October 30, 2019 • 27 mins
One of the biggest challenges of autism is the social side. So in this episode, we focus on solutions. Meet Vicky Ryan, a mom whose own daughter, Charlotte, is on the spectrum. When Charlotte was struggling with social opportunities, Vicky founded Girls Club - an amazing, accessible club especially for girls with neurological or developmental differences. We also hear from Carol Gray, an award-winning educator and consultant who is best known for developing Social Stories, an evidence-based approach used worldwide to teach social skills to people on the spectrum. And finally -- a guest appearance by globally renowned speech-language pathologist Michelle Garcia Winner -- recognized for her work helping students overcome their social and communication challenges.
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Episode Transcript
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Katie Bennison (00:06):
Welcome to episode two of Life on the Spectrum, the
Autism Family Podcast. I'm your host, Katie Bennison. I'm a
broadcaster, special education assistant and the mom of a daughter
with autism. Today we're talking about the social aspects of
living with autism.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Not being able to pick up on social cues. It's
kind of hard to be in a team, especially if
they're chanting a lot because for me, my heightened senses, my
ears. And I know this is for a lot of
autistic people, but I don't like loud sounds and it's
kind of hard to be in teams if they're chanting
and you have to be in the middle of that.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
This is a bit of a hard one to answer
because there are a lot of challenging things, but the thing is
I don't normally think about other people. I'm sorry to
say that, I don't really like reflecting on myself like
this. It makes me feel kind of uneasy, but I
still feel like I'm going to do this anyway. I
am bit of a self- centered B- word at times.
(01:03):
So I'm not exactly the easiest person to live with
and because of this, not many people like me and
stuff like that. And I find that very hard because
I'm a social person, no matter how anti- social I
may seem, I'm actually social.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Something that just happens with me constantly is just I'm
five steps ahead of whoever's telling me anything or teaching
me anything. Well, a lot of the time, let's put
it that way.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
My teacher was teaching my class, in cooking class, how
to boil water and I'm like, " If you don't know
how to do this, you don't deserve to live."
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Yes, yes. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Sometimes it feels like I'm pushing the conversation too much,
like I'm talking too much. Or other times it feels
like as soon as I start talking they start talking.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
I just don't know what to say to them. I'm
not sure how to continue the conversation for a long while. And usually when
I would drop into the conversation, I would forget about
what I wanted to say earlier.
Speaker 6 (02:08):
Especially when you're in a group of people, the thing about me
is I always seem to get pushed out of groups. I
try to join in but they just keep talking and
ignore me. Like what the heck is with that? I
mean I don't know why that always happens with me.
I mean with everyone else, they leave spaces for them
to jump in. Why don't they do that with me?
I try but they just go yeah, it's cool, and
(02:31):
then continue talking or they just completely ignore me and
pretend I didn't say anything, completely run over me with
the rest of the conversation. It feels very frustrating for
me. So normally I don't hang out with more than
one person at a time. It's easier just to have a one on
one conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
No room for anyone to hear the beautiful things you
have to say. Yeah, I agree. Like I kind of
want to like just be on one on one conversations
just because of that.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
That's the first time anyone's said anything I said was beautiful. Normally people
think that stuff I say is weird. At least I
think they do. I'm not a mind reader.
Katie Bennison (03:08):
Those are a few of the voices from a round
table discussion we held earlier this year with a group
of teens with autism, and as you heard, the social
aspects of autism spectrum disorder can be pretty challenging sometimes.
Someone who knows a lot about navigating these challenges is
Vicky Ryan. Vicky, I just wanted to go into a
(03:31):
little bit about your background. Thank you so much for
joining us. You founded Girls Club, this amazing accessible club,
especially for girls with neurological or developmental differences. Your own
daughter, Charlotte, is on the spectrum. So can you tell
me first of all a little bit about your daughter, Charlotte?
Vicky Ryan (03:53):
So Charlotte just turned eight this week.
Katie Bennison (03:55):
Cool!
Vicky Ryan (03:56):
Yeah, she's a big girl now. So Charlotte, when she
was five years old when I started Girls Club and
very much so still today has a really challenging time
interacting in mainstream environments. Specifically, it was a dance class.
She loves to dance, she loves music. She's a happy,
carefree soul, loves to dance around. So I thought, great.
The dance class, I found an adapted dance class and
(04:17):
I was thrilled. I reached out to them and in
that I found that while it was adapted, they still
had certain expectations of the people who are coming and
that they were expectations I knew Charlotte would not be
able to achieve.
Katie Bennison (04:31):
Can you give me an example?
Vicky Ryan (04:33):
Oh for sure. So follow instructions. Sit still. I'm like,
in a dance class you're supposed to sit? So it
was just a few different things like that and I
thought wow, even within our own quote community within a
specialized class, an adapted class, we still don't fit. So
(04:53):
that can tell you a little bit about Charlotte that
she needs a lot of support to participate in things.
And I thought where can we go? There isn't anything
for her. And that's what led me to Girls Club.
Katie Bennison (05:04):
Would she try to socialize with other kids at all?
Vicky Ryan (05:09):
No. No. There was not a lot of trying to
connect with kids socially necessarily. Like I said, she was
kind of afraid of them in a way because there
were loud and unpredictable and we used to laugh because at times
she was the loudest and most unpredictable of all the
children. And yet she was afraid of them when they
became boisterous. So she would pull away and otherwise she
(05:30):
would observe them but always from afar.
Katie Bennison (05:32):
So what was your vision for Girls Club when you
started it?
