thanks everyone for joining today I'm Selenas I'm the education and Clinic coordinator at the sorin center for excellence and disabilities uh before we get started with our presentation I have a few housekeeping things to go over today's session is being recorded and all recordings and materials are going to be available in a couple weeks if you'd like to ask a question uh please type your question into the chat uh or you can use the raised hand button if You' like to speak if you encounter any
technical issues um please send a chat to the soran Center for excellence and disabilities we'll be monitoring the chat live captioning is available we're grateful to have Marissa as our captioner today to access the live captions please click on the live transcript button at the bottom of your screen we also ask that audience members remain muted unless you're going to speak um um lastly I'd like to read the University's land acknowledgement as we start today's session we respectfully acknowled
ge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous peoples today Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes with Tucson being the home of the Adam and the Yaki committed to diversity and inclusion the university strives to build sustainable relationships with Sovereign native nations and Indigenous communities through educ ation offerings Partnerships and community service thanks all right so today I want to introduce our speakers we're excited to have our friends f
rom the Autism Society of Southern Arizona they're here to present to us on autism friendly communities we have Kate Elliott Maxine Matthews and Jade Muny thank you guys so much for having us here I'm G to share my screen real quick so everybody can see our slides awesome well thank you so much like she said I'm Kate Elliot I'm the executive director of the Autism Society and I came to the autism world because I have a now eight and 12 year-old um who are both autistic and I do this job so I can
advocate for them and make the world a better place and we're so excited to have you guys here today I'll let my team introduce themselves ahead hi I'm Maxine Matthews I'm information and referral specialist for the Autism Society of Southern Arizona um I came to the Autism Society because I have two boys on the Spectrum um one is 19 and one is 14 um I was born and raised here um in the Sonoran Desert and I am um the granddaughter of my grandmother who was full-blooded Yaki um so this has uh be
en my home for much longer than I've been alive so I'm happy to be here hello I'm Jade msay I'm the pro program and marketing specialist um I came to the autism world when my firstborn came into my wonderful life um and made it so much better um he was diagnosed with autism and when he was three and since then he's now seven since then I've been trying to learn everything I can about autism I'm also a self- Advocate which means that I was diagnosed on the Spectrum and I try to use my knowledge a
nd information to advocate for people with autism I also have two other boys who I love and adore they're just not necessarily on the Spectrum thank you so um so the Autism Society of Southern Arizona is an affiliate of the Southern of the Autism Society of America um there's many autism societies across the country in different states we usually serve Pima County and South um but we are I I will help anyone in the state if they call me and they're looking for services all of our programs are fr
ee um and we try to serve every uh demographic in the autistic community so we have um programs for children under 10 we have programs for children over 10 we have programs for adults 18 and over um as you can see the list of programs that we have with parent support groups we have uh trainings in our lunch and learns um and then my program is a navigating autism program which means that anyone who is seeking services and resources can call me and I can uh find those services for them or if ther
e is no Services we can discuss like creating those services in the community please go to our website it's www.as a.org if you would like to learn more about our free programming so let's talk about um the CDC the Centers for Disease Control and prevention released updated data with a number of children diagnosed went from 1 in 40 in 2021 to 1 in 36 in 2023 as you can see 1% of girls and 4% of boys um and these new rates were released in March in 20124 this is the first time girls have been inc
luded um because they made an entire percentage finally as you can see that 1% um so previously girls did not get diagnosed as much as boys because most Diagnostics were based on boys um on how boys displayed and girls sometimes displayed differently and there's other factors for that too um I also want you to uh see that this is the the fact that non Caucasians were at a higher rate really is a good thing not a bad thing it just means um that we feel like the the populations that are underserve
d um are actually getting more resources and are getting out there and being able to get evaluated and diagnoses um and then I just want to say that one 36 is probably not an accurate number um because this is based on a eight-year-old in the Maricopa County of being diagnosed um so we're talking about think of all everyone who's not eight years old that can be diagnosed and what we uh always like to talk about is how many adults are getting diagnosed now um so that one and 36 uh we do believe i
