SEASON THREE PREMIERE!!
What if the key to unlocking the brilliance of an autistic child lies in focusing on their strengths rather than their challenges? This episode, Jessica is joined by Dr. Lynn Koegel, a leading figure in autism education, who has passionately championed a shift from the deficit model to a strengths-based approach in teaching autistic children. Her latest book, "Hidden Brilliance: Unlocking the Intelligence of Autism," co-authored with Claire LaZebnik, is a testament to this belief, bringing to light the potential within these unique children that often goes unrecognized.
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SEASON THREE PREMIERE!!
What if the key to unlocking the brilliance of an autistic child lies in focusing on their strengths rather than their challenges? This episode, Jessica is joined by Dr. Lynn Koegel, a leading figure in autism education, who has passionately championed a shift from the deficit model to a strengths-based approach in teaching autistic children. Her latest book, "Hidden Brilliance: Unlocking the Intelligence of Autism," co-authored with Claire LaZebnik, is a testament to this belief, bringing to light the potential within these unique children that often goes unrecognized.
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I'm Jessica Kidwell, and this is Neuroversity, a space to expand our understanding of neurodiversity and elevate neurodivergent voices and experiences. Today, I am joined by Dr Lynn Koegel, clinical professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the co-founder of the Koegel Autism Clinic at the University of California, Santa Barbara. With decades of experience in this field, Dr. Koegel has been at the forefront of the evolution of autism treatment and supports, with the goal to improve communication and understanding between autistic children, their parents and families and their schools. Her latest book, hidden Brilliance Unlocking the Intelligence of Autism, written with Claire LaZebnik, is a practical guide for parents and educators on how to stop evaluating autistic children with a deficit model and instead focus on their strengths in order to build a more successful education experience. So, fellow curious minds, let's get started. Dr Koegel, I am very grateful to have you. Welcome to Neuroversity.
Lynn Koegel:Thank you so much Thank you for inviting me, and I'm happy to be here.
Jessica Kidwell:So could we just start off a little bit about your background and how you have come to be this expert with decades of experience in the autism field. Well, that's a good question.
Lynn Koegel:Ironically, I started out in college as a studio art major and finally I realized that I wasn't that good and it wasn't probably going to make a good living. I wasn't going to make a good living at that. So I switched to speech pathology and became a speech pathologist and then I worked in the public schools for about five years and then had two kids of my own and decided that it was kind of hard to get to work at eight in the morning with two little tiny ones under two. So I ended up just deciding to work at the university where my husband was working with kids with autism and I worked in his clinic, which was an after school clinic, and then eventually just added on hours and hours and hours to my work schedule. And then after 10 years, after I got my master's, I got my PhD in psychology. So it was kind of a roundabout route to get there.
Jessica Kidwell:This is not your first book that you have written with Claire Lazebnik. How did you and Claire become such prolific co-authors?
Lynn Koegel:Well, Claire was a writer. She is a writer, she has written a lot of young adult books and constantly writes. And I met her years and years and years ago through her children and we kind of decided to get together and write our first book, just as kind of a team of a parent professional team, just kind of looking at both sides. And then we wrote a second book for older children which was kind of what was called Growing Up on the Spectrum. And then for a long time we'd been sort of throwing around this idea of you know, too often we don't focus on the positive. And I thought of it.
Lynn Koegel:It really came to my attention with my nephew when he was diagnosed because he was so smart but he was non-verbal and he had a lot of interfering behaviors, meltdowns and things like that. But all the reports always came back focusing on his meltdowns and none of them ever came back with things about his strengths and kind of it hits you hard, you know, when it's your own, really that close to you. So I ended up just kind of taking a few notes and a few years later Claire and I were chatting and we decided, oh, this would be a really important book.
Jessica Kidwell:The timing of this book is incredible because I think that the evolution of understanding of autism from when you first got involved to now comes across so clearly in your book and within the preface itself.
Jessica Kidwell:There is a lot of framing that I think addresses some of the I don't want I don't like to use the word conflict, but maybe disparate views currently all over the actually autistic self advocate world and those of us who are not neurodivergent but who truly wish to understand it more and be better allies for those that we care about who are neurodivergent. And I just really loved how you and Claire kind of start the book off in the preface, kind of setting the stage that this book is for everyone. And how did you determine that you were going to utilize this inclusive language which, for those who haven't read the book yet, although I highly recommend you all make a conscious decision to use person first and identity first and go very fluidly back and forth throughout the entire book, and it is not difficult as a reader to move through those changes. How did you guys decide to choose this inclusive way of addressing this somewhat divisive standpoint?