Vicky Ryan (05:37):
I decided to start Girls Club because I wanted Charlotte
to have an opportunity to make a friend. It was
as simple as that. And all of the other opportunities
we had tried to do that. We had preschool dance,
the swimming, any other times where we could get her
around children her age, they had not been successful. And
I couldn't really put my finger on why except for
(05:59):
that we stick out like a sore thumb, we're not
fitting in, et cetera. So I had read this book,
What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew. And so
within that book, each chapter is written by a different
self advocate and they were saying what they had wished
for when they were younger, et cetera. And a theme
in almost every single chapter is people thought I didn't
(06:19):
want friends, but I did want friends. I just didn't
know how to make them or I was scared to,
or I was bullied at school. So I became very
resistant to trying that kind of thing. And predominantly what
kept coming out is as soon as I found other
autistic people to be friends with, I finally had a
friend. And I thought, that's it. She's not making friends
(06:42):
in these little groups because every other kid in this
group is just a typical kid and she's the one
autistic kid. If I get her in a group with
lots of little kids that are autistic, she might find
her little soul match. So how am I going to
do that? And that became, my goal, is I'm going
to create a social club for girls or teens or
(07:04):
women on the spectrum so they can find each other
and have opportunities to connect. Because if we're in this
boat, there's other families in this boat too, let's find
them. So that's kind of what kicked us off.
Katie Bennison (07:16):
Your vision is a world where neurological developmental differences are
not a barrier to friendship, connection, happiness and self worth.
And I think you've definitely attained that. You've now got
hundreds of members and you're in communities all over DC.
Why do you think people have responded so well to
Girls Club?
Vicky Ryan (07:36):
I think people respond so well to girls club because
what we're creating is a culture of acceptance. So when
families come and girls come, they realize very quickly, oh
this is different, this is different than anywhere else I
go because the expectations are different, I'm expected to just
be myself, there's not heavy demands on me. I can
(07:57):
participate in ways that are meaningful to me. So if
I go to a mainstream social thing or even just
at someone's birthday party, at someone else's house, typical kid
stuff where they go and socialize, there are these unwritten
rules of engagement. There are expectations around participation. We take
(08:17):
all of that away. So some girls come to Girls
Club and may sit in the corner and not talk
to a single soul the whole time. And when they
leave they'll say they had a wonderful time and I
will hear later from their parents that so and so
had a wonderful time with her friends at Girls Club.
Thank you so much, we'll see you next time. And so
little by little these girls move from the corner of
(08:38):
the room to maybe the edge of the table, the
craft table or the food table and then maybe several
months later to a seat seated next to another girl
and then several months after that finally a conversation or
a shared activity. So we are giving girls all of
the time and space that they need to get there
on their own terms. And that's unique about us because
(09:00):
as far as I know, there are not other social
clubs doing it that way and that's why it works
and that's why people are happy.
Katie Bennison (09:07):
Basically it's peer pressure without the pressure.
Vicky Ryan (09:10):
Yes, exactly.
Katie Bennison (09:12):
Because I bring Sophie, my daughter to Girls Club whenever
we can and she absolutely loves it. When are we
going to Girls Club again? And it just fills your heart
because it is really hard for our kids to make
friends in a neuro- typical environment. And that brings me
to this. People talk a lot about the importance of
integration with neuro- typical kids and why do you think
(09:34):
it's important for youth who are on the spectrum to
meet and hang out with other kids who are more
like them?
Vicky Ryan (09:41):
I think it's important because everybody needs to find their
tribe. You need to find your people. That doesn't mean
to say you don't have neuro- typical friends or friends
at school, friends, and they can be your best. It
doesn't matter. I'm not saying choose us, not them. It's both.
Katie Bennison (09:59):
Girls Club organizes all kinds of things. There's art gallery
trips. There's trick or treating. There's Taekwondo, sexual health night,
talent shows, princess tea parties, the birthday parties. What have
you learned from the girls in putting on these activities?
Vicky Ryan (10:16):
What I have learned from the girls is that they're
pretty much up for anything and they're much more adventurous
than I would have expected when I started. For example,
the talent show. I thought most girls with autism also
have quite high anxiety and I would never have thought
of doing a talent show, but that was a member
request. That was three little girls who came to me
(10:36):
and said, can we do a talent show? And I
was like, sure. So I did the talent show. That
was shocking to me going to Playland as a field
trip and watching them on The Beast. I was like,
what is happening?
Katie Bennison (10:50):
All the sensory stuff, right?
Vicky Ryan (10:52):
Exactly! So much more adventurous, but when they feel safe
and comfortable with each other, they're definitely willing to go there.
Katie Bennison (10:59):
You're listening to life on the spectrum. I'm Katie Bennison.
Coming up, you'll hear part of my conversation with Michelle
Garcia Winner. Michelle is a congressional award winning speech language
pathologist. Her strategies for overcoming social challenges are used around
the world. And hey, if you like what you've been hearing,
help us out please and rate and review us on
(11:21):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast fix. It
really helps us reach more people. But first let's check
in with our parent round table and hear their concerns
about the social challenges their teenagers face living with autism.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
And I found it just went to warp speed around
age 12 or 13 as the other kids changed the
social dynamic, the maturity increased, more peer interactions and dynamics
that Dylan wasn't able to connect with and as friends
changed and became friends and people got mad and didn't
(12:01):
talk to each other, he didn't know how to process
that and understand it. They made a promise that we're
going to meet at two o'clock and they didn't come
or this promise was made and they broke the promise.
So I think a lot of those interactions between teens
is that complexity. It just kind of hit the wall
and extraordinarily intense emotional outbursts. Like just the inability to
(12:27):
communicate or articulate his emotions without kind of a lot
of self harm. So I think that was the most difficult.
Speaker 9 (12:36):
Any group work at school. She struggles with knowing what
the other people are expecting of her and what to
expect from them. She had this one project this year
that she would have failed if she hadn't shown up
to talk to the teacher at the end of term.
