Author: Barry Morgenstern

Probably my favorite genre of movies and television shows is time travel. I especially like stories with time loops. The best-known story in this genre is Groundhog Day, but there are many others. Recently, when I was sick for a few days, I binged-watched most of them. Time loops involve a person reliving the same day repeatedly. After each loop, they try something new and often improve their life in the process.

Of course, in real life, the same events do not repeat over and over again. Too many things change from day to day. On the other hand, things often don’t change that much. While there are many things in life that you can’t foresee, many things are very predictable.

In our work with children with autism, it can be helpful to think about time loops. We know that when our student hears the lawnmower, sees the iPad isn’t charged or that we ran out of mac and cheese, problem behavior is almost certainly going to occur. If you have been presenting the same lesson in the same way for ten days with no progress, day 11 is unlikely to be different.

If we were in a time loop movie, we certainly would have improved. If the child had a tantrum every day at 10 AM, we would do something different to stop that from occurring. If the child made the same errors during instruction, we would have likely tried a new procedure. Since our days are very varied, we often fail to see obvious patterns. Great BCBAs find patterns that aren’t obvious and more difficult to discover.

We tend to think that every day is completely different–the behavior seems to occur randomly. That is rarely the case. There is almost always a predictable pattern to discover. We aren’t in a time loop movie, but events repeat more than we realize.

When Cheryl and I moved from Illinois to NY, we decided to donate, recycle, or throw away anything that we couldn’t fit in our two tiny Toyota Tercels. It is amazing how much stuff can accumulate in the two years we were getting master’s degrees. We got rid of a lot, but we still managed to fit a lot of stuff into our two tiny cars.

Now, many years later, we both have larger cars, but I doubt that even my collection of ideas to Poogi programs for children with autism would fit inside both of our cars. I have years and years of scribblings, notebooks, and random pieces of paper with ideas. That doesn’t include the ridiculous amount I have in digital files like Dropbox, emails, and flash drives.

The thing about my collection of ideas is that most of them are terrible and will never be effective. That’s OK. I’m a strong believer that the only way to get great ideas is to have a lot of ideas. Then, only implement the best ones.

I’d do one thing differently now.  Once I determine that my idea doesn’t work, I now document the results, and then destroy both the paperwork and electronic files as soon as possible.

Clutter is a big enemy of the POOGI.

If you have never been to NY, you might never have had a real bagel. But you might have had some fat, round Wonder bread with a hole in the middle that some people mistakenly call bagels. It is hard for me to understand how people consume those. You can occasionally find a real bagel outside of the NY metro area. For example, I was in a southern town that had bagels flown in from New York daily. They were expensive, but great if you wanted to eat a real bagel.

We often like things the way we are used to them. People who grew up eating fat pieces of round wonder bread with a hole in the middle probably get some enjoyment from eating them, as hard as that is to imagine. I guess if you spread enough cream cheese or butter on them, they might be palatable?

Sometimes, people think the desire for sameness is just a characteristic of people with autism. Sure, some people with autism might have this characteristic to a more significant degree than others, but most of us like things we are used to and don’t want changes to our favorite activities.

It is OK to have strong preferences. Therefore, if the trains must be lined up a certain way, the tags must be cut out of his shirt, or a thousand other things, my suggestion is to try your best to respect those preferences. Respect doesn’t mean going to unreasonable lengths like driving hundreds of miles because the local grocery store is out of his favorite cereal. Respect doesn’t mean that you accept aggressive behavior when those preferences aren’t possible. But within reason, allow the child to have things the way they would prefer them. We all deserve the opportunity to make choices.

I don’t understand how people eat those “bagel-like” substances, but I’ve never punched anyone who has offered me one. That’s a reasonable expectation.

Shortly after college, I took the bus cross-country from California to New York. I had a friend who was working on a Master’s degree in a Midwestern state. No one used cell phones back then. I called him from a payphone at a highway rest stop along the road:

“I’ll be passing through your town in two days. Have time to get together?”

“I’m the head of a new skydiving club, and that is the day of our first jump. You are welcome to join us, though.”

“Thanks. I’ll come along and hang out, but I’ll just watch.”

I watched, and I saw one person after the next come down safely and talk about what an amazing experience it was. Odds are I’ll never have another opportunity, so I decided to give it a try, even though I have a severe fear of heights. “I’m here already.”

It turned out that when you skydive, the procedure was to climb out of the plane and hang on to the wing. Then, the instructor told you when it was safe to let go. Not sure how I managed to get through it, but I did it. I enjoyed the experience somewhat, but not so much that I did it again. I still have a major fear of heights.

It turns out this is a common phenomenon. Just watching people have fun at an activity makes you want to try it, too. Many children with autism are not eager to try new things–leisure activities, games, toys, foods, and more. But several studies have found that showing them videos or live models of people enjoying the activity is often enough to encourage children to try it. Once they try it, they might enjoy it and want to do it more. They might not, but the first step is encouraging them to sample the activity. It works much better than the typical nagging strategy.

When I was waiting tables, there was a frequent customer who was extremely difficult to deal with. Everyone would dread having to wait on her. She always complained about something. No matter what the staff did, something was always wrong.

One day, I was waiting on her, and she says, “The air conditioning was fine when I first walked in, but someone must have turned it up, and it got much colder. Can we turn it down?” I explained that the air conditioning was set automatically during the day, and we didn’t just suddenly increase it. Well, she starts screaming at me about the air conditioning, ending a long rant with, “Are you saying this is just my imagination?” I just said, “Yes, that’s right” and walked away. She left a big tip.

After that, when she came into the restaurant, she would say things like, “I will only sit in Barry’s section” and “We New Yorkers understand each other.” What probably would have gotten me fired from the job with most customers made one customer extremely happy. Barry from the Bronx was lucky. Thirty years later, Barry from Bethel, CT probably would have struggled with how to deal with customers (or clients) like this – until he learned a valuable lesson from recent clients.

Most people like social interactions to be positive and friendly and like it when people respond to our complaints with empathy. But not everyone. Some people enjoy a good argument. The complaint about the air conditioning was reasonable. Lots of people said the air conditioning was too high at the restaurant. The standard answer management told us to give was kind of ridiculous. In this case, it wasn’t about the air conditioning. She just enjoyed snarky banter.

I believe people with autism are like everyone else in this regard. Most people with autism tend to appreciate positive social interactions, friendly behavior, and empathy during social interactions. Standard protocols for providing attention during therapy run into problems when they meet that child who doesn’t like that type of attention. They may instead like arguments, complaining, negative attention, or a wide variety of other ways of interacting.

If you respond to what the client says and aren’t getting anywhere, it may not be about what they are saying but how you interact with them. Teaching clients to tell people how they’d like people to interact with them is a valuable life skill. Imagine if instead of making all the wait staff miserable, she had learned some appropriate social skills which would get the right reactions from the waitstaff?