Lynn Koegel:well, that is an interesting question because when I started in the field everybody said autistic child. You never, ever published anything or gave a speech or anything without saying autistic child. And then I think it was sometime in the 80s the parents really rebelled against that and they asked us to please not use autistic child, to use child with autism. So it really took a lot of retraining and a lot of. Sometimes you'd slip and go oh my gosh, I said autistic child and I met child with autism, and so the parents would call us on that too. A lot of we slipped up and things. So we really were careful to respect the parents wishes and it was a strong advocacy group of parents so we really were respecting their wishes and switched it.
Lynn Koegel:And now it seems like for I can see, for logical reasons, a lot of adults autistic adults have preferred using the identity first language and I, you know we went back and forth on that and I was talking to a colleague the other day from another university and she said oh, I always cringe when someone says identity first because it was so bad when we used it. People would get so mad at us when we used it for a while, but so we just kind of decided to use it interchangeably. We thought you know you're not going to please everyone and I know there there are still researchers and parents that prefer identity first and there are some that prefer a person first. So we just thought, you know, we'll just mix it up.
Jessica Kidwell:We don't have a strong feeling, we want to be respectful to everyone, so we just decided to mix it up well, I love that this seemingly bold choice was born of a place of just not trying to take a stand but instead just trying to be inclusive, because that theme kind of runs throughout the book that this is about seeing each autistic child as an individual and helping them to succeed, while also seeing the need to support and affirm the caregivers and parents and families of autistic children, and then also seeing the point of view from the educator and provider standpoint that everybody truly comes into this space wanting to help and that if we kind of look at our systems from this standpoint, as opposed to wanting to always be in conflict amongst each other, one side is winning, one side is not.
Jessica Kidwell:The systems don't actually change. And I found the examples throughout the book, the real-life world examples of different autistic experiences, so impactful from a reader standpoint, because I think with the clinical background sometimes it books can be a little bit too clinical or sometimes they can be too not esoteric but like pie in the sky and a concept that you can't quite get. And yet you and Claire just really bring it so clearly with example after example of real-life ways that it is possible to change this paradigm of deficit focus and make impactful change on children if we focus more on strengths.
Lynn Koegel:Yes, thank you, that's I. Just a little side note that when you mentioned the academic part, with the first book Claire and I wrote we had to turn in a chapter and in the first chapter all of first section said wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And all of my section said too academic, too academic, too academic. And so I called Claire and I was like, oh no, you know what do we do now? And she goes well, they like the book, they bought the book, so we just have to be sure that we make it a little more readable.
Lynn Koegel:And I was used to writing textbooks, so it was kind of a learning style for me to try to write something that was not too academic, and so this was fun. And now I think Claire's been instrumental in helping me tone it down a little bit and still get the message across. So I've got to give her credit for that. But I will say that you know, it has been really fun writing with her and, and I think that you know the idea of inclusivity, I think we, both Claire and I, feel like it's kind of a broader issue.
Lynn Koegel:I mean, we just see we just, you know, want to have a better world, I think, and we want people to treat other people kindly and with strengths and looking at their strengths. So it's always nice to write about people with autism because sometimes they unfortunately have the most biases against them. And that's where the neurodiverse movement has really come in to talk to us about what language we're using and how, when we should include more people with autism, which is such a great thing, but I think also the message is bigger, like the procedures that work with individuals with autistic individuals also really help with any individual.
Jessica Kidwell:Well, it kind of is like the disability movement in general. There's a certain kind of design that is popular right now. Haley Moss has written about it. It's universal. Universal design is trying to get the systems to be more inclusive in ways that non-disabled people don't even think need to be changed, but it ends up benefiting everyone and not just different learners or disabled people or neurodivergent people. It's this universal benefit, if you just take a look at systems in a way to be more inclusive. Now that brings me to a big focus of the book, which is the current educational system that we have, the public educational system that we have here in the US, and you are able to very clearly show how most of the supports and resources that we have available for kids who require higher support needs are only able to be accessed if the evaluators are able to show deficits in the child. So our system currently is built around find as many deficits as possible in hopes that then the supports needed can be given. How do we change that?
