Episode two of Chris Packham’s documentary about autism began with Chris discussing his own difficulties in coping with ‘change.’ In this instance he was having to rearrange his whole, rather extensive, library of books after moving house. He was finding himself somewhat overwhelmed by that task ahead of him.
Preparation is Key (Where Possible)
Change of any description can be extremely triggering for someone with autism. My own son James can cope with a degree of change if he is prepared for it. As he also has a severe learning disability this can be challenging because his understanding is quite limited, sudden unexpected change is not a good thing at all. For example, I recently met James’ grandparents at one of our local garden centres with James for coffee and more importantly to James, cake. It’s a familiar place we visit often but on arrival we found it to be extremely busy and the queue to be served was very long. Had we not had James with us we probably would have left and gone elsewhere. But, knowing James as I do, this wasn’t an option. If we had a sudden change to the plan and I’d told James we were leaving I’m pretty sure he would have had a meltdown as this is just too much for him to cope with. The other difficulty for us is that as James struggles with ‘waiting’ we then had no choice but to join the long queue. It helped that James’ grandad (James’ favourite person in the world!) was with us. We did give James the option of going to sit down and wait with Grandma but he chose to stay and wait with us and actually he was very good. I can think of many other examples where things, totally out of my control just change at the last minute and James has had great difficulty with this.
Anton
For some people with autism routine is important, what’s going to happen, when and how. Knowing this is comforting for them, it’s like a security blanket in this otherwise chaotic world we live in. Sometimes even minor changes can cause great anxiety. This was the case for Anton who we met in the second episode. Anton was obsessive about his timings and routines.
Anton had timed to the minute how long it took from getting out of bed in the morning to leaving his house, going to the bus stop and arriving at work. His routine is set in stone, down to standing in the same place when he arrives at the bus stop. Anton was able to explain how it feels if something in the routine goes wrong. He can feel like his chest is closing up, his vision becomes blurred and then tears may follow. We saw how when cycling to football practice he was delayed for just a minute or two at roadwork traffic lights and he then felt compelled to ‘make up’ that time. I can only imagine how stressful it must be to be under that amount of pressure all the time.
Interestingly Chris Packham went on to explain how ‘change’ in what is an otherwise normally comforting environment for him can be challenging. The example he gave was that he might take a walk in a familiar area of woodland that he may walk in every day. But, if something was to change like a branch having fallen from a tree, he has to reset the whole image in his mind. To a non-autistic person a branch falling from a tree may be totally insignificant, we possibly won’t even notice, but for him these changes that are out of his control are difficult to come to terms with. Personally, I find examples like these are good for my greater understanding of what people with autism are having to process every minute of every day.
Ethan
The second young man we met in this episode was Ethan. Ethan is not at all confident in social situations and is hypersensitive to noise. Ethan only leaves his home to attend college but his difficulties cause him to withdraw and isolate himself from his classmates. He sits alone at the back of his class and rarely speaks to anyone, often wearing ear defenders to block out the noise.
Ear defenders are widely available and many people find them useful. However, some people who have sensory issues may not like the sensation of wearing them. I have tried headphones with James but he’s not keen to have things on his head. They are relatively inexpensive though so worth a try. We found these on Amazon where there is a large selection for children and adults.
Ethan also found eye contact very difficult and this was apparent whilst he was being filmed. Again, this is common among people with autism, some describing making eye contact as uncomfortable and even painful. I would not say this is true of my son, James, although he cannot tell me. James makes a lot of eye contact and actually because of his inability to speak I feel he is very expressive with his eyes and uses his eyes to say a lot.
What James and Ethan have in common is their dislike of sudden noise. Ethan is not averse to noise as actually he writes music himself, the sort of music Chris described as “being best played loudly.” It’s unexpected noise that is the issue. For Ethan he demonstrated how on his walk to college the noise of the traffic and general hubbub of life surrounding him can be troubling. The suddenness of someone in his classroom moving a chair that screeches across the floor increases his anxieties. I totally understand this as I see it in James too. James can be around noise; he makes a lot of noise himself and he likes loud music etc. but, if something happens suddenly like the smoke alarm going off, he will become deeply distressed. Inconsolable until the noise stops. It’s not even necessarily about the volume as even quieter noises when it’s not expected upset him like my phone ringing. I’ll often keep it on silent when he is with me because of this.
In summary, nearly all autistic people report to being unusually responsive to at least one of the senses – be it unexpected noise, bright lights, texture, smell, taste and even temperature can all be challenging. It’s not always obvious to us bystanders, we don’t know the difficulties they are coping with every day.
I found these programmes a real eye opener. I have only touched briefly on some of the topics discussed. I would recommend for anyone working in schools, colleges, the care system etc. to watch them but, actually, I think they are really informative for anyone to watch. As a society on the whole, we should all be more informed of other peoples struggles and accepting of each other, supporting where we can. It’s a sad indictment of our society that some of the views expressed in these programmes by people with autism were that they felt ridiculed and unaccepted purely because they behave differently to what is considered ‘normal.’ What is normal anyway and who are we as individuals to be the judge of that. We all need to be less judgemental and open our minds a little more.
You can find more information about autism at the following websites:
