The following post provides a full length video recording and transcript from our popular webinar series featuring insights and guidance for parents with children with autism, delivered by renowned autism expert and author, Jonathan Alderson.
Hope for Autism Webinar Summary
The concept of hope is crucial for people, especially autistic children. It will lead to fulfillment in both parents and children, leading the little ones to grow to their full potential.
You might struggle with grasping what hope is and how it can be beneficial for your child’s autism. Even if you’re familiar with the concept, finding techniques to implement and benefit from this hope might be challenging.
In this article, we provide the full length webinar delivered by ThriveGuide founder and autism expert, Jonathan Alderson, along with a a full transcript that provides a comprehensive overview of hope for autism, what it is, how you can get it, and ways to apply it to your day-to-day life.
Related Article: Parenting an Autistic Child with Confidence: Top 10 Tips
Grasping the Basics of Hope
Think about your autistic child and hope, and then think about a number between zero and ten.
Ten is very hopeful. You have high hopes in terms of how much they can develop and what’s possible for them. You’re extremely hopeful about their ability to learn, grow, and achieve all the dreams you have for them.
Zero represents hopelessness. It’s the lowest chance of success that you can anticipate. You don’t feel like a lot of growth is possible, and your general feeling is a lack of hope or hopelessness.
Now, look at the following picture.
A little child outside in the rain, eyes closed and tongue sticking out, just trying to catch the raindrop on her tongue.
The child is waiting for raindrops, and if one lands on their tongue, they get filled with joy; and if it doesn't, they don’t get upset. It’s just the fun of trying, and there is hope in that.
Of course, the child wants the raindrops to fall on their tongue. But they’re more absorbed in the journey and just having fun. For them, it’s more about trying than being happy or disappointed because they did or didn’t achieve the goal.
What we learn from this example is the more you focus on the goal, the more likely you are to be disappointed. We all could relate to this. In our experiences with our children or even ourselves, we have set goals we really want to reach.
The question here is, “How does hope fit into this dynamic?”
In all aspects of life, including treating autistic children, hope is the trying. Hope is the generator that allows you to try in between having a goal and achieving it.
If you don't have hope, if you don't have the sense that there's a possibility there, then you’ll stop trying. When you stop trying, then it's never going to be possible unless it happens in its own right.
So, why do we try? Because we have hope. How do weget hope? That's what we're going to talk about in this article.
Related Article: What Is M-CHAT| Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers
What Is Hope?
At ThriveGuide, we believe that hope is trying something based on a belief in potential. It means you think there is some potential in something you want to do. It might be a tiny bit of potential, but it’s there nonetheless.
So, you start to try because you think there's some potential for something to happen.
In the context of autistic children, they are learning how to do things as they grow and change. However, you don’t know for sure if they can achieve a goal or not.
In these circumstances, you need to ask yourself questions such as:
What's the potential of your child learning to talk?
What’s the potential of your child getting a driver's license?
What's the potential of your child graduating from university one day?
Or getting a job? Or having a romantic partner?
You might say there's some potential, but only 2%. As little as this might sound, there's a potential, and there's no certainty about it, but it is there.
For example, you know there's zero potential for you to walk through a brick wall. There is no possibility of that. Therefore, you’re not going to try.
You don't have hope that you can do it! But if there's something that you think is possible (even if the odds are against you), then you can hope that this possibility might become a reality. With that mindset, you start putting effort into that.
So, if there’s one takeaway you need from this article, it’s that hope leads us to try.
False Hope: The Ugly Truth or an Old Myth?
In the field of autism, there's this caution to not give parents too much hope in case something doesn't go how they want, leaving them feeling let down.
As parents, you might have had professionals, teachers, or therapists tell you upfront that some things aren’t possible. You think they're doing it because they want to save you from false hope.
In ThriveGuide, we’re not going to tell you something's going to be more possible than any other professional. Rather, we see potential we could talk about, and if we see the potential, then we could try; and what we’re really good at is giving you all sorts of ways to try.
The more you try, the more likely you are to succeed. So, hope can lead to success. Why? Because trying is going to lead to more success, the probability, at least, goes up.
We don't want to have false hope. We don't want to hope too much. It is because if we hope and don't get what we want, then we’re going to be disappointed. And we will lose faith.
False hope, these two words don't go together! It's an oxymoron. It's not possible for you to walk through a brick wall and have false hope!
If hope is believing that you can do something because there's a probability, then if you try and it doesn't happen, it doesn't mean that you’ve had false hope.