Lynn Koegel:That is a bit of a catch-22 because we want we have to focus on the deficits in order to get some services, but I think we can have both. I really think that when we evaluate children, we can really look at their strengths. I know that we usually do that in IEP meetings. We start out by looking at their strengths but we don't do it enough. We don't do it like every testing, tested area should really point out the strengths. So we, for example, in speech and language, we might say, oh, they fall below the 5th percentile on their language development, but we don't say what they can do. What words are they saying? What got them there? So we really, I think in all those areas could really benefit by focusing on their strengths and really looking at different areas where maybe we're excluding them.
Lynn Koegel:Like kids with autism, on the autism spectrum, are really excluded from a lot of sports activities and a lot of team sports and they need the physical exercise. There's a lot of studies that show we've published a few ourselves that show that physical exercises were really helpful for autistic children. They do really well. If they they lower, it improves their responding and lowers some of their interfering behaviors. So I think really we need to kind of look at all those areas and really try to focus in on every single area where they have strength, because if we know why they're doing well, that'll lead us to help with an intervention plan and help with a support plan.
Lynn Koegel:And I just think it's too easy. In fact, I was at an IEP last week and the child scored in the average range on one particular area and the person, the examiner, said you know, I couldn't believe he tested in the average range. So I gave a couple more tests because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything and I was thinking my gosh, if you test anybody enough, you're going to find something that they don't do well. So I think it's just, instead of to praise their strengths, we too often go to trying to find these deficits and these areas of weaknesses.
Jessica Kidwell:You mentioned in the book how, for many providers, evaluators, those in position of having to determine the supports that children need that there can be a difficulty in seeing past the disruptive or interfering behaviors. With the experience that you have, do you have advice on how to remind our evaluators and assessors that they have to look past this disruptive behavior?
Lynn Koegel:I think the keeping in mind that most disruptive behaviors or meltdowns or interfering behaviors really are communicative. I think too often people think that the child has bad behaviors instead of really trying to understand the functions of these behaviors. So I think that's really important. One thing that I know happens is everybody panics when a child has a meltdown or an interfering behavior, and instead of panicking, I think they just need to think OK, when the child is really annoyed and irritated is not the time to teach. It's like any of us when we're you know something's bothering us and someone comes up and says oh, I can help you with a better way. You might not really feel like it at the moment, but I think the important thing is to not worry about it in the moment, but just really give a lot of consideration to the behavior and why it was happening. I think that's not too often. Kids are excluded from activities. In fact, I was talking to a dad yesterday, that said of a teenager, and he said that his son was expelled not suspended, but expelled twice before he was, when he was in the second grade, expelled from school because of, you know, some interfering behaviors, and I think we need to just step back and really understand why they're happening. So that's one, and not worry about it in the moment we're not gonna, you know, fix the problem.
Lynn Koegel:But then part two is to really develop a comprehensive intervention plan. I think too often the kids maybe the work is hard and they get Sent home from school or sent out of the classroom because they're acting up and then the child's just learned that oh, if I act up I don't have to do this hard work. So I think we really, instead of teaching the child to ask for help or maybe to revise the curriculum so it has some easy and harder interspersed and so on. So I think it's just too easy to not really develop a comprehensive program but to exclude the child. And I think it's just really important to Understand the behaviors and then again to develop a multi Component intervention.
Lynn Koegel:So maybe three or four Interventions should be occurring at the same time. Maybe one has to do with language and replacement behavior, maybe one is a self-management program, maybe one is revising the curriculum. I always say first of all, look at how we're teaching. Sometimes we can make the teaching more exciting so the child doesn't have to have these behaviors and and develop a multi component intervention program to put in place. That will help the child and making sure that everybody's Coordinated and it's not always that easy to coordinate everybody across settings, but it's so helpful for the child.
Jessica Kidwell:I found it helpful, as the parent of an autistic daughter, that this Idea of focusing on the deficit from an evaluator or provider standpoint needs to change. But I needed the reminder, as a parent, that sometimes I need to change the lens in which I'm looking, and there was a list of In the summary from the first chapter, hidden strengths. Where I did, I sat down and I answered the questions that are asked, which are what are my child's strengths? What does my child love to do, eat or watch? When is my child Happiest? What does my child do best?