s a higher number so at Autism Society of Southern Arizona we've been really striving to use this um type of training to really gain allies for the autistic community and what that might look like um is there's these different types of Ally ships one is individual so this is you learning how you're learning about autism what it what people maybe have it in your life maybe what mindset you might have originally um and trying to to educate yourself and model that good behavior and that mindset and
then we have our interpersonal relationships these are surface issues um that you're going to change from day to day with how we interact with people maybe um maybe it's family maybe it's friends maybe it's even co-workers who you just are going to be more aware of uh autism and if someone for example like if someone said something rude about someone else maybe you would be able to talk to them about it or about how maybe that was rude comment about autism or something and then we have our stru
ctural changes which is pushing the Norms pushing the policies and the systems um and really working together to make those structural changes um so this is the type of allyship that we are hoping to call all of you who are here too um and just because you came to one training doesn't make you an ally but it's a start and it's something that we are excited about because we need everyone's support to help make other people's lives just a little bit better sometimes it's it's um really hard and so
even if it's just a little bit better to have that support that's what we're here for that's what we want to do next so before we begin if you guys want to if you can you can put in the chat ch um what kind of things you I love it someone already posted something um what kind of things misconceptions you might have about autism a lot of the frequent one frequent ones I can't talk today are that maybe they're all Geniuses they're all savants um they're not very affectionate maybe they don't have
any empathy they can't talk um they can't learn new skills maybe you've heard or thought you know that kid just looks like a brat he's just misbehaving um or maybe you've seen that they're they're violent um and that's kind of your interpretation okay I don't know if you saw any that you wanted to read um if anyone has any that they want to share um this is a like it says this is a safe space so even throughout the conversation it's a safe space to ask those questions um it's better to ask them
here than to someone else maybe somebody said I have a has been considered a special gift I am against finding a cure for autism totally agree we agree too and somebody else shed an article from Australia that they're finding the ratio of women is actually to men is actually closer to three to four I love Australia they are really really at like huge Advocates I can't wait to read that article thank you for sharing it's great yeah and also remember we are all um we were all in the same boat at
one time we didn't know what autism was when my son got diagnosed I had actually um had only heard of autism once before so I had very little knowledge as well so that's why I mean we're we're in the space it's going to be safe for whatever you think and then um we you've been there so yeah so and some of us might have some recollection of like seeing Rainman and kind of thinking of that and it's not that that's that that doesn't look like autism that looks like that person's autism um and obvio
usly that's an actor but they're all they can be different for everybody they're going to fall under certain umbrellas but not everyone is a genius but some are um not everyone is super affectionate but some are right it's going to be different for everyone um but they are going to follow some certain characteristics so if we go to the next slide we are going to watch a video and yep I really like this video it's just helps us give get an idea of some of the basics go ahead Kate we are all diffe
rent and that's wonderful some differences are easy to see height hairstyle gender eye color and so on other differences can't be our favorite foods or special skills interestingly the way we see the world is all oh crap sorry guys we are all different and that's wonderful some differences are easy to see height hairstyle gender eye color and so on other differences can't be SE our favorite foods here or special skill interestingly the way we see the world is also different for instance what do
you see in this drawing most people see a duck but some of you might have seen a rabbit whichever you saw you are correct this is just a trick drawing to show you that all brains work differently the brain is your body's computer it works differently for all of us and controls how you learn that's why we are all good at different things how you feel which is why we all feel different emotions and how you communicate sometimes the brain is connected in such a way it affects senses and how we perc
eive and read situations and interactions this is known as autism many people have autism so it's likely you already know someone who is autistic and for this reason it's useful to know a little bit about autism the special wiring inside an autistic brain can sometimes make the person good at tasks we may find difficult such as mathematics drawing or music it can also do the opposite and activities we find to easy are incredibly difficult to them such as making friends the senses constantly send
