, lining things up, or analyzing toys at eye level, but it’s all a form of play for them. Observing and joining in is worth it and a great example to the other children in your classroom or on the playground that all play is okay.
Get to know their sensory profile
The majority of autistic individuals also have sensory processing differences; to truly support them, we need to understand their brains and how they experience the world. Did you know we have EIGHT sensory systems? In addition to the five senses that you’re likely familiar with, there is also proprioception (external body awareness), vestibular (balance), and interoception (internal body awareness). This is a great example of why a team approach and whole-child approach are so important, because leaning on the child’s occupational therapist (if they have one) and using them as a resource for this information can be huge!
If that’s not an option, again, leaning on parents’ knowledge can be helpful! Pay attention to how a child responds to noise, lights, expected and unexpected touch, how and when they move their bodies, and note their reactions to situations throughout the day. What is often seen as poor or attention-seeking behavior is actually just a dysregulated child who needs support. This information is key to understanding how their brain processes information within these different sensory systems, whether overresponsive or underresponsive in each one.
Prioritize safety
When we think of safety, we may think of physical safety, like not getting hurt, but safety for the Autistic Community is so much more than that. For this community, safety means embracing and celebrating their differences so they feel they can be their authentic selves with you. Safety means understanding their sensory differences so you can provide necessary sensory supports throughout their day, so they feel comfortable, understood and loved. It’s advocating for the child and helping them to advocate for themselves, while ensuring they have the tools and supports to do so.
Make a point to ensure your classroom is inclusive and genuinely welcoming to all. Taking small everyday moments to learn about accepting and embracing differences, while highlighting that we are more alike than we are different, and building each other up, is key in setting up our autistic students for continued success with classmates. We both know your job as teacher is so much more than building academic skills; creating a classroom environment that is welcoming to neurodivergent minds is essential for every child to feel safe. And as a bonus, when we feel safe, heard, loved, and understood, we are in a better position to learn!
Embrace Autistic Culture
The Double Empathy Problem, a theory by Dr. Damien Milton, explains autism as a culture. For decades, neurotypical individuals have been expecting neurodivergent individuals to do all of the work when it comes to overcoming communication barriers and breakdowns. It’s been expected that the minority would do the work to appease the majority, but Dr. Milton discussed that the empathy gap goes both ways! Two autistic individuals can successfully communicate, just as two allistic (AKA not autistic) can; the breakdown happens between neurotypes, and blame can’t be placed on the Autistic Community any longer, meaning they don’t need to change!
So what do we do with that information? As a teacher, you have the amazing ability to support not just the autistic students but their allistic peers! Embrace opportunities where you can highlight different ways of communicating, showing joy, and self-regulating. Embracing autistic culture means not forcing eye contact, accepting all forms of play, honoring echolalia, and allowing for processing time. It means teaching everyone that there is more than one way to communicate so that both sides are putting in the work to bridge the empathy gap.
And for a bonus tip: listen to and learn from autistic individuals. The quote, “Nothing about us without us,” is a perfect reminder that if we want to support a community, we need to let their voices lead the way!
~Posted with permission from Jamie Burch, MA CCC-SLP
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