Join Them in Their Wheelhouse!
My brother Danny has been calling me! Like, on the phone!
That may not sound like a big deal, but before the pandemic, I don’t think he’d ever picked up the phone to place a call without our parents prompting him. Phone phobia is real! Now, we talk a couple times a week, easily passing an hour or more chatting about video games. The funny thing is, during these calls it occurs to me that maybe he’s a better conversationalist than me. He makes up for my gaps in understanding and can keep it going with minor input from me. While my knowledge maxes out pretty quickly, I listen and make comments: “That sounds awesome!” “Wow. What do you think about that gamer’s theory?” Video games are definitely something he’s comfortable giving an opinion on! This is his wheelhouse.
This a good reminder to me as a teacher and family member of an autistic person that often, our metrics are off. Experts often judge autistic folks on their perceived conversational abilities, focusing on their “deficits” - but are we talking about something they know about? Or is their conversational ability being evaluated when they’re not in their wheelhouse?
Maybe it’s the neurotypicals who aren’t being reciprocal! If you put me in a room full of molecular biologists, I’m going to be woefully ill-equipped to contribute. I see in my classroom all the time how these kids I’ve been told don’t have reciprocal conversations or who only give one-word responses have wonderfully impassioned conversations about anime, Country Humans, Roblox, and other topics they know and care about when they find a peer with similar interests.
NERD ALERT 1: If you want some interesting reading on this concept, it really comes down to that double empathy problem (Milton, 2012). In a conversation between a neurotypical person and an autistic person, who both have a distinct communication style, there can be a breakdown. This is experienced by both people, leading to a rare feeling of conversational discomfort for the neurotypical person, and quite a common feeling of discomfort for the autistic person. Because “norms” are set by neurotypicals, it can lead one or both people to conclude that the problem is the autistic person’s communication skills. Wrong. They are both experiencing the same challenge. Another fascinating read is a study by Crompton and colleagues (2020) where they essentially played Broken Telephone with 3 groups. Groups were comprised of 8 neurotypical folks, others were made up of 8 autistic folks, and another was a mixed group comprised of both. They then passed a story down the chain. The fully neurotypical and the fully autistic groups both had similar rates of accuracy in details and rated their rapport as higher. The mixed group had a significant decline in detail retention and reduced ratings of rapport. The problem, it seems, is communicating with someone who communicates differently!
All of this leads me to conclude that maybe, just maybe, we as adults need to join our autistic loved ones or students in their wheelhouse more often.
Why to Join Them in Their Wheelhouse:
One of our class-designed bulletin boards.
You’ll get a truer sense of how a child communicates when you engage with them around their interests. Engage with them about their favourite things, and they’ll eventually ask you about your favourite things!
You’ll build rapport and trust, which makes everything else easier. And you’ll be able to develop inside jokes!
Your child will feel more relaxed! Interests are like recess — they should never be taken away. (Limited, sometimes, if the interest is taking over, but that’s another topic for discussion!) Interests may be the only time your child fully relaxes in a day. Let them have this break.
You can better support transitions if you use interests creatively. For instance, one of my families found that it was easier to put the device away if they ended off by playing a round or two of a game together.
You’ll build their self-esteem because they will be so much more knowledgeable on these topics than you, guaranteed! Ask for their advice, ideas, and opinions and really listen.
You can help them potentially “find their people” by enrolling your child in interest-based clubs. While not all of our friends share the same interests as us, interests are often a good starting point! Some of my students were delighted when a teacher agreed to supervise a lunchtime anime club, so schools can consider this, too!
Your child will be more interested in school, activities, and family interactions they enjoy.
How Their Wheelhouse Can Gradually Broaden & Why That’s Great!
Danny at the CN Tower.
Medieval Times!
Kickboxing!
You can expand their areas of interest and related skills in gradual steps. Maybe they can make a Youtube-style video game review for you. Perhaps they can take photos of fish at the aquarium and develop a love of photography. I once challenged students who loved Ninja Turtles to write and perform in a short ninja movie. Over several weeks, we brainstormed, created a script, practiced, and filmed our masterpiece. My students even created the costumes and props!