It was a social studies project that they came up
with a rap, a history rap, and one of the other
girls was going to do the tune and the (Leona)
(12:57):
wrote all the lyrics and stuff and the other girl was going to do
the music but they didn't do anything. They didn't hand
it in at all, so the teacher then called them
all in on the last day of school and Leona was the
only one who showed up, so she didn't even understand
why they didn't show up. All the unwritten social cues.
We walk down the street, I can see the two
people, I know what they're thinking. I get a sense
(13:18):
of what their relationship is, whether they're friends or whatever.
That's lost on her. She's still struggling to understand what
are those two people thinking.
Speaker 10 (13:27):
It's the inability to sort of understand what relationships are between
other people, what they're thinking, what their reaction might be
to the things that he says or does or doesn't
say or doesn't do, whether he's looking at them when
he's speaking, all of those things. He's unable to kind
of really get that. And also he doesn't understand people,
their reaction to him and their relationship to him. He
(13:49):
might have one conversation with someone at lunch and then
that person is his best friend and he comes home
and it breaks my heart because I'm like, well, I don't
know if that person's your, you know. Anyway, we've had
a lot of those things where he doesn't understand if
that person really is his friend or not his friend.
Katie Bennison (14:06):
One of the biggest challenges that come with autism is
the social side and we live in cultures that rely
heavily on social interaction. We need social skills to build
friendships, navigate conflict, and to develop careers. We also need
them to just go to the grocery store or buy
a movie ticket. But even the simplest social situations can
be very tough for people with autism. So how can
(14:29):
parents, educators and caregivers smooth the way for kids on
the spectrum? Well, this is a question Carol Gray knows
an awful lot about. She began her career as a
teacher in the 1970s and at that time she had
several students with autism so she developed what she called
Social Stories. Now her approach is used right around the
(14:50):
world. She's highly sought after as a keynote speaker and
we are very lucky to have Carol Gray join us
on Life on the Spectrum. Carol, thanks for being a
part of the show.
Carol Gray (15:01):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Katie Bennison (15:03):
So this episode is dedicated to helping pave the way
for kids socially. So I wanted to ask you, first
off, what are social stories?
Carol Gray (15:14):
Social stories are often very brief narratives, descriptions of everyday
events, concepts, skills, and also achievements. And what we've discovered
is by placing things in writing, following a format that
makes the information meaningful, understandable for people with autism, we
(15:41):
find that often they adopt on their own new more
effective responses to the situations that we've described.
Katie Bennison (15:50):
What would be an example of how a social story might
be used?
Carol Gray (15:54):
Some examples that we are working with in the workshop
that I'm currently conducting, one of the stories that people
are working on is for a little girl, Emma, four
years old and she's fearful of using the toilet and the
doctors have said she should be fine to use the
toilet. Everything physically is there and ready, but she seems
(16:15):
frightened of using the toilet. So we have some people
working on a story for Emma. We have another little
guy, a little older who's learning to write but seems
to feel that his letters must be exact. Exactly like
the model that's up in the classroom. So other people
are working on a social story for him. And at Social Story,
(16:37):
not only are we looking for characteristics and how the
information is presented, but we're also looking for the process
that determines the topic and implements the story.
Katie Bennison (16:48):
So if I give an example of my daughter who's
on the spectrum, my daughter used to be really afraid
of loud hand dryers in public spaces, like in grocery
stores, in malls, et cetera. So we had to write
a social story to show her that these are just
machines and they can't hurt you, but it had visuals
(17:08):
with it.
Carol Gray (17:09):
What's interesting is you're talking about your daughter. I had
a student on my caseload who would run from a
restroom if somebody turned on the air hand dryer. And
just as you did, we wrote a social, I contacted
the company that created that hair hand dryer and I said,
I need to know how that works, and they sent
(17:31):
diagrams, et cetera. We put that along with text and
basically described how air hand dryers work. Now in the
case of that young man, I mentioned in this story
that air hand dryers turn off automatically after about one
minute. He did not know that because he had never
stayed around long enough for them, but he was fascinated
(17:53):
by the thought that they might do that. The next
problem was getting him out of the restrooms because he
would do them over and over and over and over
again because now he understood how they worked. He understood
that there was an end to a sound that was
obviously uncomfortable for him. Meaningful frustration, whether it's being at
(18:13):
the dentist, we can tolerate something that's uncomfortable if we
understand the rationale, if we understand why we're being asked
to sit in this chair at the dentist with people
crawling all over the inside of our mouths. If we
understand the rationale for that, that frustration has meaning for
us and we're more likely to stay.
Katie Bennison (18:33):
Have there been studies done on the benefits?
Carol Gray (18:36):
Social Stories are now considered an evidence based practice, which
means that there has been enough objective research to determine
that yes, this is an effective strategy.
Katie Bennison (18:48):
So if parents or caregivers are interested in trying to
use Social Stories, what should they do? What steps should
they take?
Carol Gray (18:56):
One of the best steps would be to attend a genuine
Social Story workshop. One that is conducted by either myself
or what we call one of our Social Stories satellites,
which are organizations that now have my materials and they
have people trained to conduct Social Story workshops. Or go
(19:16):
to my website, carolgraysocialstories. com for a good introduction to that.
Katie Bennison (19:22):
Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
Carol Gray (19:26):
Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Katie Bennison (19:29):
Every parent wants their child to make friends, to have
conversations, to take turns and to share, to feel love
and to give love. Humans by nature are social creatures,
but when your child doesn't learn the same way as
other kids, teaching social skills can be a big challenge.
So what do you do? Michelle Garcia Winner specializes in
(19:50):
the treatment of people with social learning challenges. She's the
founder and CEO of Social Thinking in California, a company
that helps kids and adults develop social skills and meet
their social goals. She's created programs that help educators, clinicians,
and other professionals as well as parents and families. Michelle
has written more than 20 books and she travels the
(20:12):
world to talk about social thinking. Michelle, welcome to life
on the spectrum.