Jessica Kidwell:What settings bring out the best in my child? What people bring out the best of my child? And how does my child learn best? And it was humbling for me to to realize how long it had been since. Perhaps I took a look at Her through that lens, because I think we spend as parents so much time worrying and advocating To make sure that the deficits are taken care of that even I, as her most fierce Ally and advocate, can lose sight of her strengths, and I Guess that's one of the things that I hope Parents will get, or even Ants, uncles anyone who loves a autistic person Can kind of use this opportunity to change the lens and and try to see that there are so many strengths and that helps kind of determine ways for my child to be more successful.
Lynn Koegel:Sometimes things can be a little simpler if we look at the strengths for and look at you know, those questions that we ask like. Let me just give you a recent example. I have a student that had two paraprofessionals working with him. He's fully included and one of them was not very supportive. Before they'd go to Class she'd say now remember, don't Do, don't get out of your seat again. I always have to tell you to get out of your seat and it kind of put him in a bad mood. And the other paraprofessional was a Opposite, always just very encouraging and Ironically, when he was with the one that was kind of punitive, even when he hadn't done anything wrong, just in her way of Reminding him he didn't behave as well. So sometimes you know, simple things can be changed and altered just environmentally to make things a little different.
Lynn Koegel:Maybe I've had kids that were seated by somebody that was not being very nice to him and Antagonizing them and then they'd have a meltdown. It was really just because they were seated by somebody that wasn't being supportive. And I think you know other times people will say, oh, he has really bad attention. But then we look in some subjects the child can focus really well for hours. So it's not that they have a bad attention, it's just that it's not something that's motivating to them.
Lynn Koegel:So I thought you know it's important to discuss that if we really focus on their interests, that can make a big difference. For example, in academics, instead of Writing about something the teacher has decided they write about, if they let them choose a topic that's of their interest, that can make a big difference. Even things like choosing the order of doing your homework can make a big difference for the kids, especially with our language. We can, you know, as long as they're learning language and progressing and learning more vocabulary and learning how to string words together, it doesn't matter what you talk about, what you learn, and we can talk about what's you know, even if it's a perseverative interest, that's fine, as long as you know they're learning what we want them to learn.
Lynn Koegel:So, really focusing on these strengths and you know I have a lot of parents that send video clips to me and they'll call me and they say we're having some Issues with some of the behaviors Can I send you those? And I always say yes, but also send me when you're not having the problems, because sometimes just comparing those two situations and figuring out. Oh, this is stepping back and figuring out this could be it or that could be it, or there might be multiple reasons why one environment is harder than the other, so really trying to look at what Situations they do well in also is really helpful.
Jessica Kidwell:Could you expand a little bit on the example within the book that is given on a child that was deemed non-verbal and had been Kind of, just assumed would remain non-verbal? And you observe the child and noticed, was able to notice where his attention kept being drawn to, and once you were able to stop the providers from Forcing their agenda onto the child and went and spent time with where his attention kept going, something amazing happened.
Lynn Koegel:That happens a lot, where people decide what words a child should learn first, and we used to do that. Actually, I should say we all did that. We all did that back in the 70s when I first started working with kids with autism. We had flashcards, we had cabinets full of flashcards and we always just we decided what words they should use and we decided they should sit at a table and put their hands down and things. And the kids weren't really enjoying the sessions that much and we always felt so badly. In fact my husband was the first one to say you know, I got 10 here but I never felt good about it because the kids didn't like the sessions.
Lynn Koegel:I remember my first little guy. He was nonverbal, he was probably about five or six and cute little redheaded guy and he said he'd never said a word before but I had a cookie and we usually use the cookies because he liked cookies as a reward for responding correctly with our flashcards. But I just was, we were just kind of exploring some other methods of teaching and I held up the cookie and said cookie and he said cookie, perfectly clearly, a little slowly but perfectly clearly, and I couldn't believe it and I did it again and again and I ran him down the hall. He must have had about 10 cookies that day because he did so well with the cookies. But just connecting it and it kind of makes sense. I mean, when you think about it, the way we used to and unfortunately some people still do teach children on the autism spectrum is kind of not the way children without autism learn language. They learn language because they get that connection between their words and the outcome of those words and just not use that just doesn't make sense.
