Expressive vs Receptive Language

I was working with a young man called Jack this week and wanted to share with you my experience with him. Jack is a 20 year old man and resides in a residential home for autistic adults. When you first meet Jack he comes across as very confident young man, happily talking to anyone that will listen to him. He sometimes does things that he shouldn’t and gets chastised by those around him in a typical neuro typical fashion. Generally this does not work and people around him get very frustrated that he doesn’t listen and continues to make the same mistakes. I had to take Jack to college and I had never done this before so was a little stressed out. Before we left I asked Jack did he need to take anything to college with him, he replied ‘No’. So we drove to college, which was interesting in itself because he found a CD in the car ‘Elton John’s greatest hits’ and for the whole journey he proceeded to play ‘Rocket Man’ over and over and over and over again. This was coupled with his standard conversation piece about music which is ‘Do you like this’? ‘Is it an old song’? If you spend enough time with Jack and pay attention you realise very quickly that a lot of what he says is very standardised or scripted. I mentioned pay attention because if you don’t pay attention you get dragged into the belief that he is your every run of the day 20 year old who is doing all this just to annoy you. As we got to college Jack said to me ‘I need my bag and ID’, Me ‘You said you didn’t need them’, Jack ‘I do, I do otherwise they won’t let me in’. For a second I was talking to a typical 20 something, I could feel the frustration building and then I remembered Jack has autism, he lives in a residential home and then I remembered a line that I say to parents all the time ‘Does it really matter’? And then I thought so what if we are late to college it’s not going to be the end of the world. Although to be honest a little part of me was feeling jaded. So we drove all the way back home and whilst we were driving home Jack talked about how he doesn’t like going to college on Mondays because the day is too long 10am till 3pm and that he can’t cope with being at college for that amount of time. I talked to him about the fact that he went to college last year and did 9am till 2pm and he was fine with that and he replied ‘yes’ I can cope with that length of time. Me ‘But Jack it’s the same length of time’, Jack ‘No I can’t cope with 10am till 3pm’ Jack couldn’t grasp it and all of a sudden I was feeling the frustration build up as I tried to explain that he had to go to college during this time and if he didn’t go on a Monday he would not be allowed to go to college anymore (the colleges words not mine). Round and round the conversation went with both of us becoming frustrated with the other. When I realised we were going round in circles I ended the conversation ‘We will have to discuss this with Sue, when we get back home’. The car was silent for a few minutes. Jack ‘Are you hungry’? me ‘No, not at the moment’, Jack ‘I am, rather than go to college this morning can we go to Greggs and get a stake bake’? Me ‘No, we need to go to college’, by the time we get there you will only have 30 minutes until lunch’, Me ‘Do you like college Jack’, Jack ‘Yes but I’m hungry’. So we get to college Jack says hello to everyone tells the tutor that he has just scratched his bottom, tutor tell Jack to go wash his hands, we go to the toilet and Jack locks himself in the toilet until lunch time. During lunch we get into the same conversation about college on Mondays and how he doesn’t like working 10am till 3pm as it is too long a day but he would be happy to work 9pm till 2pm as he can cope. I visually draw it out for him and show him that the amount of time is exactly the same i.e. 5 hours. He looks at me and says ‘I don’t understand’. Bam it hits me, omg his receptive (what he understands) is a mile apart from his expressive (what he says) language. How could I have been so stupid, I was aware of the gap but I didn’t think it was as vast as it is. During the afternoon session the void was becoming more and more apparent. Jack attends college with individuals with learning difficulties and what hit me in the afternoon is that the groups expressive and receptive language was at a much higher level than Jacks. Jack could not engage with his peers at an appropriate level. When he said things they were often in appropriate such as telling a girl that she was beautiful and then not understanding why she was so embarrassed because it was in front of the whole clash or bursting into song at any given moment or calling to someone in the class and when they responded he just ignored them. It was really interesting because when I’m writing it down you can see the void it’s like Jack is two different people. But when you meet Jack you see this very confident young man, happily talking to anyone that will listen him. So to the point, with some individuals try to remember that their use or expressive or receptive language can be at very different levels and to communicate effectively with them you may need to put things in a way that fits their receptive language capability.

Filtering Communication

I always say to parents, if you don’t want something repeated then don’t mention it in front of your child. Our children appear not to have the filtration system that us neuro-typicals have. So for example when I am out with my one friend who has autism I have to say ‘What I am telling you must not be repeated to anyone else’. I have to say this to make sure that he knows not to tell others. Most neuro-typicals know that when one friend tells them something then they use their discretion to know who or who not to relay the information to.

