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Threshold's web information is protected intellectual property. We ask that you invite others to come and visit this site, rather than to take material away from it.
UNDERSTANDING AUTISM
INFORMATION SYSTEM
Moving From Unawareness into Awareness
Of What We Do and Do Not Know About Autism*
"Why is learning about Autism often so upsetting and confusing for our new families and novice providers, and even skilled professionals who may come in contact with people with Autism and our families for the first time?"
None of us first come into our living, working, or coping with the reality of Autism with all of the knowledge, awareness, skills, and ableness we need. None of us. We are never fully prepared for the realities of adjusting and adapting to this complex condition. No persons with Autism, no family members, and no service providers with any kind or level of degrees can just jump out of the blocks at the start of our journey. We all arrive in this new unfamiliar world, facing a long uphill road, without a full backpack of supplies or a good map for the trek ahead of us. Therefore, from the start, as more typically able adults we will usually seek out as much new and useful information about Autism as we can manage to take in and carry, as our first step on this trip. However, we will often do this without first becoming fully aware of the highly diverse nature and shared dynamic nurture potentials of our own or each others’ human development over our life spans. Then, we can easily get lost in the many behavioral briar patches, and chaotic quicksands of Autism. There, we can lose years of opportunities or even be in danger, unless and until we have an accurate map of this new world, and the many approach/avoid destinations it will afford us. However, whenever we are given a complete and clear map of Autism it may upset and confuse us at first, so we may ignore its features. This is why the complex realities of being people with and without Autism can create a landscape with real risks for us all.
"How can this web page provide a clear map that helps us not get lost?
Threshold's Understanding Autism Information System is designed to reduce traveler risks by offering productive, positive, principled, and proactive options for people with Autism, and our family and service providers as we find our way. To do this we have designed an Autism Knowledge Brokerage that includes FACT-BASED, CONCEPT-BASED, CONTEXT-BASED, and INDIVIDUALLY-BASED information that is commonly known in the Autism community, and that is supported by scholarly literature. This four dimensional view of knowledge and competency, which has been gleaned from many models of human research and scholarship by Dr. Robert Silverman of the Fielding Graduate University. It offers us a use-able compass and a value-able guide. Our creation of a dimensional information matrix on our homepage can help us see where we have been so far, and all our undiscovered territories of understanding Autism. Within it, Threshold also provides a network to other key sites, a home base matrix for you to return to and track your journey, and email and phone contact with a live Developmental Autism Consultant guide, for whenever you are feeling lost and alone out there. Please understand that Autism can cause anyone to become lost at times, so don't be shy to ask for help. Threshold will be here
"How can we adults ever manage to deal with all this--it feels impossible?"
In the learning about, and adjusting to, this whole new world Autism, we adults who need and want to provide care and services to people with Autism, (who will also be experiencing upsetting and confusing transitions), will have to manage some disorientation and discomfort ourselves. This is because we must move from being more unaware of what we do, and do not, know about each other, to become more aware of what we do and do not know about our worlds together. Only then, can we begin to gradually build a reliable and more shared base of Basic>Intermediate>Advancing knowledge about each other and the world around us. Each of our understandingautism.org web page links organizes our information systems on these three levels of our adult provider knowing. People with and without Autism will need to start from where we are, when Autism first comes into our lives and workplaces, and move forward to build a base of use-able information, beginning with the basics to build upon our understanding of those foundational realities. Don't get ahead of yourself, thinking you will get farther and faster with random bits of information. You can get lost.
The reason our more typically able adult minds can lead us astray is because we want to learn everything about Autism right away. We assume knowledge will save us. However, our brain's need us to work in more pragmatic and automatic ways in relation to all our life span stores of knowledge and functional skills now. Our minds will usually reject any information we cannot apply as we learn it. This is because have actually lost much of the conscious awareness and flexibility of our own learning processes, which we had in our early youth. (This also means we adult learners actually share some more unconscious and more pragmatic thinking styles and flexible thinking challenges with people with Autism! Yet, hopefully we typical adults are the ones who can become fully able to readily choose to learn to how to avoid the pragmatic problems that inflexible thinking may create for us both.) Yet, most of the information out there on Autism is not framed to be use-able, but just informative. This is what makes this learning path so very transformative. Complex and unfamiliar information makes us all uncomfortable, and if it does not let us apply it right away we get frustrated. This is why Autism DOES seem very confusing, and learning about it WILL feel upsetting at first. Unfortunately, this bind also means we may naturally want to seek simplistic ideas and narrow "how to" tips about Autism, which frame people with Autism as The Problem. Or worse, we may ignor all established information and try to apply our own trial and error approaches. This is very dangerous.
