In the special ed world, there is a big debate about whether parents and teachers should focus on a child’s weaknesses or his/her strengths. This debate plays out strongly in the autistic community, because there is such a huge gap between strengths and weaknesses.
For years, we focused on the weaknesses. Ian was in a barrage of therapy in school and at home. This fall, I went in the opposite direction. I pulled him out of all the therapy and “special ed” type activities. In school, he’s in a regular “special education” program that does far less coddling than the autistic programs. He can’t earn breaks. He is expected to blend in with the general population. He is expected to cope in the stressful, disorganized, loud, chaotic band room. He’s handling it. There probably could be a bit more coddling, but I’m treating this school like one giant “life skill” experiment.
After school, I’m focusing on his strengths like art and music and technology. In these activities, he is better than average. In two months, he has burned through the beginner music books for keyboard and drums. He attends “Minecraft” hour at the library and engineering classes at the town recreation program. Sometimes, I pay Jonah to go with him to these classes to make sure that he is attending to the directions, but I may not even need to do that anymore. He suddenly loves the theater, so we’re going to every high school play.
He has an insanely complicated after-school life. It’s all mapped out on a calendar posted to my fridge. But it’s all happy things. We’re all so much happier now that we’re accepting the weaknesses and fostering the strengths.
Check out this young autistic artist in England.
Here’s a really interesting new book by Jean-Michael Basquiat’s girl friends. He sounds a little autistic.
Apt. 11d 
I think that this has huge application in the neuro-typical world as well. We may not all be tiger moms but there certainly is a lot of anxiety around making up for perceived weaknesses/development areas rather than focusing on strengths/passions/interests.
And there’s a lot to be said for making some choices that make everyone happy all around. Even with the crazy schedule, it must bring a lot of joy to be ferrying him about to music and other things that he loves rather than the other. How empowering for him too – it’d be demoralizing for us as adults to be only taking classes/getting tutored on the areas where we fall short.
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In the IT world we readily embrace people who are spectrum-y, because they’re so insanely skilled with equipment. (But it can make for awkward lunch conversation.)
I should also note that the business world has an equivalent to this approach, which got some press in the early 2000s via Marcus Buckingham’s StrengthsFinder approach. His book “Now Discover Your Strengths” is a good introduction. I myself have been thru StrengthsFinder evaluation and it informs the projects and roles I choose to pursue. It’s had a big impact on how I view potential career paths.
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Fun. My kiddo said the other day that she’s having a hard time remembering all the things her friends are quitting, now they are in middle school. 12-13 seems to be the point where parents/children stop focusing on making sure their children have had all the opportunities to find their strengths (that’s what I would have called it, rather than focusing on weakness, though of course, it’s different when applying the principle to neurotypical kids). Seems like it’s pretty standard these days for kids to play music, play a sport, do some art, have to explore all academic subjects (and that’s probably not just tiger-moming), do some performance, . . . . Around middle school, it looks like parents let the kids quit the things they hate or don’t like (or maybe, teenagers refuse to do them).
So, I seems to be on a neurotypical trajectory, but with the added bonus that you are now discovering so many things he loves.
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Yes – Laura you must be so thrilled!
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I am not a fan of the child abstract art prodigy stories. There’s a documentary about Maria Olmstead, one of the first publicized child art prodigies hat brings up a lot of my concerns. 1) there’s inevitably a lot of marketing in the development of these artists (and, meshing with a crazy art market that I believe had morphed into a form of money laundering). 2) often the child is being heavily guided by a parent with artistic knowledge. The kid may hold the paintbrush, but colors, media, configuration are being designed by the parent. 3) the burden on the child often looks pretty high — painting those large canvases is tiring, even for an adult.
Iris (in your link) might enjoy the art, and it might reflect an area of strength that makes her happy and the paintings are pretty (It’s fun to watch the You Tube video — she really does look like she’s’ having fun and making a plan with her paintings). If that’s what she’s doing, then great. If she’s becoming a money making machine, it’s worrisome.
Actually, now that I say that, I think that’s part of the worry about all the activities we put our kids into (typical or neurotypical). When they’re having fun with the soccer ball, it’s all great. But, when we start thinking that’s the ticket to their future a lot of bad things happen.
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I have to question the either/or thinking – how can you afford to ignore either? You neglect the deficits and your kid may not be able to function in normal settings. You neglect the strengths and you get a discouraged, depressed kid. The big question is, I think, how do you handle it when the child can’t develop the language and/or self-regulation to participate in things he or she loves?
I can’t imagine where my son would be if we hadn’t focused on both.The language help made it possible for him to participate fully in music and on track and swim teams (well, and school….). The music and running made him happy.
I’m glad Ian is doing so well.
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I thought that the therapy was getting very repetitive and boring. He would go to speech therapy where the teacher would play games with him to work on language and joint attention. It was isolating. He was only around other kids on the spectrum. Some therapists weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.
He goes to music class and his music teacher (no autistic education training) talks to him the entire time. He has to pay really close attention to her and follow her instructions. He can’t get distracted by the bongos in the corner of the music room. There are much higher expectations of his behavior. So, he’s getting the same work on the weaknesses incidentally, and he’s learning a new skill.
I think Ian has gotten to point where I can put him into these types of activities. I also think that music has a really positive impact on brain development. New studies on the elderly with dimensia show that music helps impact their cognitive functioning.
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