Michelle G. W. (20:17):
Thanks and thank you for inviting me.
Katie Bennison (20:19):
Absolutely. So my question for you is, first of all,
why is it important for people to learn how to socialize?
Michelle G. W. (20:29):
It's in our DNA to seek the emotionality of connecting
with each other. And if a student keeps saying, I
don't care, I don't care, I don't care, as they
age up, at some point they start to get really
depressed and really anxious because just like we need food
and air, we need human connection to keep us feeling
like we're part of something bigger than ourselves.
Katie Bennison (20:51):
Absolutely. Well, why is it difficult for people with autism
to socialize?
Michelle G. W. (20:57):
So folks on the autism spectrum have some different learning
abilities in addition to some biological and sensory processing, but
in terms of their cognitive abilities, some of our folks
have really great scientific abilities, but when it comes to
the social world, their brain struggles to understand other people's
(21:19):
perspectives, to understand that other people have goals that are
different from their own. To be able to understand something
as elusive and innate and that's understanding as emotions. How
do I feel? How do you feel? How do we
create plans together? This is all part of what's called
our social cognition and I think it's hard today to
(21:41):
refute that each of us has many different types of
smarts we call them. Some people are naturally gifted in
math or reading and maybe not gifted on the playground
or not gifted in socially connecting. And that's because our
brains are designed, each of us has a unique brain
that delivers us different types of brain smarts. People on
(22:01):
the autism spectrum all share a trait of having their
brain be more sluggish when it comes to understanding the
social dynamics.
Katie Bennison (22:09):
So what are some of the toughest social situations for
children with autism?
Michelle G. W. (22:16):
So there's different types of autisms out there and our
work is specifically for kids who have solid to high
level language and learning abilities. But there's kind of two
big factors going on. One is understanding others, understanding that
people have plans that are different from yourself. Understanding that
people don't understand you by you just existing. I've worked
(22:39):
with some clients who thought just, I thought that just
by showing up on the playground meant I wanted to
play, but no one came to play with me because
they were standing back just kind of looking at their
feet and they thought that because they were there, that
meant I really want to play with you, but no
one else reads that as being somebody who wants to
play, the typical kids. And so that's one of the
(23:01):
challenges is understanding kind of the perspective taking loop. What's
the message you want to send others? And a lot
of the messages we send are without language.
Katie Bennison (23:10):
Is it any different for teens? Are there different tough
social situations?
Michelle G. W. (23:15):
I think what gets harder for teens is one, kids
get developmentally cattier. Kids are more boastful of who's in
their group. And then by around third grade, fourth grade,
nine, 10 years old, kids not only really love who's
in their group, but then they sometimes make a big
deal about negatives about who's not in their group. More
verbosity or sometimes meanness about, who am I with, who
(23:41):
am I not with? But I have to say, people
on the autism spectrum can also, like they're not saints.
So they have some challenges. They're developmentally on point too
through this. And so I think there's a tendency to
think everybody on the spectrum is naive or unaware and
our guys can be pretty prickly at times and some
of our kids can even bully. So we have to
(24:04):
be aware of all of those factors. Because developmentally, the
mind just gets more complicated. We're all born to be
collaborative and cooperative in nature. But as we get a
sense of ourself, we want different things. And so by
the time you're becoming a teen, depending on where you
are on the spectrum, if you have more social self-
awareness, you may be feeling really rejected because you're seeing
(24:28):
people just relate more actively or, and dating is starting
and hormones are coming in. So it's a really vulnerable
age where we see kids really start to get super
frustrated. And the same kid maybe five years ago was
saying he's happy by himself, that his brain was kind
of overwhelmed socially when he was younger. Because one of
(24:51):
the things we see with younger kids, this happens with
some of our older kids too, but with younger kids
they're a little bit more spacey or they're happy inside
of their brain imagining whatever kind of passion that they
have that they like to think about. But as they get
older there's naturally a little bit more awareness of what's
going on around them. And certainly kids higher on the
spectrum have more and more awareness. And so then the
(25:13):
vulnerabilities are not only the complexity of social dynamics as
kids are hanging out in cliques and moving between friends
and wanting to date or flirt, there's also the really,
really compelling anxiety and depressions that can kick in. So
I think that's where we have to caretake how do
we validate a person and help them feel good about
(25:35):
where they are and what they're learning while also helping
them acknowledge their vulnerabilities and never make it sound too
easy? Like just stop being anxious. Because sometimes people say
you don't need to be anxious, just go join a
group. That kind of feedback isn't helpful because it just
makes it all sound like it's easy and none of
(25:55):
this is easy. When your brain makes something hard for
you to learn, that's certainly stressful.
Katie Bennison (26:00):
You coined the term social thinking in the mid 1990s.
What is social thinking?
Michelle G. W. (26:07):
So social thinking is the ability to understand our own and
others' perspectives and emotions in context to understand what's happening
around us or what's happening to the people that we're
seeing on a screen, in a story, in the news.
To understand people's intentions.
Katie Bennison (26:26):
So what's the answer? How do we help kids or
teens on the spectrum get better at social thinking?
Michelle G. W. (26:32):
We have to really feed them what they want, which
is a logical way to understand super abstract information. And
that's what I've endeavored to do in Social Thinking, is
help logical minds think about the abstract nature of the
social world in a concrete way so they feel like
they can be part of it.
Katie Bennison (26:51):
That's those hidden rules that you always talk about.
Michelle G. W. (26:53):
Yeah. Lately we've been talking about teaching how does the
social world work? How do I work in the world?
How do I navigate and regulate in the world? To
meet each of our goals.
Katie Bennison (27:08):
And I think that's a great question to go out
on. I, for one, feel very inspired to look for
new ways to support my daughter as she learns the
hidden rules of social interactions. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode,
and if you'd like to hear my full conversation with
Michelle Garcia Winner or check out some of the other
episodes of our podcast, you can go to our website, lifeonthespectrumpodcast.
