Friday, December 4, 2009

John Shouse always has an interesting facebook status. It was Shouse who taught me uʍop ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ oʇ ʍoɥ. Today, Shouse's status displays this quote:

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work. Rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery


The quote reminds me of the different approaches to autism intervention. Behavioral interventions can focus on skill building while completely missing the reason for "talk" and words, missing curiosity and the immensity of relationships.

When we focus on herding, assigning tasks and work as our approach of choice, we are at risk of completely missing the point of interaction and relationships.

3 comments:

Julee Huy said...

Forgot to say, my friends had a grand ole time with that upside down writing, it spent a whole day on Facebook entertaining people. ;)

Julee Huy said...

I found that this method caused a lot of stress and tantrums and unhappiness in my son.

It took a good couple of months to detox him of ABA!

Marie said...

Very very very well said. Don't miss the forest for the trees, right?
BTW, how do you do the upside down writing?

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Created by OnePlusYou -

Stat Counter