Jessica Kidwell:The key with the motivational components I think that you have found is what motivates. What we think motivates most children does not motivate most autistic children because of the difference in the way the brain is wired and what is interesting or what social connection looks like.
Lynn Koegel:That's absolutely correct, especially kids without autism. You'll hear them say things like mama, dad a. Depending on the culture, they may say auntie and things like that are doggie and they're a little more social high by. And the kids that are the autistic children usually tend to have their first words things that they really enjoy, activities they enjoy or items they enjoy, which I feel like that's absolutely fine. We just want to get them a lot of words and if it's fun to say those words, they're going to want to say more words. But if we're forcing them to say words that we want them to say, even if it's mama, dad, it's not going to, they're not going to want to talk.
Lynn Koegel:So we're these motivational components really. You know, we have a theory that maybe the kids can perform a lot better than people think, but it's just that they lack that motivation. And then when they don't have a lot of motivation, adults tend to help them a lot and try to do things for them, caringly and lovingly try to do things for them, but sometimes that can compound the problem. Sometimes that can make them try less because they can get things done without having to make an effort. So we really want to look at what motivates them and try to get them enjoying it.
Lynn Koegel:So it's, it's hard. I mean, if you say hi to somebody, if you're a little kid and someone says hi to you, if you say hi back, they're going to say how old are you or what you know, what's your name or do you go to school, and things like that. That gets so hard and it's I think we said in the book if you take your subject that you thought was hardest in school and then say, okay, now you have to do it all day long, I think all of us would have a lot of avoidance behavior.
Jessica Kidwell:That in and of itself was mind shifting for me. And then when you start to look at what is valued if you're looking at like preschool aged children, for instance, and how sometimes arbitrary, like who decided that this particular set of words or numbers or letters were the gold standard of first this, then you can start being interested in more atypical children, things like dinosaurs or trains or what you know. Every fact about a giraffe like that is as valuable, and the words used to impart all that information are are excellent words, and I find that sometimes the systems have to take a look at what why did? Why did we decide this was the gold standard anyway?
Lynn Koegel:That's true and I think too often people think, oh, if this isn't what children without autism do, we should get rid of it.
Lynn Koegel:And you can always turn those activities into a social activity. For example, I was in a preschool not too long ago and the little guy would lay on his side and open and close, and open, and close, and open and close his little playhouse door and he could do that for hours. But we found out that if we called the other kids over and talked to them about doors and let them take turns opening, he didn't mind that at all, and so he was learning to take turns and he was telling them whether to open the door or close the door. So you can create these social activities out of a child's perseverative interest, which can be really fun for the autistic person. And we've done that all the way from preschool up through college and adulthood where, if we look at what their interests are and really expand on that, not only do, most of the kids are very in awe of the individual with autism because they have so much information on that. So that really makes a big difference.
Jessica Kidwell:Which leads me to my next question, which is another chapter in the book where it's the limits of conventional testing and if we have a system, which we do the public school system currently, depending on the state that you live in. But generally we are looking at standards of learning and the ever, the ever vilified IQ test that is still sometimes used as a gold standard for determining a child's ability. What are some of the limitations that you hope to highlight of conventional testing for everyone to kind of keep in the forefront of their minds, I think?
Lynn Koegel:one of the big issues with conventional testing is it doesn't tap into some of the areas of strength of the child and some children have and adolescents and adults have really big strengths where they maybe accumulated a lot of information on a topic and some it maybe just be smaller areas where they enjoy. Even if they do have some significant language differences, they still have some areas of strength and some things they enjoy which the testing doesn't always pick up and I think you mentioned earlier too in your questions is sometimes parents know about these things that the school doesn't. For example, we had a fourth grader that loved old movies and could name every single movie star, the name of the title, the year it was made. She knew everything about old movies and always watched them, but the school never knew that. And somebody that can memorize that many dates and that many names has a real strength, but it wasn't showing on the test.
