As I’ve said before – you shouldn’t be teaching resilience. Resilience is a sure-fire dive into burnout and suicide ideation for autistic and otherwise ND people.
Resilience (according to some people) is learning to ‘bounce back’. But this is the problem… you should never teach a child to bounce back. Instead, you should be teaching them how to identify the things that harm them, and how to cope with or to avoid those things.
Bouncing back leads to a never-ending decline of mental health – each time you ‘bounce back’ the trauma or harm you experienced stays with you, and it builds and builds and builds. For ND people it’s much worse. Because building ‘resilience’ always means masking. Whenever we are taught to ‘build resilience’ what we are really being taught is to ignore our valid experiences and emotions (and to actually see them as overreacting!). We are taught that NT reactions are the only sort that are OK to display. If we show ND reactions to things – people will tell us we are overreacting and that we need to learn to build ‘resilience’. That’s not safe or appropriate or even kind. It’s incredibly gaslighting and insulting, and truly harmful.
People will even advise teachers HOW to teach resilience.. let’s go over a few and find out why each is horrific in it’s own way.
· Catastrophe scale:
How big is the problem? Big problem, little problem.
How big is your reaction?
I’m starting with this one – because it’s the one I hate most.
CBT does the same thing BTW. These scales and idea of ‘measuring’ a persons problem and attributing an appropriate sized reaction is monumentally discriminatory against autistic people. We don’t overreact. We react perfectly to the issue.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And it’s true for our emotions and feelings. When I break a leg – I scream the amount it hurts. When someone bullies me – I react equally with how I felt internally. My outward expression is an exact replica of my internal feelings. How will you know how much I’m hurt if I don’t express it.
Did you know that autistics express physical pain differently to NT’s. When we attend emergency rooms for pain treatment – we often have neutral expressions, but are in as much pain as an NT who has experienced a similar thing… but we express it differently.
Sometimes we have experienced chronic pain disabilities for years and have learnt to hide/mask or deal with the pain – so we won’t show as much pain as an NT or non-disabled person with the same issue.
Or – sometimes our SPD is super sensitive to pain, and we show more pain responses to an NT in a similar position.
You are being a dick if you are saying we overreact, or if you assume our pain is fake, or whatever you are assuming. Believe us! Don’t teach us how to express our pain – we know how to express pain – we just do it differently. Instead – learn how to read our pain scale and accept it as it is.
If we are having a big problem – we will either display shutdown or meltdown – (masking or what you call overreacting). To us it is a BIG problem – don’t tell us that’s a little problem and that we should be responding by doing X or expressing Y. We express how we express – learn to shut up and believe us.
We are taught to hide/mask our pain all the time (with this exact tool) – it’s why ND people are more likely to experience S3xual assault, scams, being taken advantage of (especially by friends), and domestic abuse etc. We are taught that our feelings and expressions of those feelings are wrong, or not to be believed – so we stop – altogether. We stop asking for help, and stop expressing our needs. It’s why we have higher suicide rates and higher development of mental health issues and of chronic diseases or autoimmune disorders.
We are the community that is most likely to die young because of this exact thing. When we finally see a doctor about an issue, they expect us to be reacting a certain way – but because we have been told our entire lives that our expressions are ‘over the top’ and need to be suppressed – doctors don’t believe us. We are also the community that experiences the most amount of medical gaslighting and medical trauma due to this. So – by teaching us that they aren’t big problems and we should be responding to any problem with ‘little responses’ you are literally causing our early death – thanks for that BTW, really appreciated (sarcasm inferred).
· “Bounce Back” resource: it’s an Australian program for schools.
This is based on CBT – which is gaslighting AF for autistics. It invalidates our experiences and teaches us that we are the problem – don’t use this.
It also uses ‘circle time’ – read my previous blogs about circle time to find out why it’s a toxic tool that should be abolished in all schools.
Also built on ‘social-emotional’ learning – that is based on NT development and behaviours, not on ND ones – this should never be used with ND children.
