Issue No. 43, February 2013

Why Johnny Can’t Be Good

Here comes February, with its hype-y, happy holiday, a bafflement for concrete-thinking children with autism. Paper hearts and candy in every conceivable form confront us with the ubiquitous romantic request – or is it a demand? – “Be my Valentine,” or its more succinct version, “Be mine.” How, Bryce pondered one year when faced with the usual classroom party, was he supposed to do that? What do you have to do to be a Valentine? What if he didn’t want to be a Valentine? And “be mine,” well, that was downright scary. How could he be someone else’s? Did he have any choice in the matter or was “Be mine” an order, a have-to?

Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously chewed over the question, “To be, or not to be?” Paul McCartney’s last musical advice before leaving The Beatles was, “Let it be.” Contemporary pop music is replete with song titles like “I Will Be,” “Has to Be,” “Meant to Be,” “Just Be,” “May It Be.”

“I know he can’t be good all the time,” the exhausted mom of an eight-year-old with autism told me, with tears in her eyes. “But why he can’t he do it for just a day? A morning? An hour?” As we talked, many reasons emerged. But the starting point was this: how is a concrete-thinking child to infer what we mean by “good” when it may be the most subjective word in the English language? It’s an adjective, a noun, an interjection, an adverb. Dictionary.com cites sixty-four—sixty-four!—definitions and sub-definitions. “Good” is a moving target that changes from venue to venue, relationship to relationship. It changes with the time of day and it changes as the child ages. Defining “good” so that our kids can practice and master “being good” in every increment of every situation is an intensive process that, alas, too many adults trust to osmosis, to inferential skills our kids haven’t been taught, to inductive reasoning patterns not present in the thinking architecture of autism.

Even when we define “good,” we often couch it in negative terms. The weary mother’s definition of being good translated into don’t hit your brother, don’t throw things, don’t yell. We might think her list short and reasonable, but any demand that requires the child learn and master more than one thing at a time is a list too long. Small, incremental successes will naturally build upon one another, but multiple simultaneous expectations all but guarantee failure. Consider further: in order to be good, a child must feel good. In defining the “good” we want from them, do we acknowledge and validate the emotions, motivations and triggers behind a child’s behavior? Do we teach her the self-regulation strategies to deal with them, providing time and opportunity for her to practice those skills in a supportive, nonjudgmental way? Telling a child what not to do (don’t hit your brother) doesn’t tell her what to do. Even when phrased in active terms—how often have we said “keep your hands to yourself” or “button your lip,” idiomatic phrases that confuse the concrete-thinking child with autism—it doesn’t address the anger, frustration or fear behind the child’s thumping her brother. Learning to “be good” doesn’t mean she never gets to be angry, exuberant, frustrated or super-energetic. It means teaching her acceptable outlets for all her normal human feelings.

The same applies approach applies to the classroom. This true tale, an excerpt from Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew, skewers home the point:

I’ll never forget a story I heard years ago about a whirling dervish of a girl with ADHD, nine years old. Her teacher proposed a deal, a reward for meeting a behavioral goal. If the girl could “be good” for three weeks, the teacher would buy her an ice cream cone. The girl reported to her therapist: “Is she kidding? I can’t ‘be good’ for three hours, let alone three weeks. And besides, I don’t like ice cream.”

The goal: unrealistic, out of reach.

Guidance offered to help in accomplishing the goal: none.

The reward: irrelevant, and nowhere near equal in value to the effort required.

Here’s a scenario more constructive times six: Teacher and student (1) meet one-on-one and (2) discuss and agree to (3) a specific, (4) short-range goal (5) that is achievable and (6) has a meaningful motivator as a reward. For instance, the student will work toward remaining in her seat or other designated spot during silent reading time, which is the twenty minutes following lunch recess (short period of time following a physical-release outlet offers best chance of success). She’ll start with five-minute increments and work up from there. Success will earn her a token toward computer time, a movie pass or other mutually-agreed-upon end result attractive to her.

Why can’t he be good? He can, but not until we take a dose of our own medicine: be patient. As it so often the case, our answers might be found in the mirror. George Gershwin gave us the turn-the-tables perspective in his famous song lyric: “I am so awf'ly misunderstood. So lady, be good to me.”