Children with Autism and Boundaries
Group: Groupies
Names: Annastasia, Kendra, Michigan, Will, & Darian
What is autism?
Meet Julia
- Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication.
- Examples:
- Flapping of the arms
- little to no eye contact
- sometimes slur of speech
- but remember! Everyone is different when it comes to autism
Challenges with communication
Meet Julia
Linguistic Barrier (Julia)
Linguistic Boundaries
- Linguistic barriers - groups erect linguistic barriers when members use a private vocabulary or slang meant to camouflage meaning outside of the group.
- Julia has private vocabulary when it comes autism
- "boing boing boing" meant jumping to Julia
- "Show painting." meant she is processing the question into a statement
Psychological barrier
Psychological
- Psychological barrier - Anything that makes an individual feel that he or she is not a true member of a group.
- James example:
- James does not respond with direct answers like others in his class (i.e. he does not sit down, and he does not take out his things)
- James does not do the work the rest of the class is working on (i.e. he is doing a puzzle)
Meet, Abigail!
Meet Abigail
Physical Barrier
Physical
- Physical barrier - A group boundary control such as walls, locked doors, an inconvenient location in a building, and partitions and cubicles in offices to restrict input.
- For autism it's very similar but it could be the person does not like touch (i.e. hugs, poking, or a rub on the back)
- Abigail:
- She showed she did not want to do the video by getting up and walking away
Meet your classmates
Case Study and Discussion
Case Study - how to communicate?
Case Study
- We will have four groups of people
- Three groups will either have cotton balls, lollipops, and the secret thing for the eyes
- We will rotate at least two times
- groups will have grab a question from the bowl
- the bowl is a topic and has questions inside to start a conversation
- you cannot remove your item during the conversation
- try to find a different way to say yes and no
Discussion Questions
Discussion
- What do you think the importance of this activity was?
- How did this activity make you feel?
- What were you able to take away from the activity?
- Why is this activity important to the camparison of real life kids with autism?
- How has this activity made you think about how you treat others especially kids with special needs like autism?