Recently I had to explain how autistic people need downtime. Unfortunately it was not a positive experience, and I have been sitting here in my rocking chair processing it for 4 days.

We need time alone.

A lot of people don’t understand this. When I get home from work. I greet my wife, and check up on her before checking out.

I am so glad I decided to keep my rocking chair from my old classroom.

The thing is, positive or negative, dealing with people is exhausting. I may have had a very good day at work, with a lot of fun things happening. When I get home I need 1 or 2 hours to sit in silence to process.

Sometimes I have had a very bad or difficult day, i will then need 2 or 3 hours to sit and process, and I may not even get through it all. But at least after the three hours I will be able to function again.

I will sit in my rocking chair, and I will pick up a Sudoku book, and stare aimlessly at it for a period of time. Sometimes I may even do a puzzle. But not always. I may just turn on Youtube and have some music or a show that requires no watching (Audio dramas are good). to just have background noise. I could use my headphones to listen to music, but I don’t often, unless it has been a severely bad day and I need to comepletely disconnect from the world.

I cannot put ideas forth when I am in this point.. I cannot hold a conversation, as I cannot focus on what the others are saying. They will have to repeat things two or three times, as I cannot focus. I cannot write, because that requires focus and the ability to string words together.

It requires communication. Which is not possible during these times.

Once I have had my time, rocking away, I can function better. But it can be difficult to transition from one activity to another. So if I have been staring at my sudoku for 2 hours, and my daughter wants to pay, I have to ask her to wait 5 minutes so I can right my brain, and get out of my chair.

I can then do things like marking, messaging parents, or interacting with my family.

The thing is, this down time allows me to reset my brain. Without this time, I will get frustrated easily. I will yell. I will get angry all with little to no reason.

This down time is so important to us autistic people. I don’t understand how this is hard to understand.

I have been introduced to this idea recently that if you do not give an autistic child any downtime, or only 5 minute intervals of downtime at a time, this will force their brain to “Right itself” into normalcy.

What’s so great about normalcy?

First this idea will be exhausting.

Second this will lead to the child being more prone to shutdowns and meltdowns publicly. The child may begin to hate themself. We are often diagnosed with depression, and many of us grow up hating ourselves. Forcing us to have these meltdowns will make us hate ourselves more.

The autistic suicide rate is approximately between 3 to 8 times higher than the neurotypical (normal brained people) because of this. Autistic girls and women are typically in the higher end of this.

Masking, or pretending to be normal, causes this. It directly causes this. Autistic children and adults who constantly feel that they are not enough for their friends or family because they think differently, or act differently are the most affected.

So, what goes through our head when we are shut down? Nothing. We just sit in silence and our brain is blank.

What goes through our brains during down time? Everything. We replay everything from the day, from the last week, and from the entirety of our lives, trying to make connections to understand what happened. Why people reacted the way they did to things. Sometimes I don’t figure this out until litteral years after the incident in question.

How did I screw up today? What are the upcoming consequences I will have to deal with to fix it?

I understand people see us, and they panic. They don’t know what to do or say, or “How to Help.” If your loved one is autistic, first make sure you let them know that you love them. Tell them. They will not know unless you do. We are terrible at reading between the lines.

Second, Make sure you let them know that There is nothing wrong with them. You want to help them manage themselves, and progress to have a positive life.

I am not saying a Normal Life. Never demand that.

That is like going to a person who is right handed and telling them that they will be normal if they only use their left hand. Or telling your little girl she needs to act more like a boy to get through life. The brain is wired the way it is for a reason, and learning to live with that is a Lifelong Disability.

Help your loved one to live the best life they can, but don’t compare them to “Normal” people. Watch them, and help them develop their interests. Give them space when they need.

Thank you.

I have been looking back through some files laterly. Going over old blog posts that never got posted, or lesson plans I did 10 years ago that might be usable again. Part of this is to clear up some clutter. Part of this is to reorganize.

I don’t know about others, but organizing things helps me disconnect and relax. It doesn’t seem to matter if it is digital reorganizing, or physical. I never seem to be happy with an organization structure. It is never good enough, but always end up good enough. Does that make sense?

Like I am not happy with the organization, but I don’t have the ability to do more with it, so I have to abandon it until later when I will start fresh. This goes for My classroom, my shelves, my computer.

When I am overwhelmed, I start. Especially if I can’t get into one of my other tactics.

I love my new school. It’s not perfect, but its human. Of course I don’t mean literally, but due to its size, it doesn’t feel like a corporation disguised as an educational facility. I have a history with schools like that.

A lot has been occupying my mind lately, and part of it can be summed up with waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am making rookie mistakes, and am not organized enough in my class. (Thus the obsession wit htrying to find ways to do better). I want to be the fun teacher, that has all these cool projects and fun activities. But I get overwhelmed and lost trying to prepare them in advance.