It also teaches NT social skills. ND people already have social skills – we don’t need to be taught NT ones. In fact, being taught NT ones only teaches us that we are broken and that you hate us for our innate skills, but also teaches masking and unnatural interactions – it causes the Uncanny Valley Theory to be experienced in full – and it causes the ultimate rejection of the ND person by NT’s.
Teaches humour as a coping mechanism – this can be good and bad. ND’s are usually used to using sarcasm and comedy as a coping strategy – it’s why so many go into comedic roles (Dan Ackroyd, Jerry Seinfeld, Hannah Gadsby).
They use (what they call) “Quality Literature” to teach these skills – but none of them are written or approved by autistic or otherwise ND neuroaffirming organisations.
They use cooperative learning – which is bad for many autistics but good for some ADHD’ers.
They say that building these skills in year 1 is what is important for setting kids up for the rest of their lives. I can attest to this being the opposite. This being taught in this way – is what caused my children extreme trauma and school can’t and forced them into homeschooling. It set them up for failure and for life long mental health issues.
It also teaches the children how to express different emotions – eg: pull out an emotion card and make that ‘face’. This is extremely problematic for ND people; our internal feelings are often different to our outward expressions, and telling us to emote them differently is discrimination. We have our own culture and way of expressing things – this is not culturally sensitive at all.
· Having 5 People they trust to talk to:
Autistic people have real trouble with trust and making friends. I had no one at school that I would trust to talk to. Even at home – I only ever had my sister, but not for all the years, we became better friends when we started to realise and actually talk to each other about the a-hole friends we had, or the teachers who were terrible to us, or the bullying or the shame, or the hideousness of school. We eventually became each other’s confidants, but being undiagnosed really held us back for decades. She’s still the only person I trust to talk to.
· Feelings Charts:
As I described above, ND people express themselves differently – they must be allowed to express themselves naturally – not told what a face means or how an emotion ‘should be’ emoted. This is not culturally sensitive – in fact, it’s insulting. We also often have interoception issues that cause us to confuse our internal feelings. What we show on the outside might not be what is happening internally at all. So being told we are sad when we are feeling happy or anything else is really problematic. It confuses us even more and causes us to mistrust even our own faces and what we are conveying.
The right way to teach emotions is tricky – needs to be culturally sensitive, and taught like a documentary about different cultures. Eg: Some cultures show this face 😊 when they are happy some people show a different face altogether :/ ☹ :I :# etc and then let the individual make up their own mind about how they emote. You should never assume what a person is thinking or feeling.
Some schools will have a board up with pics of emotions and the children are to point to how they are feeling on entering – this is a form of peer pressure bullying. For Situationally Non-Speaking people this can be a good way to communicate, but when everyone behind them can see what the child is choosing – this is a huge problem. Maybe – turn the board, get the child to walk around the board and point to the emotion – so only the teacher can see the response. But the teacher must be careful to give the SAME response to every child – so the other children can’t guess what the emotion was. A child dealing with bullying, domestic abuse or anything else – will not want to point to their real feelings. This is a huge problem with ND people- it is forcing them to either mask. Forcing them to point to something that is a socially acceptable response (eg: always point to happy)– or to unmask in front of their peers and point to their real response (eg: sad or angry etc)– which is likely to be completely unsafe for them to do.
The way schools teach emotions – they prioritise and preference certain emotions – like happy. They make it socially unacceptable to display anything other than happiness. That’s what these ‘building resilience’ courses are about – they are about teaching kids to only display readiness to learn – or happiness, or perhaps neutrality. When I can assure you the emotions I felt most at school was fear, hatred, anger, disgust, sadness and depression. But I masked it as neutral or happy – in order to survive. That’s what you are teaching – you are teaching a survival tool not a coping tool or a strategy to thrive. You are teaching kids to accept a life of surviving instead of thriving.
· Positive Affirmations, like: “I can……” “I accept…..”.
For disabled kids, the people in our lives often focus on our deficits (that’s the medical model of disability that is rife in schools – like when teachers use ASD or “has autism” etc). It puts us down and insults us with every utterance of it. Coming up with affirmation can be extremely triggering to us. Saying I can…. Is a trigger!