Lynn Koegel:So I think we all need I think as professionals and as mentors, we need to teach people how to look for these strengths and ask for them and really, if we do a language sample, we need to bring out these areas that they'll talk about a lot so we can look at their strengths and maybe do more observations and do more questioning, because I think in general we get so used to even as parents, we get so used to talking about what he can't do and what we need to focus on as goals that we forget sometimes to really focus on what they can do and what they do like and what they are good at. So really those standardized tests, especially like things like vocabulary tests, they're not going to tap into some of those areas where the kids may have a lot of vocabulary but they're not mainstream so much.
Jessica Kidwell:But that goes back to the motivation factor. If you have a child who is not motivated by the approval that one receives when you do well on a test, then the testing in and of itself is something that they're not really interested in focusing on and that sometimes perhaps, tests don't measure intelligence. They measure the ability to please others or the ability to have attention.
Lynn Koegel:That's absolutely right and I think that there's a lot of things that play into reasons why a child may not do well on a standardized test. We discussed quite a few of them in the book. But sometimes behaviors are interfering with their ability to do well and also with standardized tests. Most often they're not really involved, they're not really around their interests, so that can play into it where they're not motivated, so they just don't respond as well, even if they know the answer. I've had kids too that sometimes some of the standardized tests you have to kind of max out, like you have to get a certain number right in a row Sorry, a certain number wrong in a row before you can stop the test, or maybe six out of eight wrong before you can stop the test. So if the kids start not knowing the answer and they realize that they're not doing very well and they're struggling because it's not easy, they can get really frustrated and not persevere as long. So there's so many reasons why they may not do well at standardized tests and I think this is kind of true of a lot of kids I think I mentioned in the book there.
Lynn Koegel:I remember visiting one of my friends. She was a teacher and I stopped in to see her and she was giving a class wide IQ test for the gifted program and she whispered to me look at some of the kids, because some of them were like staring out the window and playing with their pencils and she said they don't realize how important this is to some of their parents. And so really the kids that were just kind of bored and were more interested in something happen outside may come up with a lower score than the children that are maybe good at test taking, so it doesn't necessarily mean that they're smarter than the other kids. That's why it's kind of better to mix in classes, to mix in all different you know ability levels and have the teachers individualize more. That seems to work out better for the kids than having than segregating them by these arbitrary labels that we put on them.
Jessica Kidwell:Do you think that parents in general I mean this is an overgeneralization, but do you think parents feel empowered to push back on the type of testing that their children may have? Or how can we empower parents more to give the school or the provider that additional information if they think that the picture of their child is not necessarily a full picture?
Lynn Koegel:I think parents can Google tests. So sometimes if the kids better visually than verbally, it's almost better to have a nonverbal IQ test just to see how they can do with that visual or I mean personally, I'm not a huge fan of standardized tests.
Jessica Kidwell:I'd rather have more observation and see how they're doing in the real world and what they need to succeed in the real world, rather than focusing too much on tests, and that has to be the important part that the parent plays when an IEP is being drawn up, because and your book gives lots of very good examples of supports that can get requested and put into place in the IEP that maybe some parents don't necessarily, or haven't necessarily thought of before. So I found it very helpful as far as to educate parents on ways that they can request these supports in the document that then is supposed to be legally binding for the public school systems to provide.
Lynn Koegel:Yes, it is really helpful for the parents to request the most that they can, or that would be the most helpful for their children to really be comprehensive in that. And sometimes I feel like when we write an IEP it's for a whole year and sometimes I think the bar is just way too low for a whole year. I mean I think, gosh, if the kid can only learn 20 new words in a whole year, we're doing something wrong with the way we're teaching them. So, or whatever the goal is. So just make sure that we're thinking. A whole year that's a long time, that's a lot. And you know, I think teachers and paraprofessionals should be exhausted at the end of the day. They should teach so much and so quickly and make it so much fun that they're exhausted at the end of the day.
Lynn Koegel:Too often we see the paras or other people just kind of standing back and only stepping in if the child is having a problem when we really need to figure out. How can we really get a lot of learning going on all day long? That's another reason why we talk a lot about teaching initiations, so the children can kind of initiate some of these learning interactions. But also I think it's important just to get a lot of peers involved. I mean peers can be great and if they understand and have responsibility, they love it and peers can be really good support systems. So just kind of get everybody around the child coming together as a team so the child's going to really make a lot of progress. Whether you know they're, you know three or 33, it still makes sense to just have everybody come together and really support the people that need that support to be able to make as much progress as possible.