It just means it hasn't happened yet, so maybe you've got to try different things. Maybe it's not the time yet, but it doesn't mean that your hope was false. The hope you had was based on believing in the possibility and then trying.
Related Article: Autism and Picky Eating: Is Being a Picky Eater a Sign of Autism
Don’t Be Scared to Change up Your Priorities
You may think, “But I don't know if my child can do this particular thing, like learning to tie his shoes.
I don't know if that's like a brick wall to me!” But do you have absolute, 100% certainty that it's not possible? Because you do with a brick wall! You have absolute, undeniable evidence that you cannot walk through a wall. But you don't have that about tying shoes.
You might be frustrated because you have been trying for years to get your child to tie their own shoes, but they still haven’t. Still, it's probably slow hope, not false hope. Maybe there are other goals you should focus on. There are other priorities. Don’t be scared to reprioritize!
As the child moves, changes, and develops, we let go of some goals, but it's not because we're losing hope. It's just a matter of priority.
That's why the new online platform that we've developed, called ThriveGuide, helps parents prioritize. Our tagline is your best next step. We help parents identify their next step.
Keep Hoping, and Don’t Stop
When Colonel Sanders, the guy behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, started his business, he was trying to get funding, and he was rejected numerous times.
In fact, he was rejected 15 times before he got a yes, and as you know, KFC is a mega multi-billion-dollar empire to this day.
Despite the empire he built, they were surely people who told Colonel Sanders along the way, “Hey, Colonel! Come here, buddy! Why don’t you try something else?! This is not going to happen!”
Hope, Happiness, and Fulfillment
Let's say you want your child to learn how to brush their teeth by themselves, and you've been trying for a couple of years. Still, it’s not happening, and you're feeling sad or frustrated. That's just hope that you're hanging your happiness onto. But it doesn't mean it's false! It just means that you made a contingency.
“If I get it, I'm happy; if I don't, I am unhappy.”
But that's on you! You can change it. Maybe at some point, you stop, and that's okay, but you don't have to be happy or sad about not getting the outcome you're not getting.
Of course, you feel disappointed! Of course, you get frustrated. However, with behavioral therapy, we can change how we look at our beliefs and how we set things up.
You could start to say, “You know what? I'm going to derive my joy and happiness not based on my achievements. Maybe just based on how my child is today, just my love for my job, or other things in my life.”
This is the work that we do with the therapists that we train. Our INTI (Intensive Multitude in Intervention) therapists learn how to have hope that is not attached to their happiness, which helps them remain hopeful and stay resilient.
Hope for Autism: What to Do?
It’s time to dive into a couple of practical strategies to help build hope in yourself. The first thing is if we know that hope is derived from seeing some potential, then we should hunt for potential.
Pay attention to the word hunt. It's active, not passive. You shouldn’t be waiting for your child to show up and show you that they've learned how to catch the baseball.
You should look for the potential that they might be able to learn how to capture based forward, which leads them to get the ball, pick it up, and search for rhyme with them.
A Story of Hope for Autism
Let’s take you back to an old story. Years ago, at the Massachusetts Center there was this little girl who was around three and a half years old.
She was non-verbal but starting to make some sounds. So, she was monosyllabic. At her session with Steven Walkden, this little girl was sitting at a desk, attempting to say she was happy to be there.
He sat in front of her and had a task that he wanted to get her to do. Before anything happened, he looked right at her and said, “Hey, good job! You're watching me! Way to go!”
He said this because he was hunting for potential. She hadn't even started the task, but he was already looking for the potential for something good to happen. So, he was acknowledging and recognizing her attention already.
We don't know if she was ready to learn or not. She was a nonverbal autistic little girl. But he was hunting and looking for little tiny signs of potential.
So, the next thing he did was pull out a sheet of paper, hold it up in the air, and say, “Tell me what this is.” On it was the letter ‘A.’
What he was demonstrating was that we didn’t even have to know if she could do the task because if we knew that she could, we wouldn't need hope. If we already had the evidence that it was possible, we didn't need to Hope.
He sat and stared right ahead and said, “Wow! Way to go! That's perfect!” He was hunting for the potential. The next thing that happened was she opened her mouth a little bit.
He said, “Yes! You moved your lips right here.” He tapped his mouth, then reached over, tapped her chin, and said, “Yes! You moved your mouth! That’s great!” Because he knew in order to make her make this sound, her brain and her neurology should move the jaw and have the muscles open the mouth. He was hunting for evidence of what was happening.
