Teaching Eric Guitar (Video)

Here's a video with Eric's new guitar teacher Stu Miller (Shane, his teacher in the previous guitar video moved back to Indiana). Stu talks about the differences and similarities between teaching Eric and teaching typical students.

I'm always nervous whenever Eric starts with a new instructor. I don't know what preconceptions about autism they may have, or if the instructors want to deal with the extra effort. Fortunately, Stu turned out to have the right elements for working with Eric --a love for teaching, patience, a sense of humor, and a lot of energy.

Switching Schools

This is a shortened version of a video we made for the Denver school district in 2007 (Eric was eight) --just before we moved from Florida to Colorado. From previous experience we knew Eric would be withdrawn in a new environment with new teachers and classmates. Because of that we were afraid that the school would set low expectations for Eric. We wanted to show what he was like when relaxed and comfortable. We found that videos like this were very useful since they helped school districts and teachers find the right placement and support for Eric more quickly than they would have otherwise.

There are several things that were significant at this point in Eric’s development that are evident in this video. When I “interviewed” the different stuffed animals, Eric was giving each a voice and answering for them. This ability to role-play comes naturally for typical kids at an early age. But for Eric, this was a delayed skill that came much later with deliberate practice.

At one point, I ask Wilson the rabbit if he belonged to Eric. To which Eric replied,“yes” giggle-giggle. This was a lie --Wilson belongs to his little brother. I’m sure some autism parents will relate to my experience of secretly rejoicing the first time Eric lied to me. Lying is an abstract concept that is difficult for some on the spectrum to grasp. Why would someone say something if it is not true? is their thinking. Lying is yet another skill, if you can call it that, which came late for Eric.

Math had been extremely difficult for Eric since starting school. When he was 6 years old, a psychologist who evaluated Eric recommended a learning method called Touchmath. With this method, Eric finally started to make some headway. The addition and subtraction Eric is doing in the video uses Touchmath.

After hitting all the milestones of development in infancy, Eric began to slowly regress at age two. He was almost four by the time he was diagnosed with autism and had stopped laughing. After Eric lost many of his early abilities, every little thing he did recover was amazing to us. In the video, he is being naughty and laughing about it. Other parents might say, “he’s being mischievous, so what?” We say, “Look! He wants joint attention! He wants to engage in multiple verbal exchanges! He is looking in my eyes!!!” But most important of all, he was capable of being happy again.

Little Lost Robot

I’ve been working on a new page for the blog called Art and found this old drawing done by Eric when he was 6 years old. I showed it to Eric today and asked why he had liked the movie I, Robot so much when he was little. He said, “I used to feel like Sonny.” 

Maybe Eric still does not have the language yet to verbally express a complex emotion. That doesn’t mean he can’t feel it. But I do know this. Sonny, the main character of the movie is a robot that looks exactly like all the other robots. Massed produced to serve the human race. Except, Sonny was unique. He was secretly designed by his creator to be able to dream and have feelings. No one expected or wanted Sonny to be this way. He was a robot who was supposed to be analytical and make decisions, including life and death decisions, based on probability and logic. But Sonny had a heart and was being hunted down for not conforming and they were afraid of him. 

I don’t believe for a moment that Eric thinks everyone’s after him or anything like that. I do think that he relates to the isolation that comes from being different. He may also register that Sonny, like himself, needs social cues explained to him.

Sonny: What does this action signify? [winks]
Sonny: As you walked in the room, when you looked at the other human. What does it mean? [winks]
Detective Del Spooner: It's a sign of trust. It's a human thing. You wouldn't understand. 

Maybe Eric understands Sonny’s feelings about looking like a robot and how that makes it difficult for others to see that he is so much more.

Quotes, photo and note from IMDb: The idea of a robot hiding in a large group of identical robots comes from the Isaac Asimov [short] story "Little Lost Robot."

The Irony Mask

I don’t know any boy who loves Halloween more than Eric. Last fall, for the first time since he started trick-or-treating, he did not go door to door with his younger brother. Instead he wanted to stay home and hand out treats from our front porch. He wore his Michael Myers mask and silently waited outside as the sun set. This was the only day of the year when people treated him the way they would treat everyone else. Kids were not afraid of him, except for the littlest ones. They did not avoid him. Instead they seeked him out. On halloween he was accepted as “normal” while wearing his nightmare slasher costume. Kids would come up to him with a smile and greet him with delight, “Trick-or-Treat Michael Myers!” and “Cool costume!” He was popular and he didn’t even have to say a single word. No one would make fun of the way he spoke. For one night, everything was ok.