Jessica Kidwell:So that would lead me to believe that, personally, you are an advocate for inclusion education as opposed to pull out separated education.
Lynn Koegel:I am an advocate of that. There's study after study after study that shows that it's really beneficial socially for the children to have those good role models, to have kids that have good language development so that they can communicate and interact with them. And also there's a lot of research to show that the academically kids do better if they're included. Even the longitudinal studies which there are several that show that over time they sometimes, if you put them in a special ed class, they teach them slower, so they're not really catching up, which was the point of a smaller classroom, but they're just being taught slower and also just realizing that partial participation is so important.
Lynn Koegel:If people aren't exposed to things, they're not going to know what to do in that situation. So, for example, in the book I think we talk about, if you have a little child and you're clearing off the table, you have a little child clear their dishes off. You don't well, you don't have to clear their dishes. You haven't cleared the plastic or the spoons or the napkins, but you're not going to exclude the child from that because they need to learn that and that's the same thing with school.
Lynn Koegel:It's nice to have them exposed to this curriculum that the kids without autism are exposed to, because in the end we want them working and we want them included in jobs and having jobs is so important for mental health and for just society. So it's an odd thing to kind of segregate them the whole time and then say now you're 18, let's try to get you back included in a work setting or something like that. So I think that's on the one hand, the benefits for the autistic person are clear. But also there's been some publications for the children related to children without autism who have children with disabilities in their classroom and they do better. They do better, they learn more. If you get these peer-mediated interventions going, they report that it was satisfying for them. It's great for you know some of them will have children with autism and if they understand what to do, it will be much better than if they're segregated and have never seen someone with disabilities. So that's a long way of saying yes, I'm definitely pro inclusion.
Jessica Kidwell:I think it also has been shown that it builds empathy, and how is more empathy in the world something that anyone thinks we need less of?
Lynn Koegel:Absolutely. I think in the book we talked about a high school that we went to because one of our students was feeling the kids were being really mean to them. So we went to that class and we just talked about autism and characteristics and one of the students came up to us after and she said I feel so badly, I didn't realize he had autism and I've been being really mean to him. I didn't realize those were behaviors, were characteristic of you know autism, and she felt horrible. And the next day everything changed. He was happy to go to that class, he didn't feel like people were being mean to him and they were actually the opposite. So I think education, you know, helping people learn how to support others that may not have strengths, in whatever area, is so important.
Jessica Kidwell:So if you could recreate the education system in a model that was full of best practices. You and Claire have delineated some things within the book that you think would make best practices in a classroom setting. Can you pick a couple and we can talk a little bit about the classroom setting best practices that could be put into place?
Lynn Koegel:Well, we all know that motivation is really critical and I think we don't always teach our teachers properly and that I'll take some of the blame because I'm in the university setting but we don't always teach our teachers properly how to go in there and really look for activities that will motivate the children. And it's so important, especially for children on the autism spectrum, to have that motivational component, have practical, practical activities. I remember back into my kindergarten where some of the practical things we did I stick in my mind. I, we all probably remember the worksheet after worksheet after worksheet, like math problems that were worked, so many math problems that you hated it, whereas it's it's, you know, if you put it, add up, you know things that you want to buy from a catalog for your birthday or something. It's. It's easy to do, the math of the decimals and all that. So, really just looking at what's practical, what's fun and practical, which is a better way of learning, and that those are usually more motivational.
Lynn Koegel:Really looking at the kids interests you know we have so much turnover in education, especially special education. There's so much turnover and I think if teachers were able to go in there and realize what I'm doing is making these kids happy and not have. They wouldn't have to deal with so many interfering behaviors and things and we wouldn't have as much turnover. Maybe that's overly optimistic but it's just too bad that there's so much turnover and year to year parents have to deal with changes and I think I had one parent that said 10 of the teachers were new in his child's one year of school. You know it was like two new speech therapists and one new reason. It was just so much turnover. So I think really making the extra effort sometimes it's a little more work to not just do worksheets or put kids, you know, in the drill type situation but it really makes a big difference for learning and behavior.