Sam was having difficulties with his Maths teacher Mrs Williams, dad tried to make light of the situation by saying to Sam ‘Don’t worry about Mrs Williams, she is just a miserable old bag’, unfortunately the next time Sam was in Mrs Williams class he told her what dad had said. This can then get really messy if this is mentioned at the next parents evening and dad denies ever having had this conversation just to save face. Unfortunately this means that Sam very quickly gets labelled a liar. This can also happen the other way around when the teacher calla Sam an idiot and a moron and when Sam tells dad he goes to the school and confronts the teacher and then the teacher denies having said a word of it. In one situation the teacher had got caught out because Sam had recorded the entire conversation.

Simon came to visit me one day for a meeting we had planned; he was early so I had not yet arrived. A female colleague of mine asked Simon if he would like to sit with her whilst he waited for me to arrive. Simon agreed and whilst sat by her desk he noticed that she had a card on the desk saying ‘Congratulations on your engagement’, Simon said to the lady ‘Oh you’re getting married’, to which the lady replied ‘yes’. Simon replied ‘I haven’t got a girlfriend, but I do masturbate’. The lady did not know which way look.

Body Language

Some individuals really struggle to read body language. The problem with this is that because we can read it, we assume everybody else can, Professor Mehrabian combined the statistical results of the two studies and came up with the now famous—and famously misused—rule that communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal. The non-verbal component was made up of body language (55 percent) and tone of voice (38 percent). So the problem is that if we assume that someone is reading our body language and they don’t respond to it then we assume that they are being defiant or rude. Imagine the scene a young neuro-typicals boy is climbing on the kitchen work surface to get his hands on the ever allusive biscuit tin. Mom walks in, Billy turns around and sees mom with arms folded and one of her feet taping. Now almost every neuro-typicals understands what this bodily display means. Billy will admit defeat and get off the work surface and try to slink quietly past his mom. Now Tom who is autistic attempts to climb on the work surface to get the biscuits. Again mom walks in, Tom looks at mom and see’s she is standing differently but doesn’t know what this means, he then remembers he wants a biscuit and then proceeds to get one. His mom reads this as defiance but it is simply a matter of a brake-down in communication. This situation may be made worse with mom using sarcasm; mom say’s ‘Go on then, help yourself’. Which has a hidden meaning of ‘Get down now, before I kill you’. Problem is Tom doesn’t read it this way and only hears ‘Go then, help yourself’ to which he does. He then becomes bemused when you start to shout at him asking ‘what the hell does he think he is doing’. A rule of thumb for these individuals is to use direct speech and don’t rely on your body language as both parties always end up getting frustrated. I had a meeting with a Anna one day and at the end of the meeting I stood up and said “Right Anna, it was lovely to meet you”, most neuro-typicals know this as a sign of the meeting has come to an end. Anna just sat there and looked blankly at me. I very quickly sat down and realised what I had to do. I stood up and said to Anna, “Ok Anna our meeting is over and you need to leave now”, to which Anna replied “Ok, she stood up and left”. The difficulty is that to a lot of neuro-typicals this feels very rude, but sometimes the direct approach is the best approach.

Now some individuals who struggle in reading body language will actually make a concerted effort and study it via books and the internet and they can become better at reading body language than their neuro-typicals counterparts. So remember autism is a not one size fits all disorder, and neither are the approaches be.

I have worked with a few individuals that give of deviant body language to which I mean they hold themselves in a way that neuro-typicals read as one thing but they actually mean another. This at times has gotten some people into trouble. I include in this personal space, I have worked with a few people that just don’t get the idea of personal space and when they talk to you they are right in your face which us neuro-typicals can find quite intimidating. Remember though that they are not trying to intimidate you but you do feel intimidated. With these individuals you will have to teach them an appropriate distance to stand when talking to someone such as an arm’s length away.

A final word about body language is around eye contact. Some individuals find eye contact extremely painful and therefore cannot make it. These individuals under no circumstances should be made to look at you when you are talking to them or they are talking to you. I once worked with a young man who was taught to make eye contact although the problem was he was never taught to break it, so when he looked at you he would stare which some people find very off putting and at times it even got him into trouble with people that did not know him.  Some individuals can only process one sense at a time so that means they can talk to you but when you want them to listen they have to look at the floor. Never grab a child’s face and insist on eye contact. If you make them look at you they probably can’t hear a word you are saying and for some, you are causing them extreme pain, which means you assaulted them twice, once by physically hurting them and secondly by causing pain via the eye contact. If you have to get them to look at you teach them to look at the top of your head and only do this if they don’t feel any discomfort doing it.

I have heard of many stories of children getting into trouble at school for not looking at the teacher. Imagine this scenario; Billy is looking out the window whilst the teacher is giving a history lesson.

Teacher “Billy, you are not listening to me”.

Billy “Yes I am”.

Teacher “What did I say”.

Billy “You talked about King Harold and the battle of Hastings and how he got an arrow in his eye”.

Teacher “You trying to be cleaver”?

Remember Billy is literal

Billy “No, that’s what you said”.

The teacher views this as sarcasm and now shouts

Teacher “GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM NOW”.

Billy not understanding why he has been sent out punches the door.