Therefore, what we all NEED is to become able to work to first understand the complex and MUTUAL problems Autism presents to us all. Then, we need to pick an established best practices guide model and follow it closely for the first few years of our learning as adult providers. Then, we will begin to recognize more functional solutions that have been proven to help us all. Practical answers, linked to well researched questtions, that are grounded in the life span problems we face, will let us work in ways that are effective, efficient, ethical, and so, elegant in the end. Then life will start to feel simpler and joyful again. When we first fullfill our own adult developmental potentials, then we can do remarkable things to help ourselves and people with Autism. Therefore, deciding who we family care and professional service providers are going to BE in relation on to people with Autism in the long run, may represent a more critical question, than any quick answers about what we should DO about Autism.
However, accurate Autism information may be very upsetting to parents. This is because it tells us about a human condition that involves real loss and great sorrow, which our families may find we cannot yet prevent, avoid, or cure. This is why learning about Autism presents any adults, who must care for or serve people with Autism, but who are not familiar with this condition, with formidable internal and external challenges. We all may have to thrash around in upset at first because we do not have the power to fix it--when that is what we need to do. We may have to crash about in confusion for a while longer with new ideas and intervention choices we are not sure about yet. Only then may we finally feel fully ready, able, and willing, choose to put in the time, and out the effort, to fully grapple with the larger nature of Autism and best practice intervention methods. Only then, may we firmly grasp it and fully appreciate important new information.
From this place of gaining a basic foundation of knowledge we adults can engage in the intermediate and advanced learning process. All this work will call on us to Keep Going...Stay Together...and Follow The Guide (of the best practice model each family chooses), and to draw out and hang onto your new Understanding Autism Map. This site is meant to help provide a way to begin to draw out a reliable map, with a work-able compass in hand. It can help you choose your path and find a guide for your long term adult family and/or service provider development. Like Dorothy, then you can follow a spiralling road ahead.
...Do Not Despair, Just Start Walking, and Everything Will Be O.K.
Threshold's web site is one source of a reality-based map and a truthful guide. We hope you may choose to follow our path. We can help soften the upset, and lessen the confusion, and yet we will always honor and value those necessary states and stages of your learning without judging you. To accomplish this goal, we have structured this web site into a textual dialog by using your provider questions and our answers format on our pages. We have gotten feedback that this can help new Autism family providers and novice Autism service providers help move through these difficult states and onto progressive stages of growth. The more Frequently Asked Questions and Answers (FAQ & A) we have used, are the ones which new adult providers (parents, teachers, therapists, and doctors) have told us are the most helpful in our journey over the last 15 years. Therefore, our highlighted color-coded questions may help you more quickly spot which information may feel most relevant to you as you browse over time. We have found this will more easily and quickly clear the path ahead for us all as adult learners, on what must be hard and slow journey forward. Bon Voyage, dear Autism world explorers.
*FOR READERS COMING IN FROM OUTSIDE THE WORLD OF AUTISM:
Autism is a neurological disorder of the central nervous system. It typically effects young infants age birth and three, but also older children ages 5-10. However, many people with Autism may not receive a timely diagnosis. Autism is a complex and pervasive developmental disorder that seriously effects a person’s cognitive development and, so often, our sensorimotor processing, communication, and social capacities. Therefore, it negatively impacts our functional behaviors. It is a heterogeneous spectrum disorder that presents in a wide variety of mild, moderate, to severe forms with diverse combinations of characteristic symptoms in each person. Autism does not have a stable life span prognosis until after puberty. People with Autism, as well as their family and service providers, can all greatly benefit from early diagnosis, and direct training services within specialized Autism intervention programs. Therefore, we will all need reliable support systems and strong structures of demands that can help us realize our fullest potentials to have many less negative, reactive, and counter-productive problems, and many more positive, proactive, and productive responses in relation to each other.
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