(27:34):
com. Plus, of course, you can always listen, like, and
share us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to
listen. The next episode will be all about navigating the
school system when your child is on the spectrum. I'm
Katie Bennison. Thanks so much for listening.
Welcome to episode two of Life on the Spectrum, the
Autism Family Podcast. I'm your host, Katie Bennison. I'm a
broadcaster, special education assistant and the mom of a daughter
with autism. Today we're talking about the social aspects of
living with autism.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Not being able to pick up on social cues. It's
kind of hard to be in a team, especially if
they're chanting a lot because for me, my heightened senses, my
ears. And I know this is for a lot of
autistic people, but I don't like loud sounds and it's
kind of hard to be in teams if they're chanting
and you have to be in the middle of that.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
This is a bit of a hard one to answer
because there are a lot of challenging things, but the thing is
I don't normally think about other people. I'm sorry to
say that, I don't really like reflecting on myself like
this. It makes me feel kind of uneasy, but I
still feel like I'm going to do this anyway. I
am bit of a self- centered B- word at times.
(01:03):
So I'm not exactly the easiest person to live with
and because of this, not many people like me and
stuff like that. And I find that very hard because
I'm a social person, no matter how anti- social I
may seem, I'm actually social.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Something that just happens with me constantly is just I'm
five steps ahead of whoever's telling me anything or teaching
me anything. Well, a lot of the time, let's put
it that way.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
My teacher was teaching my class, in cooking class, how
to boil water and I'm like, " If you don't know
how to do this, you don't deserve to live."
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Yes, yes. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Sometimes it feels like I'm pushing the conversation too much,
like I'm talking too much. Or other times it feels
like as soon as I start talking they start talking.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
I just don't know what to say to them. I'm
not sure how to continue the conversation for a long while. And usually when
I would drop into the conversation, I would forget about
what I wanted to say earlier.
Speaker 6 (02:08):
Especially when you're in a group of people, the thing about me
is I always seem to get pushed out of groups. I
try to join in but they just keep talking and
ignore me. Like what the heck is with that? I
mean I don't know why that always happens with me.
I mean with everyone else, they leave spaces for them
to jump in. Why don't they do that with me?
I try but they just go yeah, it's cool, and
(02:31):
then continue talking or they just completely ignore me and
pretend I didn't say anything, completely run over me with
the rest of the conversation. It feels very frustrating for
me. So normally I don't hang out with more than
one person at a time. It's easier just to have a one on
one conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
No room for anyone to hear the beautiful things you
have to say. Yeah, I agree. Like I kind of
want to like just be on one on one conversations
just because of that.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
That's the first time anyone's said anything I said was beautiful. Normally people
think that stuff I say is weird. At least I
think they do. I'm not a mind reader.
Katie Bennison (03:08):
Those are a few of the voices from a round
table discussion we held earlier this year with a group
of teens with autism, and as you heard, the social
aspects of autism spectrum disorder can be pretty challenging sometimes.
Someone who knows a lot about navigating these challenges is
Vicky Ryan. Vicky, I just wanted to go into a
(03:31):
little bit about your background. Thank you so much for
joining us. You founded Girls Club, this amazing accessible club,
especially for girls with neurological or developmental differences. Your own
daughter, Charlotte, is on the spectrum. So can you tell
me first of all a little bit about your daughter, Charlotte?
Vicky Ryan (03:53):
So Charlotte just turned eight this week.
Katie Bennison (03:55):
Cool!
Vicky Ryan (03:56):
Yeah, she's a big girl now. So Charlotte, when she
was five years old when I started Girls Club and
very much so still today has a really challenging time
interacting in mainstream environments. Specifically, it was a dance class.
She loves to dance, she loves music. She's a happy,
carefree soul, loves to dance around. So I thought, great.
The dance class, I found an adapted dance class and
(04:17):
I was thrilled. I reached out to them and in
that I found that while it was adapted, they still
had certain expectations of the people who are coming and
that they were expectations I knew Charlotte would not be
able to achieve.
Katie Bennison (04:31):
Can you give me an example?
Vicky Ryan (04:33):
Oh for sure. So follow instructions. Sit still. I'm like,
in a dance class you're supposed to sit? So it
was just a few different things like that and I
thought wow, even within our own quote community within a
specialized class, an adapted class, we still don't fit. So
(04:53):
that can tell you a little bit about Charlotte that
she needs a lot of support to participate in things.
And I thought where can we go? There isn't anything
for her. And that's what led me to Girls Club.
Katie Bennison (05:04):
Would she try to socialize with other kids at all?
Vicky Ryan (05:09):
No. No. There was not a lot of trying to
connect with kids socially necessarily. Like I said, she was
kind of afraid of them in a way because there
were loud and unpredictable and we used to laugh because at times
she was the loudest and most unpredictable of all the
children. And yet she was afraid of them when they
became boisterous. So she would pull away and otherwise she
(05:30):
would observe them but always from afar.
Katie Bennison (05:32):
So what was your vision for Girls Club when you
started it?
