Love, Love, Love ♫

You’re invited to click and play this Beatles video to enjoy music while you read the article on love and autism below.

Love, Love, Love…Love is all you need”, John Lennon famously sang these words to the world in the ‘60s. The message is as relevant today as then, but for some reason we have separated education and teaching from loving kids.

The field of ABA for autism treatment programs is changing to be more playful and fun, but the serious, down-to-business forced drill style of many therapy programs still lingers after several decades of the “autism therapy has to be intensive to work” mentality.

There’s no doubt that many children with autism only benefit from instruction when they have enough program hours.  Some children I’ve worked with get the most benefit from 40+ hours per week, for example. But these hours don’t have to be devoid of caring and affection from the adults that they spend their therapy hours with. Making therapy drills focused doesn’t mean they have to be serious. Being careful to not give cues and prompts to your student does not mean you have to keep a straight-serious face. Keeping up a fast pace of drills is not mutually exclusive from showing love.

A very insightful autism therapist is Howard Buten, Ph.D. from the U.S. now directing an institute in France. In his book Through the Glass Wall, he explains that his autistic students learn the most and he sees the best development happen once a therapist has taken time to establish a positive trust-based relationship with the student. In his program, as in my Intensive MultiTreatment Intervention program, Buten builds student-therapist relationship / rapport right into the curriculum. Therapists are required to first and foremost spend time showing love and building trust before they try to teach the child any kind of new skills or academics. Buten writes:

“Though I would never go as far as to say that once these relationships are established anything is possible, I say that without them very little will be.” (p165)

Working with therapist in schools, and other programs I observe that many feel uncomfortable about or are not certain how to “love” a student.

• First, I suggest that they are already half-way there by just understanding how important showing caring to students is for real learning to occur and by making it a priority.

• The second thing I suggest is for the directing and senior therapists to discuss a list of how therapists in their particular program could be affectionate and show more love to students. Schools, hospitals, and treatment centers all have regulations and codes of staff conduct but there is always a way to show caring even in the most conservative environment. Then, I suggest they build these teaching strategies (love can be a teaching strategy) right into  therapist training programs.

• Third, I boldly suggest that therapists be accountable for loving students as much as they are accountable for the academic drills and for completing data charts and reports. “Do your therapists have to check off a box to ensure they were “loving” the student for each trial, drill, lesson alongside the student’s performance measures?”, I ask.

Like Howard Buten, while I don’t believe that Lennon’s “Love is all you need” mantra is the only ingredient for autism treatment, I do believe that without it, teaching is less effective and students’ learning is less robust.

Tagged as: Family Training, Loving, Showing Affection, Therapy Drills