Although it’s not certain if she understood him, she saw that he was cheering and smiled. He said, “Come on, make a sound,” and reached out to prompt her. Indeed, she came out with a ‘T.’ Now, the sound ‘T’ is far away from ‘A.’ But Steven was hunting for potential.
He rounded up, remembering math that 4.5 is rounded up to 5. Taking little tiny shreds of evidence, he was rounding it up. And in his mind, this ‘T’ was remarkable enough. He cheered, “Yes! ‘T’! ‘T’ is like two, and two is a number. This is almost like a number; this is a letter.” So, he was giving her some clues.
The point of this story is how he was driving hope within himself. He was driving energy. He found evidence that changes are possible in those who are hunting for potential.
Learn to Hunt for Potential
Let's say that you've been trying to help your child learn how to brush their teeth. Tonight, when you say, “Okay, buddy! It's time to brush your teeth,” your child starts walking towards the bathroom. You could see that as potential. Even if they've done it a thousand times, you could say, “I love that when you come into the bathroom! Way to go! It's time to brush your teeth!”
Why is that important? Because when you see potential, then you have hope. When you have hope, you're going to try more. The more you try, the more likely you are to succeed.
Stay Present to Keep Hope for Autism
What's the opposite of staying present? If you're not present, you're either in the past or the future. If you're in the past, looking backward to what your child hasn't accomplished, even given all of your efforts, you definitely aren't feeling hopeful.
To stay present is to be focused on the possibility at this moment. Don't use the past to negate the future. Don't use the past to suck out the hope.
If you’re not present or reminicing the past, then you’re looking at the future. This is more common in parents looking for hope for their autistic child. They'll say, “I'm so tired. I don't sleep well because I stay awake at night and think about the future.
But it's not a happy future. I'm thinking, who's going to take care of my child when I'm gone!”
Of course, it’s normal to worry about the future. But when you're futurizing and playing out all sorts of scenarios and feeling fear, you’re draining yourself from hope and physical energy. So, staying present is super important!
In the story of hope we went over, Steven was present for the little autistic girl. He was so present he saw her mouth open up just a little bit. He was present and looking for evidence that she was trying, evidence that she could do it, evidence that she could learn, evidence that she could change.
Sustained presence is really important. You can achieve this by practicing mindfulness as a strategy. It's a skill. It's not something you have, but you can build.
The more you are present, the more you see evidence of your child trying. Therefore, you’ll be more likely to observe your child’s behavior and cheer for them. The more you positively reinforce a behavior, the more likely it is to grow and occur again. In essence, presence creates a positive cycle of hope for autism.
Planning and Staying Present: Can You Do Both?
One of the things that stops people from being present is planning the future. They say, “It's really hard to be present because I'm always trying to plan and anticipate what I have to do tomorrow.”
The answer to this problem is to manage your time to plan and stay present. Maybe you can set some time aside for planning on a daily or weekly basis. But when that time is up, you should stay present for your child and hunt for potential and hope.
Remember, Changes Are Possible
Changes are possible. Remember how you rated your hopefulness on a scale of zero to ten at the beginning of this article. If you were a five or less, one thing that you can do is look back a little bit and find evidence of change, of potential. Hunt for evidence that your child changed, that your child learned.
There is hardly any child on the autism spectrum who shows no evidence of learning and change. Years ago, our team started to work with a little girl at just around her third birthday. This was many years ago, and she's about twenty-five years old now. For almost ten years, our team, her parents, and her educators at school worked on teaching her how to count from one to five.
Though that might sound crazy, that was our main focus for years. It was something we were doing. But while we were teaching her how to count to five over all those years, she was learning how to swim.
She became an excellent swimmer. She also learned how to ski. She's a very good skier of high mountains. She learned a lot of things.
As long as we had evidence that she could learn, that she could make changes, we were willing to show up every day and try new goals, new activities, new creativity, and new reinforcements. Because we know change is possible.
Hope for Autism: What We Learned
Hope is a key characteristic for parents who have autistic children. Simply put, it’s the ability to observe a potential in something and try to make it happen.
By separating your hope for your autistic children from your happiness, you can continue to hunt their potential and help them grow.
When hunting for your little one’s potential, it’s important to stay present. Don’t let your thoughts drift to the past or future. Rather, observe your little one at the moment being, prioritize according to their behaviour and needs, and keep finding evidence of change.
This article from ThriveGuide covered a basic yet important concept: hope for autism. Be sure to watch our webinar on this subject.
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