Vicky Ryan (05:37):
I decided to start Girls Club because I wanted Charlotte
to have an opportunity to make a friend. It was
as simple as that. And all of the other opportunities
we had tried to do that. We had preschool dance,
the swimming, any other times where we could get her
around children her age, they had not been successful. And
I couldn't really put my finger on why except for
(05:59):
that we stick out like a sore thumb, we're not
fitting in, et cetera. So I had read this book,
What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew. And so
within that book, each chapter is written by a different
self advocate and they were saying what they had wished
for when they were younger, et cetera. And a theme
in almost every single chapter is people thought I didn't
(06:19):
want friends, but I did want friends. I just didn't
know how to make them or I was scared to,
or I was bullied at school. So I became very
resistant to trying that kind of thing. And predominantly what
kept coming out is as soon as I found other
autistic people to be friends with, I finally had a
friend. And I thought, that's it. She's not making friends
(06:42):
in these little groups because every other kid in this
group is just a typical kid and she's the one
autistic kid. If I get her in a group with
lots of little kids that are autistic, she might find
her little soul match. So how am I going to
do that? And that became, my goal, is I'm going
to create a social club for girls or teens or
(07:04):
women on the spectrum so they can find each other
and have opportunities to connect. Because if we're in this
boat, there's other families in this boat too, let's find
them. So that's kind of what kicked us off.
Katie Bennison (07:16):
Your vision is a world where neurological developmental differences are
not a barrier to friendship, connection, happiness and self worth.
And I think you've definitely attained that. You've now got
hundreds of members and you're in communities all over DC.
Why do you think people have responded so well to
Girls Club?
Vicky Ryan (07:36):
I think people respond so well to girls club because
what we're creating is a culture of acceptance. So when
families come and girls come, they realize very quickly, oh
this is different, this is different than anywhere else I
go because the expectations are different, I'm expected to just
be myself, there's not heavy demands on me. I can
(07:57):
participate in ways that are meaningful to me. So if
I go to a mainstream social thing or even just
at someone's birthday party, at someone else's house, typical kid
stuff where they go and socialize, there are these unwritten
rules of engagement. There are expectations around participation. We take
(08:17):
all of that away. So some girls come to Girls
Club and may sit in the corner and not talk
to a single soul the whole time. And when they
leave they'll say they had a wonderful time and I
will hear later from their parents that so and so
had a wonderful time with her friends at Girls Club.
Thank you so much, we'll see you next time. And so
little by little these girls move from the corner of
(08:38):
the room to maybe the edge of the table, the
craft table or the food table and then maybe several
months later to a seat seated next to another girl
and then several months after that finally a conversation or
a shared activity. So we are giving girls all of
the time and space that they need to get there
on their own terms. And that's unique about us because
(09:00):
as far as I know, there are not other social
clubs doing it that way and that's why it works
and that's why people are happy.
Katie Bennison (09:07):
Basically it's peer pressure without the pressure.
Vicky Ryan (09:10):
Yes, exactly.
Katie Bennison (09:12):
Because I bring Sophie, my daughter to Girls Club whenever
we can and she absolutely loves it. When are we
going to Girls Club again? And it just fills your heart
because it is really hard for our kids to make
friends in a neuro- typical environment. And that brings me
to this. People talk a lot about the importance of
integration with neuro- typical kids and why do you think
(09:34):
it's important for youth who are on the spectrum to
meet and hang out with other kids who are more
like them?
Vicky Ryan (09:41):
I think it's important because everybody needs to find their
tribe. You need to find your people. That doesn't mean
to say you don't have neuro- typical friends or friends
at school, friends, and they can be your best. It
doesn't matter. I'm not saying choose us, not them. It's both.
Katie Bennison (09:59):
Girls Club organizes all kinds of things. There's art gallery
trips. There's trick or treating. There's Taekwondo, sexual health night,
talent shows, princess tea parties, the birthday parties. What have
you learned from the girls in putting on these activities?
Vicky Ryan (10:16):
What I have learned from the girls is that they're
pretty much up for anything and they're much more adventurous
than I would have expected when I started. For example,
the talent show. I thought most girls with autism also
have quite high anxiety and I would never have thought
of doing a talent show, but that was a member
request. That was three little girls who came to me
(10:36):
and said, can we do a talent show? And I
was like, sure. So I did the talent show. That
was shocking to me going to Playland as a field
trip and watching them on The Beast. I was like,
what is happening?
Katie Bennison (10:50):
All the sensory stuff, right?
Vicky Ryan (10:52):
Exactly! So much more adventurous, but when they feel safe
and comfortable with each other, they're definitely willing to go there.
Katie Bennison (10:59):
You're listening to life on the spectrum. I'm Katie Bennison.
Coming up, you'll hear part of my conversation with Michelle
Garcia Winner. Michelle is a congressional award winning speech language
pathologist. Her strategies for overcoming social challenges are used around
the world. And hey, if you like what you've been hearing,
help us out please and rate and review us on
(11:21):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast fix. It
really helps us reach more people. But first let's check
in with our parent round table and hear their concerns
about the social challenges their teenagers face living with autism.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
And I found it just went to warp speed around
age 12 or 13 as the other kids changed the
social dynamic, the maturity increased, more peer interactions and dynamics
that Dylan wasn't able to connect with and as friends
changed and became friends and people got mad and didn't
(12:01):
talk to each other, he didn't know how to process
that and understand it. They made a promise that we're
going to meet at two o'clock and they didn't come
or this promise was made and they broke the promise.
So I think a lot of those interactions between teens
is that complexity. It just kind of hit the wall
and extraordinarily intense emotional outbursts. Like just the inability to
(12:27):
communicate or articulate his emotions without kind of a lot
of self harm. So I think that was the most difficult.
Speaker 9 (12:36):
Any group work at school. She struggles with knowing what
the other people are expecting of her and what to
expect from them. She had this one project this year
that she would have failed if she hadn't shown up
to talk to the teacher at the end of term.
It was a social studies project that they came up
with a rap, a history rap, and one of the other
girls was going to do the tune and the (Leona)
(12:57):
wrote all the lyrics and stuff and the other girl was going to do
the music but they didn't do anything. They didn't hand
it in at all, so the teacher then called them
all in on the last day of school and Leona was the
only one who showed up, so she didn't even understand
why they didn't show up. All the unwritten social cues.
We walk down the street, I can see the two
people, I know what they're thinking. I get a sense
(13:18):
of what their relationship is, whether they're friends or whatever.
