Specialty
Finding an "Island of Competence"
A friend of mine has a 13 year old son who has been diagnosed with autism. It has been a long tough ride for both parents, especially since Dana was pretty much out of control during his preschool years. It is very difficult to make diagnoses of any kind with very young children and even now, Dana fits the diagnosis in some ways and not others. The social deficits are quite evident as are symptoms such as rocking and tremors. He prefers to spend much of his free time playing video games by himself.
The parents went from one professional to another before this diagnosis was made. Medications have helped reduce aggressive outbursts and hyperactivity, but they produce side effects, such as loss of appetite and, perhaps, some mental fogginess at times. Schooling has been a major challenge. Dana is far behind in many areas and, at 13, one begins to wonder how much, if any he can make up his deficits. Yet, even in areas of weakness, such as language processing, sometimes he surprises with what he appears to understand.
But this is not an article about autism. This is a story about the challenge of finding an "island of competence" in a child who presents parents with a host of difficult challenges and is, literally, quite draining to spend a lot of time with. An important issue for all parents is to be able to identify at least one area of strength in a child and focus on that area in such a way as to help build a foundation of self-esteem and self-reliance. I learned much about the importance of "islands of competence" from listening to and reading books published by my good friend, and fellow psychologist, Robert Brooks.
Dana's mother focused on trying to help him experience success in the classroom. Years of struggle and disappointing results finally began to change when the school agreed to place Dana in a separate class for children with more severe special needs. Too often schools are so fixated on the concept of mainstreaming children that they fail to see the academic and social benefits of having a child primarily educated in a small, highly individualized environment. Dana has definitely made considerably more progress since this change took place. Nevertheless, learning is still a significant challenge for him. But he is clearly able to experience more success in his separate classroom, not just academically, but socially.
Still, Dana was missing out on the experience of fitting into the larger world in some way that might help him feel a special sense of competence and, perhaps, some recognition by a wider range of peers that he had something of value to contribute. For some children, they will demonstrate an artistic skill or prove adept at construction activities. Others develop an interest in a hobby, sometimes building on some obsessional traits to create an extensive collection of some type. I've seen children who love to cook, others who find a topic that they want to learn about almost to the exclusion of everything else but resulting in an expertise that belies their overall academic struggles. Some have a love of pets or enjoy caring for younger children that creates a positive role for them. But Dana didn't demonstrate any of these and his "victories" were small ones, savored by his parents, but not providing the kind of foundation they were searching for.
His father had focused on sports as a possible way to experience this. They tried several but the results were always the same. Dana was not very coordinated and seemed unable to grasp the complexity of team sports, even when kept simple at early entry levels. He would start out behind his peers and the gap would just widen each year until frustration set in and it was time to move on. However, a few years ago, Dana's father noticed that the gap between his son and other children when it came to roller blading didn't seem quite as substantial. In fact, early on, Dana showed better skills at this than anything else they had tried. So his father decided to focus on this one skill, and the sport of roller blade hockey, popular in warm climate areas where ice isn't readily available in the winter.
So began the process of pushing his son to practice, going back and forth, round and round, hour after hour. While Dana often protested that is was too hard, too tiring, his protests were mild enough not to discourage his father from pushing him. As part of the process, especially as Dana seemed to actually be closing the gap with his peers instead of increasing it, his father also began putting more pressure on Dana to "dress himself." Putting on a full set of hockey equipment is no easy task, especially for a boy who still can't tie his shoes. But playing on Dana's emerging joy of flying along on his blades, his father increasingly demanded that Dana lace himself up and get all the equipment on without any help. It took incredible patience but it gradually led to success. Of course, even now, Dana often complains and resists doing it. But, in the end, he does it, and one has to believe, it is important to him to know he can.
However, this is not a story about a boy with autism who can dress himself in hockey gear and skate very fast on his roller blades. Something even more remarkable happened. He could skate backwards. He could make and receive passes from teammates. And he could score goals. Lots of goals. It's not that he has become a great all-round player. He still struggles with lacking a true vision of the game and his role. But he knows more about this sport than any other. He even loves going to professional hockey games.
Most importantly, his teammates root for him, scream his name when he scores important goals, and accept him as a true, and important, part of the team on the rink. It is an experience that his parents had begun to doubt Dana would ever have. Now, this is not a movie story where everything changes. Dana is not a part of the lives of his teammates off the rink. But they all came to his birthday party, held at a professional hockey game, with a happy birthday sign appearing on the big overhead scoreboard, and all his teammates cheering.
At thirteen, Dana has an "island of competence." I spoke to my friend and we puzzled about why he shows such coordination on skates and nowhere else. What has made this so different? Actually, as I have reflected on that, I recall many children who are very proficient in a single sport while notably unsuccessful in others. Sometimes parents give up too soon. These parents didn't. There's no way to predict what this experience will really mean as Dana grows up. But you can be sure that experiencing himself as exceptionally competent in at least one part of his life, while struggling in other parts, is going to count for something of value, now certainly, and likely, forever.
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