We know we can do things, but we are often praised for doing simple things (or NT things) and become confused – because those things are not things we ‘can’ do without causing ourselves pain. So when we are asked to say what we can do – we can sometimes jump to “I can do all these NT things that cause me pain” but they are not really things that I want to be able to do, or should be doing to keep myself safe. So it causes dissociation. It causes confusion and a dislike of ourselves.
ADHD’ers are yelled at and told off constantly – being asked to name things that we are good at, can do etc can feel like a trap and sends us into fight/flight/flex mode. Or into executive dysfunction – we become stuck in the idea – everyone is always telling me off for the things I can do, or do do – so what am I supposed to say???
“I accept” also seems like a trick or gaslighting. It feels like the teacher is trying to force things on me that I don’t accept – but I have to pretend to accept to be accepted… it’s a word jumble trap.
· Calm corners that are not used naturally but more as a ‘time out’.
When there’s a sign on the area that says “Calm Corner” – this is a demand/ necessity or an insistence – not an opportunity to actually regulate – just to told “You’re being naughty, go away until you’re ready to ‘behave’ appropriately”.
Change the sign to something like Sensory Tools. This is changing it from a demand to a statement of fact – there are sensory items in that area.
· Mass generated social stories:
(I’ve blogged about this previously as well – have a look if you need more information). Mass generated social stories are bad – they teach ‘social skills’ NT social skills and expectations – they teach masking for ND people – they should never be used unless you use them like a nature documentary and explicitly teach “This is how NT people behave and expect things to go in their lives – ND people expect this other way – and behave in other ways”. This normalizes their experiences and wants and needs – and shows them that other people are allowed to behave and react in whatever way is culturally appropriate/required for them.
· Board games to teach how to lose or turn taking:
Board games are bad for this. They only ever teach trauma, the don’t actually teach strategies to thrive or cope. Collaborative games on the other hand are perfect for this – ones where you work together to achieve goal (instead of ‘win’) are what you want. In real life – when you work in teams, you work to achieve a goal together – not to compete against each other. When you use board games that have a winner or loser – you are teaching the child abnormal and dysfunctional ways to work in teams – you are teaching them how to NOT work together. How to break a team and cause in fighting and hurt feelings. Choose collaborative games instead.
· Circle of Control: (I have talked about this previously if you’d like to check out my previous posts)
I truly hate this concept – so don’t read this bit if you truly love it – because I may trigger you. This system gaslights the F out of ND and disabled people. It’s only to ever be used by ableists and people with extreme privilege. The title of the course is reason enough to avoid it – a person with extreme privilege will have a huge circle of what they can control and a tiny circle of what harms them. A disabled or disadvantaged/oppressed person will have a teeny tiny circle of things they can control and a massively gigantic circle of things that harm them. Check your extreme privilege before ever using this tool… and then don’t use it – because you NEVER know someone else’s privilege – and to say “you can control this – or you shouldn’t be upset about that” is just you being a privileged A-Hole who can’t see your privilege or understand or see other peoples disadvantage.
Ø Focus on what they can change and what they can’t - is one of the biggest concepts of circle of control.
· Teach them to be appreciative and grateful for the things in their life:
ND’s get very few things they actually need and get them help. For adults – we get almost nothing, we have to do it all ourselves. This ‘grateful for what you get or have’ teaches resentment of peers and others. It teaches ND people that NT people have a severe amount of privilege. ND’s are ignored and taught that they ‘should be grateful for what they do get’. Think about it (have you seen the movie “Oliver!” – if you are given gruel in an orphanage, yes you are grateful for food, but you are still possibly pissed off that others are more privileged than you – being taught by NT’s that you should be grateful is like spitting in the ND persons face and giving them gruel. It’s lip service and telling people not to complain or ask for help.
· Positive reinforcement for when they’re displaying ‘appropriate’ resilience:
Like a “bounce back jar” – every time you see someone masking their pain – you put something in the jar – when the jar is full – you celebrate the decline/detriment of the children’s mental health – but also celebrate that they aren’t annoying you with their problems anymore. This is a truly terrible idea.