That's lost on her. She's still struggling to understand what
are those two people thinking.
Speaker 10 (13:27):
It's the inability to sort of understand what relationships are between
other people, what they're thinking, what their reaction might be
to the things that he says or does or doesn't
say or doesn't do, whether he's looking at them when
he's speaking, all of those things. He's unable to kind
of really get that. And also he doesn't understand people,
their reaction to him and their relationship to him. He
(13:49):
might have one conversation with someone at lunch and then
that person is his best friend and he comes home
and it breaks my heart because I'm like, well, I don't
know if that person's your, you know. Anyway, we've had
a lot of those things where he doesn't understand if
that person really is his friend or not his friend.
Katie Bennison (14:06):
One of the biggest challenges that come with autism is
the social side and we live in cultures that rely
heavily on social interaction. We need social skills to build
friendships, navigate conflict, and to develop careers. We also need
them to just go to the grocery store or buy
a movie ticket. But even the simplest social situations can
be very tough for people with autism. So how can
(14:29):
parents, educators and caregivers smooth the way for kids on
the spectrum? Well, this is a question Carol Gray knows
an awful lot about. She began her career as a
teacher in the 1970s and at that time she had
several students with autism so she developed what she called
Social Stories. Now her approach is used right around the
(14:50):
world. She's highly sought after as a keynote speaker and
we are very lucky to have Carol Gray join us
on Life on the Spectrum. Carol, thanks for being a
part of the show.
Carol Gray (15:01):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Katie Bennison (15:03):
So this episode is dedicated to helping pave the way
for kids socially. So I wanted to ask you, first
off, what are social stories?
Carol Gray (15:14):
Social stories are often very brief narratives, descriptions of everyday
events, concepts, skills, and also achievements. And what we've discovered
is by placing things in writing, following a format that
makes the information meaningful, understandable for people with autism, we
(15:41):
find that often they adopt on their own new more
effective responses to the situations that we've described.
Katie Bennison (15:50):
What would be an example of how a social story might
be used?
Carol Gray (15:54):
Some examples that we are working with in the workshop
that I'm currently conducting, one of the stories that people
are working on is for a little girl, Emma, four
years old and she's fearful of using the toilet and the
doctors have said she should be fine to use the
toilet. Everything physically is there and ready, but she seems
(16:15):
frightened of using the toilet. So we have some people
working on a story for Emma. We have another little
guy, a little older who's learning to write but seems
to feel that his letters must be exact. Exactly like
the model that's up in the classroom. So other people
are working on a social story for him. And at Social Story,
(16:37):
not only are we looking for characteristics and how the
information is presented, but we're also looking for the process
that determines the topic and implements the story.
Katie Bennison (16:48):
So if I give an example of my daughter who's
on the spectrum, my daughter used to be really afraid
of loud hand dryers in public spaces, like in grocery
stores, in malls, et cetera. So we had to write
a social story to show her that these are just
machines and they can't hurt you, but it had visuals
(17:08):
with it.
Carol Gray (17:09):
What's interesting is you're talking about your daughter. I had
a student on my caseload who would run from a
restroom if somebody turned on the air hand dryer. And
just as you did, we wrote a social, I contacted
the company that created that hair hand dryer and I said,
I need to know how that works, and they sent
(17:31):
diagrams, et cetera. We put that along with text and
basically described how air hand dryers work. Now in the
case of that young man, I mentioned in this story
that air hand dryers turn off automatically after about one
minute. He did not know that because he had never
stayed around long enough for them, but he was fascinated
(17:53):
by the thought that they might do that. The next
problem was getting him out of the restrooms because he
would do them over and over and over and over
again because now he understood how they worked. He understood
that there was an end to a sound that was
obviously uncomfortable for him. Meaningful frustration, whether it's being at
(18:13):
the dentist, we can tolerate something that's uncomfortable if we
understand the rationale, if we understand why we're being asked
to sit in this chair at the dentist with people
crawling all over the inside of our mouths. If we
understand the rationale for that, that frustration has meaning for
us and we're more likely to stay.
Katie Bennison (18:33):
Have there been studies done on the benefits?
Carol Gray (18:36):
Social Stories are now considered an evidence based practice, which
means that there has been enough objective research to determine
that yes, this is an effective strategy.
Katie Bennison (18:48):
So if parents or caregivers are interested in trying to
use Social Stories, what should they do? What steps should
they take?
Carol Gray (18:56):
One of the best steps would be to attend a genuine
Social Story workshop. One that is conducted by either myself
or what we call one of our Social Stories satellites,
which are organizations that now have my materials and they
have people trained to conduct Social Story workshops. Or go
(19:16):
to my website, carolgraysocialstories. com for a good introduction to that.
Katie Bennison (19:22):
Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
Carol Gray (19:26):
Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Katie Bennison (19:29):
Every parent wants their child to make friends, to have
conversations, to take turns and to share, to feel love
and to give love. Humans by nature are social creatures,
but when your child doesn't learn the same way as
other kids, teaching social skills can be a big challenge.
So what do you do? Michelle Garcia Winner specializes in
(19:50):
the treatment of people with social learning challenges. She's the
founder and CEO of Social Thinking in California, a company
that helps kids and adults develop social skills and meet
their social goals. She's created programs that help educators, clinicians,
and other professionals as well as parents and families. Michelle
has written more than 20 books and she travels the
(20:12):
world to talk about social thinking. Michelle, welcome to life
on the spectrum.
Michelle G. W. (20:17):
Thanks and thank you for inviting me.
Katie Bennison (20:19):
Absolutely. So my question for you is, first of all,
why is it important for people to learn how to socialize?
