An' Another Fing ... about Alleviating Anxiety

Last year I took my "other 'arf" to see 

Micky Flanagan's An' Another Fing show.  

It was a birthday present.  

Yes, we went "out out" ~ a really "rare rare" occurrence.  

When I checked in on Facebook I said I was self-medicating laughter.  And, actually, I really was. 

I was medicating for the other 'arf as much as for myself.  For many many reasons ~ as anyone living with autism will understand ~ moments of stress & anxiety can easily & seriously outnumber moments of fun & laughter so I decided to prescribe one huge, hilarious hit of fun. 

In those hours, all anxieties were alleviated.

And as I pondered our motivation for going & the positive impact at the time ~ & expanding on my last post about Accessing School Assessments ~ I realised our going out out illustrated simply why making learning fun ~ or just having fun generally ~ for autistic kids is so necessary.

Some might reasonably respond "everyone likes to have fun" "surely all kids benefit from a fun approach to learning" & some might expect all children to be capable of learning whether it's fun or not.  Some might question why learning needs to be "more fun" for autistic kids for them to access?  Isn't that just pandering to them?  Surely they should just learn to get on with it, like everyone else."

Well the answer lies above.  For me, our experience of going out out is a good analogy that I hope anyone can appreciate.  Autistic kids enter the school gates (assuming they get that far) with already heightened levels of anxiety (even if it doesn't show outwardly).  For all sorts of reasons, their anxiety can very easily & very quickly reach levels that interfere with functioning & inhibit learning (again, even if it doesn't show outwardly). 

Creating a fun environment, making learning truly fun, has the tremendous power to replace the adverse, prohibitive feelings of anxiety, panic & fear with calming, positive feelings of happiness & joy & in this improved state, learning finds a crack of light through which to enter.

It can be the difference between feeling anxious & not.  Fun ~ humour ~ has the power to alleviate anxiety.

Even just trying to touch your ears with the corners of your mouth can make you feel a bit better (although my angel fish have quickly become wise to that particular challenge!).

This is not a new theory.  

I'm merely capturing a personal analogy to explain how & why such an approach to learning has been & is advocated by many autism experts. Here's a quote from Hans Asperger, as an example: 

"These children often show a surprising sensitivity to the personality of the teacher.  They can be taught ... by those who give them true understanding & affection, people who show kindness towards them & yes, humour ...  The teacher's underlying attitude influences, involuntarily & unconsciously, the mood & behaviour of the child."

Hans Asperger Quote via An Affinity With A

And the Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) Society talk about it's importance within their online guide for educators ~ see the section headed Humour, Pretending & Role Play.

So, by drawing this parallel I hope I might encourage more to pursue & provide autism-friendly approaches to learning; to consider how they might help someone replace feelings of anxiety with more positive, more helpful feelings. 

Because you can't tell someone to calm down, to stop being anxious ~ just like you can't tell someone to laugh at a joke if it's not funny or have fun if it's not actually their idea of fun.  Well, you can but it probably wouldn't get you very far.

Which prompts further words of warning which, I assume, any good comedian might echo: delivery has to be genuine (they have to care), content has to be relevant to the audience (they must enter, or inhabit, the same world), timing & a well placed pause is crucial (some things take longer to sink in, register & connect) & consistency is key (familiarity is more likely to be rewarded with loyalty & longevity).

Of course, successful learning for autistic children is not solely dependent on good fun & humour ~ it's not just down to the star turn, their content & delivery.  A lot lot else needs to be right right to minimise the risk of, & alleviate, autistic based anxieties ~ & to enable autistic children to access that fun (any fun, in fact).  It's all too easy for them to end up on the sidelines, looking in, watching others have the fun ~ often they need extra assistance to access alongside their peers.

So, from the getting ready & the journey in, arriving at & navigating the venue, the crowds, finding & securing the right seats, the environment, facilities & the ability to see & hear unimpeded to the actions of the wider audience.  All of these are parallels.  And, yes, many non-autistics might be impacted by any of these not being right ~ but many are unlikely to experience extreme, debilitating, panic attack level anxiety.  Alleviating these anxieties ~ abating the freeze, flight or fight response ~ well, that requires everything to be right right.

Of course, such anxieties are not limited to learning & don't disappear on reaching adulthood (although, hopefully, strategies & experience helps individuals to better self-manage over time) but accessing learning has been a recent focus so I've stuck with that as the main anecdote.

An' another fing ~ & this might be the autistic or the cockney in me (or both!) ~ but shouldn't it be 

"An' anuvver fing ..."?

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Creating a fun environment, making learning truly fun, has the tremendous power to replace the adverse, prohibitive feelings of anxiety, panic & fear with calming, positive feelings of happiness & joy & in this improved state, learning finds a crack of light through which to enter.

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HeHeHeHe via Pinterest