Jessica Kidwell:I think that you mentioned the importance of organization, which can feel maybe when you are overstretched in a public school setting and you're a teacher with 30, some kids and not enough support and not enough budget. But you point out that if you take the time to be a little bit more organized on the front end, that that can pay off more in the classroom setting.
Lynn Koegel:Yes, and we do talk in the book about priming A lot of times.
Lynn Koegel:If we can send the materials home with a child the night before, which can start in preschool with the stories and go all the way up to high school with other more advanced subjects if they feel more familiar with them, they won't do as much avoidance and escape behavior.
Lynn Koegel:So we just like to familiarize the children and this can be the case on tests too. Some of the schools will let us have the test beforehand and that's always really helpful to just kind of go over the test. We even had some kids that didn't do poorly on the subject material but they had trouble with following the directions on a test and if we could just prime them and go over those directions beforehand, they did well on the test. So really I like the priming because it's a way of instead of having to send home all this work that they didn't finish, it's to preview it, so they find it more enjoyable and they understand a little better and they're more engaged. So I think that priming it's a nice homeschool collaboration method that can really be helpful for kids across the age span, since we focused on finding the strengths of the autistic child or student in our lives.
Jessica Kidwell:can we end the interview talking a little bit about some of the ways that you and your co-author encouraged parents and I guess it could apply to educators and providers as well in finding their own joy?
Lynn Koegel:Well, I think we did have a chapter on parents, because we feel that that's so important. I mean, teachers come and go, service providers come and go, but parents, we all love our kids so much and we'll do anything for them and we won't. You know, we'll be there throughout our lifespan for our kids. But we also realized I personally think it's very unfortunate that if you look at the stress measures, parents of children with autism have higher stress than any other group of parents, and I feel like that's something society is very much failing families. You know, we all anybody that has a child knows that you have some stresses when you have a child, but it shouldn't be. We all know stress isn't fun, and to have parents that have to feel like this constantly means we as a society aren't pulling together and supporting families in the way that we should, so parents can feel not stressed and feel, you know, happy, and so I think that's one thing that I'm not sure there's an easy answer to that, but we give some ideas of just coming together and really helping people, families, other things to really support them, and also it is nice for parents to have breaks once in a while, of course, but parents of children with autism always report that they don't feel comfortable getting the neighborhood babysitter because their kids might have some behaviors or some things that they're not really able to deal with.
Lynn Koegel:So at my last university we always put together a list of undergraduate students that had experience and maybe some coursework in the area.
Lynn Koegel:So we suggest, if you have a university near you, to reach out or to try to get someone that you can train a little bit so that when you do take a little break that you feel good about that, your child's gonna be getting some support and not just be doing something that you wouldn't like them to do.
Lynn Koegel:So really, you know it's important to parents to take care of themselves and also physical activity is important. It's helpful. I had one dad that told me when he read our study on physical exercise he started riding his bike to school with his son every day, and some parents will walk their kids instead of driving them or maybe try to get them on a sports thing. But sometimes families can do sports activities go hiking, go swimming, anything that's fun for the child and that's so important too. So we try to discuss. A lot of different ideas of parents are so instrumental and a very necessary part of the child's development that we really want the parents to feel good and feel happy and, as I said, it's gonna take some work for the society in general to be there to support parents the way we should. But we do have some suggestions in the book.
Jessica Kidwell:Well, change doesn't happen quickly, and change doesn't happen unless we talk about it. So that is why I'm very grateful to you and to Claire for the work that you have done through the years, but especially for this book, Hidden Brilliance, and I hope that it gets into the hands that need it the most. But I also hope it gets into the hands of people who need to rethink things in a different way.
Lynn Koegel:Well, thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Jessica Kidwell:Neuroversity is hosted and produced by Jessica Kidwell. Our audio engineer is Jarrett Nicolay at Mixtape Studios. Jarrett also created our theme music. Graphic Design for Neuroversity by Kevin Adkins. Web support is provided by George Fox. For more information about this episode, ways to support the podcast or anything related to neuroversity, please visit our website at www. neuroversitypod. com. You can also follow us on your podcast app and social media sites. We are at @ neuroversitypod on Instagram, twitter, linkedin and Facebook and if you like what we're doing, please tell others about neuroversity and give us a review on Apple Podcast. There's plenty of room for more curious minds to enroll.