Music Therapy (Video) - Dance

Here is more of the Music Therapy session from 10 years ago when Eric was 4.  This segment involved dancing, and Eric was pretty distracted (except for the spinning part). Surprise, surprise an autistic kid that likes spinning :-) 

Here are some observations made by the therapist during this dance segment which focused on gross-motor skills.

Eric appears to have some adequate, age-appropriate gross-motor skills. He was able to participate in most of the imitation tasks. During the several motor imitation activities presented during this evaluation, Eric's responses were generally accurate. This was observed when he attempted to walk, run, jump, gallop and tiptoe along with "Bop Till You Drop." He was able to imitate many the actions, however had difficulty with more complex ones (i.e. gallop and tiptoe) during which he either ran or walked. In addition, his gross motor actions were increased and more accurate when he held the therapist's hands during the activities. This seemed to provide the support and confidence that he desired to complete the action accurately.

And on sensory issues...

Eric was not observed using objects in unusual ways. For example, he did not seem to become fixated on parts of objects or engage in repetitive actions with items. However, he did become obsessed with the CD player the therapist brought. He often stared at it when she walked in and during some of the session. He was very interested in closing the CD cover and if it was not covered he stared at the numbers. Though, when engaged in an enjoyable activity he would turn his attention towards the therapist.

Full evaluation PDF
(Certain information deleted for privacy) 

Mask and Music

Over a year ago, when Eric was 13, he became fixated with horror movies, particularly the Halloween series and the character Michael Meyers. I was somewhat concerned about how the violence was being processed in his head. But more strongly, I felt the need to engage Eric through his interests and to learn together. “Follow his lead,” is what had become ingrained in me beginning in his early childhood when he started Floortime therapy.

From this horror movie phase emerged a parallel fascination with masks. He had been drawing many masks with color pencil or marker on paper. But one day, he wanted to make a sculpted one out of paper mache. We scrounged around the house for something that would serve as a mold and found it in the recycling bin --a plastic milk jug. Since we no longer have physical newspapers lying around, we made do with supermarket circulars. We looked up how to make paper mache paste on the web. The translucency of the jug made it easy to trace eyeholes and overall shape. I had Eric do as much of the handcrafting as possible and I did the directing and sneaking-in of the math. Like measuring out the ingredients for the paste, tearing the paper to a quarter or half that size, placing that strip “perpendicular” or “parallel,” etc. Eric painted it after letting it dry for a day. I taught him how to loop rubber bands together to create a long band to hold the mask in place when wearing. He was very pleased with his creation and he kept the plastic mold as a second mask.

It was around this time that Eric had begun guitar lessons. And as soon as he learned enough, he taught himself how to play the John Carpenter Halloween theme song. Of course, my “follow his lead,” reflex kicked into gear and we made a video and put it on you tube.


Eric told me recently that he is not interested in horror movies anymore --to my relief. I watched every single one of them with him. I wanted to be able to talk about it if there was anything particularly disturbing or if he had any questions. I always hated horror movies and am so glad this phase is over.

What's So Funny?

Anyone else asking this question might just seemed annoyed. But when Eric asks, he really wants to know why that is considered funny. He wants to understand the mechanics of humor. He wants to fit in this world of ours where everyone else seems to know when to laugh and when not to.

This is very difficult for me to explain to Eric, because I just don’t know why certain things are funny and others not. Why is slipping on a banana peel funny? Why are things only funny when it is in cartoon form? Like a dynamite blowing up in Daffy's mouth. Why do I crack up when Porky Pig is eating bacon and crying because he loves it so much? I mean, I have good guesses as to why, but guesses do not help Eric.

Imagine if you had to program a robot to have a sense of humor. I realize Eric is not a robot, but for you to make this work, you would have be able to describe concisely the steps of funniness. It might go something like this:

Does the joke contain two incongruous elements?
>If no, then not funny.
>If yes, is one element socially normal?
     >If no, then not funny.
     >If yes, does the other element, constitute a violation of the “subjective moral order.”
          >If no, then not funny.
          >If yes, then laugh.*

Let's test it on Groucho Marx:

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.

It works! Ok, ok --that was my own “brand” of humor. Even though as individuals we all laugh at different things, there is still a general understanding of what is funny. Otherwise comedians would have a very tough time making a living. 

My ”program” was inspired by the theory of verbal humor by T.C. Veatch (1998) found in this article The First Joke: Exploring the Evolutionary Origins of Humor