Your child may be more open to reading if you find a book or text that is in your child’s wheelhouse. Start with audio books or graphic novels. It’s still reading! Read to them out loud and once they’re hooked on the plot, ask them to read a little first before you take over and gradually increase their reading time!
Interests and new experiences can enhance their literacy skills! Reading comprehension is bolstered by connecting to prior knowledge and experiences, so children with more interest in the topic and who have more life experiences tend to make more meaning when reading. (NERD ALERT 2: read this article from Edutopia.)
You can use characters in video games, books, movies, or tv shows to teach them new things! You can talk about how characters handled different situations and use those as reference points. I once had a conversation with a student about how he could speed up from Allosaurus to Raptor when the recess bell rang and he was expected to line up.
You can help them to recognize that not all new experiences need to be feared. With Danny, I’ve used his interests as a bridge to trying many other new experiences. We’ve gone to the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of Goddesses and to a Harry Potter film accompanied by a live orchestra. We’ve tried out virtual reality. We’ve gorged ourselves at Medieval Times. We’ve also expanded to group activities, like playing Dungeons and Dragons and going to a video game RPG-style escape room with some friends. With each positive experience, he’s been more open to other excursions and activities. Somehow, I even got him to come to kickboxing class with me!
You can create positive memory boards to remind them of their accomplishments, new experiences, and things they enjoy! Danny and I take photos of each of our outings as a reminder of something he’s tried, enjoyed, and felt successful while doing. These can also act as a visual reminder that he can do new things. Each opportunity is a moment of growth that builds confidence that he will enjoy something new next time.
You can get them to share their opinions! “Did you like that book? What did you think of the arch-nemesis?” “Was that boss easy or hard to beat?” “What did you think of tobogganing?” They will tell you what they enjoy or don’t enjoy. Ask them why, but do so out of curiosity rather than in an attempt to persuade them to conform to your wishes. Being able to express thoughts and desires is part of self-advocacy! (Don’t force trying something they’ve said they hated - honour their opinions and preferences. A student once set a goal for himself to try one new food presented in different formats throughout the week. He saw how other people enjoyed lots of dishes and he wondered if he was missing out. So, he started helping his parent pick recipes for the week to serve alongside the old standards. If I remember correctly, he started with cheeses because he knew he liked one kind of cheese, and later moved on to different preparations of fruits and vegetables. There was no obligation to eat anything his parent prepared but if he was feeling adventurous, he’d smell the dish. If it smelled okay, he’d put it in his mouth. Spitting it out or continuing to eat it were both okay. He definitely didn’t have to like it and he didn’t have to try it a second time, and he knew his parent was proud no matter what. Each week, he was pleased to tell me when he found new items and dishes he enjoyed or to tell me how disgusting a particular melted cheese had been!)
You can give them more to talk about! More interests and experiences also means your child has more topics they feel comfortable discussing. If you experience these things together, you have more in common. At school, your child may also feel brave sharing a connection in class. I’ve seen this myself: students who have gone on outings, tried more extracurricular activities, eaten different cuisines, or travelled have more topics to talk about and relate to concepts as I teach. While there are economic barriers, busy work schedules, and other obstacles for some families to contend with, some creativity can help. One of my favourite things to come out of the pandemic was witnessing families finding ways to make fun and learn at home. One family went on a roller coaster ride by streaming a first-person video of a ride and taking turns jiggling one another in a rolly chair in sync with the video. Others did science experiments. Another created their own bowling alley. Some toured virtual museums or archaeological sites together. So many of my students learned to cook, garden, put together Ikea furniture — you name it!
You might connect them to a future career path. The way I’ve always seen it, everybody does better when they pursue their interests. This is especially true of neurodivergent children. They tend to have interest-based attention, so projects and courses are more interesting when they have choice. (My favourite teacher in elementary school had a whole system where we chose different literacy, math, and science tasks to work on, and he gave me different books to read from the class! Probably the best year of learning in my younger years!) Human beings are most likely going to look for employment in domains we enjoy or in which we feel we can be successful. There’s a reason I’m a teacher and not a molecular biologist ;) Help your child explore what they might like to do and the skills they might need to get there!
I highly recommend reading Dr. Paula Kluth’s “Just Give Him the Whale” for a school-based perspective on all the ways incorporating interests can benefit autistic children at school.