5. Free “consultations” (at Pioneer Mountain Resort)

Section added in 2021.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of memories about these “consultations”, since they did not last more than one or two hours, and since I never saw these persons again, so for me there was nothing “constructive” (no follow-up), so I didn’t really memorize.

But I will mention below the few that I remember.

During this summer camp, after a few days, I’ve been asked if I wanted to talk to parents of autistic children (who were not staying in the camp), and of course I accepted (for free, as always), but only on condition that they come with their child.

Indeed, often in these cases, the mothers of autistic children describe to me the situation of their child but he or she is not there, so that poses two big problems: first, they give me information which is their point of view, that is to say, indirect and necessarily subjective information, but above all, I cannot finely observe the behaviour of the child, and it is very unlikely that this parental information contains “the little details that make the difference” and which allow us to begin to understand, even if of course this parental information is useful.

So, several times a week I would see new parents arriving with their child, they would sit at the table where I was working with my computer in the restaurant room, or sometimes we would go outside, and they would explain their situation to me while that I was observing their child’s behaviour, in order to start picking up “clues”.

Among these children, there were a few about whom I had no idea of ​​the reasons for their behaviour. A priori, they weren’t autistic, but I’m not even sure (I can’t know everything about autism).
So I had to tell them that I didn’t know, which was disappointing and sad for them (and for me), but I had no other idea …

Most of the other children presented were more or less like those who came to summer camp (although of course all of them were quite diverse).

It was usually rather difficult to give an opinion in such a short time, and I don’t have much practical experience, especially with the younger ones or those who hardly speak.

But quite often I managed, according to the explanations of the parents, and by observing their child, to find that at least something, explanations and / or advice, and they seemed to find it interesting and to be satisfied.

I remember mostly two cases.

For a little boy of about 7-8 years old, it was obvious to me that he was playing with his mother, that she was like his toy, and she did not realize it. So I explained that to her, with examples, with what I had observed (since her child had stayed long and he had even done some damage by “playing” and breaking some things), and I do not know if she believed me, nor what she thought.

And for another one, an anecdote hard to forget is the following.

This boy of about 11-12 years old was sitting in front of me, next to his parents, and he was screaming, he was screaming without stopping, always pretty much the same sound. So I had an inspiration: since I had noise-cancelling headphones with an audio input, I put some music in the headphones, I put these headphones on his head, and he immediately and completely stopped screaming …

If I took the headset off for a few seconds it would scream again, and if I put it back on his head, he would stop completely.

It was almost “magical” … His parents were quite astonished…

So there was a clue here.

Sure, wearing headphones with music isn’t a lasting solution, but this experience allows to begin to analyse things. It would have taken longer by doing other experiments, but this family was here for only an hour or two, so I don’t know what they did next.

However, they saw that what I was saying was not just theories, and that my ideas or actions could be effective.

It is not always so “magical”, sometimes the tests do not work at all, but with some perseverance, and a good deep understanding of autism, sooner or later we get results, that is to say, to the reduction of difficulties or problems.

And that’s exactly what happened in this summer camp: each stay lasted 10 days, which is very short, but it still allowed, in almost all cases, to obtain very interesting results.

And obviously, these families had not obtained these results with the existing means, that is to say the “professionals”, the “centers”, or simply by leaving the child at home and preventing any change, which is the worst thing to do: autistic people need *freedom*, in order to discover life on their own “life path”, thanks to “natural interactions”, which result from “subtle” phenomena which cannot appear when everything is already planned (or “formatted”), particularly when it is done by a “system” which ignores or misunderstands autism.