Michelle G. W. (20:29):
It's in our DNA to seek the emotionality of connecting
with each other. And if a student keeps saying, I
don't care, I don't care, I don't care, as they
age up, at some point they start to get really
depressed and really anxious because just like we need food
and air, we need human connection to keep us feeling
like we're part of something bigger than ourselves.
Katie Bennison (20:51):
Absolutely. Well, why is it difficult for people with autism
to socialize?
Michelle G. W. (20:57):
So folks on the autism spectrum have some different learning
abilities in addition to some biological and sensory processing, but
in terms of their cognitive abilities, some of our folks
have really great scientific abilities, but when it comes to
the social world, their brain struggles to understand other people's
(21:19):
perspectives, to understand that other people have goals that are
different from their own. To be able to understand something
as elusive and innate and that's understanding as emotions. How
do I feel? How do you feel? How do we
create plans together? This is all part of what's called
our social cognition and I think it's hard today to
(21:41):
refute that each of us has many different types of
smarts we call them. Some people are naturally gifted in
math or reading and maybe not gifted on the playground
or not gifted in socially connecting. And that's because our
brains are designed, each of us has a unique brain
that delivers us different types of brain smarts. People on
(22:01):
the autism spectrum all share a trait of having their
brain be more sluggish when it comes to understanding the
social dynamics.
Katie Bennison (22:09):
So what are some of the toughest social situations for
children with autism?
Michelle G. W. (22:16):
So there's different types of autisms out there and our
work is specifically for kids who have solid to high
level language and learning abilities. But there's kind of two
big factors going on. One is understanding others, understanding that
people have plans that are different from yourself. Understanding that
people don't understand you by you just existing. I've worked
(22:39):
with some clients who thought just, I thought that just
by showing up on the playground meant I wanted to
play, but no one came to play with me because
they were standing back just kind of looking at their
feet and they thought that because they were there, that
meant I really want to play with you, but no
one else reads that as being somebody who wants to
play, the typical kids. And so that's one of the
(23:01):
challenges is understanding kind of the perspective taking loop. What's
the message you want to send others? And a lot
of the messages we send are without language.
Katie Bennison (23:10):
Is it any different for teens? Are there different tough
social situations?
Michelle G. W. (23:15):
I think what gets harder for teens is one, kids
get developmentally cattier. Kids are more boastful of who's in
their group. And then by around third grade, fourth grade,
nine, 10 years old, kids not only really love who's
in their group, but then they sometimes make a big
deal about negatives about who's not in their group. More
verbosity or sometimes meanness about, who am I with, who
(23:41):
am I not with? But I have to say, people
on the autism spectrum can also, like they're not saints.
So they have some challenges. They're developmentally on point too
through this. And so I think there's a tendency to
think everybody on the spectrum is naive or unaware and
our guys can be pretty prickly at times and some
of our kids can even bully. So we have to
(24:04):
be aware of all of those factors. Because developmentally, the
mind just gets more complicated. We're all born to be
collaborative and cooperative in nature. But as we get a
sense of ourself, we want different things. And so by
the time you're becoming a teen, depending on where you
are on the spectrum, if you have more social self-
awareness, you may be feeling really rejected because you're seeing
(24:28):
people just relate more actively or, and dating is starting
and hormones are coming in. So it's a really vulnerable
age where we see kids really start to get super
frustrated. And the same kid maybe five years ago was
saying he's happy by himself, that his brain was kind
of overwhelmed socially when he was younger. Because one of
(24:51):
the things we see with younger kids, this happens with
some of our older kids too, but with younger kids
they're a little bit more spacey or they're happy inside
of their brain imagining whatever kind of passion that they
have that they like to think about. But as they get
older there's naturally a little bit more awareness of what's
going on around them. And certainly kids higher on the
spectrum have more and more awareness. And so then the
(25:13):
vulnerabilities are not only the complexity of social dynamics as
kids are hanging out in cliques and moving between friends
and wanting to date or flirt, there's also the really,
really compelling anxiety and depressions that can kick in. So
I think that's where we have to caretake how do
we validate a person and help them feel good about
(25:35):
where they are and what they're learning while also helping
them acknowledge their vulnerabilities and never make it sound too
easy? Like just stop being anxious. Because sometimes people say
you don't need to be anxious, just go join a
group. That kind of feedback isn't helpful because it just
makes it all sound like it's easy and none of
(25:55):
this is easy. When your brain makes something hard for
you to learn, that's certainly stressful.
Katie Bennison (26:00):
You coined the term social thinking in the mid 1990s.
What is social thinking?
Michelle G. W. (26:07):
So social thinking is the ability to understand our own and
others' perspectives and emotions in context to understand what's happening
around us or what's happening to the people that we're
seeing on a screen, in a story, in the news.
To understand people's intentions.
Katie Bennison (26:26):
So what's the answer? How do we help kids or
teens on the spectrum get better at social thinking?
Michelle G. W. (26:32):
We have to really feed them what they want, which
is a logical way to understand super abstract information. And
that's what I've endeavored to do in Social Thinking, is
help logical minds think about the abstract nature of the
social world in a concrete way so they feel like
they can be part of it.
Katie Bennison (26:51):
That's those hidden rules that you always talk about.
Michelle G. W. (26:53):
Yeah. Lately we've been talking about teaching how does the
social world work? How do I work in the world?
How do I navigate and regulate in the world? To
meet each of our goals.
Katie Bennison (27:08):
And I think that's a great question to go out
on. I, for one, feel very inspired to look for
new ways to support my daughter as she learns the
hidden rules of social interactions. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode,
and if you'd like to hear my full conversation with
Michelle Garcia Winner or check out some of the other
episodes of our podcast, you can go to our website, lifeonthespectrumpodcast.
(27:34):
com. Plus, of course, you can always listen, like, and
share us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to
listen. The next episode will be all about navigating the
school system when your child is on the spectrum. I'm
Katie Bennison. Thanks so much for listening.
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