Your assumption that they are being resilient instead of masking is a huge problem – you are not rewarding what you think you are. You are rewarding unhealthy mental health strategies and rewarding children for hiding pain and for being compliant – not for actually being able, or for using strategies that are neuroaffirming or helpful. You have no idea what is happening internally – so rewarding them for that is a huge problem. When you reward what you see – instead of what you understand, you inadvertently teach children to be compliant instead of to learn what their needs are and you avoid teaching them actual things that will help.
· Pete the cat story – white shoes?
My mouth dropped open when I listened to/watched this on YouTube. I was so revolted I wanted to smash the computer.
Basically, it teaches a kid that it’s not alright to cry – ever. This doesn’t teach a child to cope when things go wrong – it teaches a kid that their feelings must be hidden – never shown, never validated, just ignored or gaslit. It also teaches kids to bully other kids when they cry. It teaches that natural reactions are wrong, that people should never be upset about anything.
I never want my children to learn this lesson – EVER! If I had a teacher show this to my kid – I’d scream at the teacher…. And then ask them – are you going to cry, or be upset, or run away or have any feelings about me yelling in your face at all???? And if so – you’ve proven my point. We have the right to have reactions, to be upset – to emote what we need to emote. This is the reason that especially men don’t cry and learn not to cry, even when they have severe depression. This is why the world adopted “Are you OK Day?” Because we are constantly teaching our children to hide their pain, not how to emote or cope. Stop this toxic shit now.
Ø “Bound Bound, and rebound” – the jackalope song from Pixar/Disney
This one is hard for me, because I love Pixar, and I love the song/cartoon in this Disney Short. BUT…. It’s the same ‘BUT’ and reason for the ‘but’ as above. When you teach children to rebound, you need to teach how and why. And ALSO teach them that by doing this – they are teaching themselves to lean into depression and into masking, into suicide ideation and severe burnout. You can tell a person how to make themselves feel better (like this cartoon does -he dances his cares away), but the poor sheep never should’ve been bullied in the first place. The message is slightly wrong. It’s teaching to ignore bullies instead of calling them out.
Bullying should always be called out and stopped. The child should be given safety – safety they can trust. Then you can teach skills about cheering yourself when you’re sad – but teach them to sit with the sadness first. Society is too ready and pushy – they want everyone to not cry, or to not have any sadness at all. You cannot enjoy the happy times if you do not fully experience the sad times – there’s nothing to compare the happiness to if you always avoid the sadness (check out the movie “Inside Out” for a great example of this – you can’t and shouldn’t mask the sadness).
This is what is called Toxic Positivity. I know someone (a friend) who lives with a person who does this – my friend was forced into depression because of it. You need to sit with the sadness or the anger etc – whatever the feeling is. Bottling feelings is really unhealthy – and that’s what you are teaching when you say – don’t cry or get angry – cheer yourself or “Bound, Bound, Bound and Rebound” (while tap dancing like the sheep in the Disney cartoon). You teach to mask the emotion and deal with it – that’s really unhealthy.
· Box in the room for children to write about their issues to give to the teacher:
If the teacher is the problem – this won’t work. No offence, but if the teacher, their teaching style, their use of any of the above tools or strategies, their inability to deal with bullies etc – this isn’t a safe option for the child. I’ve been bullied by teachers before, and never felt safe to call them out on it – because the school is taught to protect their own – to close ranks and to stick together against complaints.
If the child trusts the teacher, this may be a good idea. But… children need to be able to access the box at all times of the day (eg: when other children can’t see them putting something in the box). And the teacher MUST action the thing that they write down. Having a note/message that just enter the ether, and nothing comes of it is as bad as no outlet at all. Or being shamed for the message, being called out in public about your message, or children finding out that one child ‘dobbed them in’. There’s so much that can go wrong here. As an ADHD’er – I’d do it for a week, and then forget about it – and I’d lose the children’s trust, so it’s not something I could personally do.