Today I get so stimulated that I let my sound sensitivity get to me. I am teaching grade 2 this year, they will get loud, and I just couldn’t handle it for a bit. It hurt, and I raised my voice. Then I had a quiet talk apologizing to everyone.

I do that a lot. I apologize.
Should I ? I don’t know. With my students, they need to know, that I am sensitive to certain things, and it is not their fault. Adults, too.

There is a lot of talk about autism lately, and a lot of misinformation. (I’m looking at you , vaccines and Tylenol). There are groups of people in the world that think we should just disappear. There are groups of people out there who think we should just fit in. And there are groups of people out there who think we should just be proud of who we are, and screw the rest of the world.

I was always taught to show respect, and that if we do something that bothers others, to apologize for it. But the key word here is do. Some people want us to apologize for being.

There are people, several people, in my life that believe they understand what the autistic people are going through, or what we should be doing. People are showing me tiktocs of Autistic kids or Mom’s who have autistic kids, and asking my feeling on these. I feel like the whole genre of family tiktok/ Youtube should cease to exist. Don’t film your family for other people’s entertainment.

I have people in my life who want to tell me about every other autistic person they have met, and their difficulties. Not how they tried to help, or explain things to, or assist the autist. Just tell me about the mistakes, or social faux pas they make.

I have people in my life now that treat autistic children like they are broken, and get angry at them when they are needing a brain break, or need to just move, or do anything different.

I have someone in my life now that has made comments about me taking things literal, or not understanding jokes. I think he means well, and is just trying to communicate his concerns about communicating with me.

I don’t want to be the bad guy who has to sit down with all of these people and explain why this is exhausting to me, or hurtful, or that their efforts to help a child, could be doing the opposite.

I don’t think I have the energy for that.

But here’s the thing. All of the people I am ranting about have the best intentions. They are all trying to understand more in their own way. And Misinformation is everywhere.

I ran across this half finished blog article I wrote back in 2017. i will post it below for you. Please enjoy, or not. You can see maybe what my journey has been like for the last few years.

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ADHD & Autistic Kids in the APS

ADHD & Autistic Kids in the APSEvery now and then I feel like I have to step up and say something about what I see happening, especially in our program. Last time I wrote one of these, it was taken as an attack on some of my team and I do not want this to come off sounding that way.

It seems to me that the culture in our program is still very confrontational. Teacher’s vs Parents, Teachers vs. Students. We have a few students in our program that do not fit the regular mold. They never will able to be exactly like everyone else, and there is nothing we can do about this.

As a teaching community, it is our responsibility to try to understand these students and find ways to encourage them to be better. Encourage is the operative word here. What we do is not encourage. What we are doing right now is the opposite. We criticize, and yell, and push and scream and hope that these children will change.

They wont.

Not that way. All we are doing is making them feel bad for existing.

Recently we had a girl who was diagnosed with clinical depression in the Bilingual department. She was unable to handle the stress that was heaped on her and decided it was best to kill herself. By constantly telling these kids that they are not good enough and never will be 3 years down the road what’s to keep them from doing the same?

These kids need patience, understanding, and sometimes, they need time in a quiet place to focus.

Right now as I try to teach my class to be more respectful and helpful, and to have more kindness; I feel that the rest of my team is undoing all that by teaching the class to ostracize the odd student. To let them know it’s ok to call him names and treat him as an outsider. Then they reinforce this by waiting for him to make a mistake so they can yell at him and mistreat him.

Of course he lashes out, and acts bad, we have him convinced that he is bad, so he acts that way. Any child that is constantly told that they are bad, and different, will act bad.

We have these kids in all of the classes now, and almost every class has made the conscious decision to
tell everyone that the child is bad. We should be focusing on what they can do well, so the child will want to do well. If we compliment them for good behavior and make them feel good about the things they do well, those kids will start to act better. They will stop acting up.

This is not a short-term solution. And if we try it for 1 week and get no response, then we should not give up and say “Well I tried, let’s go back to yelling.” It takes time to rebuild the child’s self confidence, and the child’s sense of worth. Especially the kids who are already different from everyone else.

If we want our kids to be inclusive, patient, and to be positive, we need to model this at all times.

We have to adapt to help our kids prepare for the future, and we have to do it quick.

There is a book I would like to have everyone read over the holiday, and find… (I never finished this, and don’t remember what book I was going to recommend.)

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I have been trying to find ways to reach the different students for years. Sometimes I am successful, sometimes not. Sometimes I run across a new obsticle, and need to learn more.

I try to take as many PDs as I can to help me along with this. I cannot afford to get the degree in special education that I want. I am a father of a single income family. I have a son entering college.

Not that I am picking on my wife, I love her and if she is happy being at home, i want that for her.

But I do want to help these kids, and sometimes I work myself into a situation trying. I need to do better.

That’s been my mantra for 45 years. I need to do better. and I try.