information to your brain about your surroundings and other people however when a person's brain and its senses don't communicate well the brain can become overwhelmed and Confused affecting how they see the world picture yourself walking down the street this is how an autistic brain may experience the same scary isn't it sadly in many cases the person can't say out loud how they feel so even though there's chaos going on their heads they seem okay on the outside unable to ask for help we will
develop behaviors to help us feel calm in uncomfortable situations we may look away hug ourselves chew our fingernails fidget bite our lips and so on equally autistic people develop behaviors that help them Cab's intense moment these actions may seem unusual but they're just their way to feel calm when they happen it means they are having a hard time the kind thing to do is not to give them an even harder time by getting cross ignoring them or mocking people with Autism need friends who are will
ing to take the time to know them with good communication and plenty of patience everyone would be better off people with Autism are not ill or broken they simply have a unique view of the world T and with a little support from their friends they might just be able to share that view with us autism can make amazing things [Music] happen I love that video so much I don't know if it's his voice or what but I also love autism so it's probably all that um okay so here are some of the actual criteria
like I said it can be different for um everyone but for the most part these are going to be the main criteria for getting diagnosed so um this is from the diagnostic and statistical Manual of mental disorders the DSM 5 and the first criteria is is social communication deficit so this could look like being non-verbal um or it could look like having a difficult time expressing yourself in an appropriate way um or it could look like needing to write um to communicate or use some sort of other comm
unication um I like to think of it more of just like communicating differently versus communicating deficit um just differently than what maybe we would um typically do with this with the interactions that we have from other people um the second one is going to be a fixed interest and repetitive behaviors so um again this could look like someone really interested in trains um but it can also look like someone really interested in autism and um it can really vary um but they're going to have that
fixated interest in repetitive behavior of um that being the one thing um the second the third one is the symptoms existing in Early Childhood so this is an important one it means that they that autism was present from a young age and didn't just occur when they were 18 or 30 or 50 um this is something that has existed their whole relatively their whole life um or at least developed a really young within their childhood and number four so criteria D is symptoms impairing function so this means
that at some point wherever ever they are on this spectrum um it's going to reach a point their symptoms are going to reach a point where it impairs some type of functioning whether that is in communication whether that is their fixated interest is causing other issues um where they cannot function in some other form um so somehow it's going to impair functioning I would say impair typical daily functioning um criteria e is the impairments are not better explained by intellectual disabilities so
this is a very important one not everyone with autism is going to be intellectually disabled there are some people who will have comorbidities and also be intellectually disabled but the majority of people I would say the majority I don't know that could be I could be saying too much but most of the people for the autism diagnosis aren't necessarily intellectually disabled and so that's not going to fit in that diagnosis do that make sense C enough um I see there's a lot of stuff happening in t
he chat box but um okay so those are the main Criterion for being diagnosed on the autism spectrum at least according to dsm5 um CDC has that again it's a social communication difference or deficit and the fixated interest repetitive Behavior so those are the things that are really focused on um for people with Autism so yeah and it's important to know that um oh yeah never mind let's not that I did want to say one thing um I I do want to say that back in 2013 the American Psychiatric associatio
n discontinued the separate diagnosis of autism and Asbergers to one of autism spect Disorder so when people say like I was diagnosed with Asbergers and I can't get my services um it usually looks like because they need to be reassessed re-evaluated to get that autism spectrum disorder um diagnosis um that's that's one I wanted to put in there yeah that's great Max um I was originally diagnosed with the Aspergers but obviously um it's all part of that Spectrum so yeah that's an important key um
and if you need help with that or you know someone that needs help with that you can always contact Max and try to she can try to figure out which people would provide you with the proper um diagnosis um okay so more Universal symptoms of autism so here's a here's again hyper or hyperactivity to sensory input um so this means that the person might be a sensory Seeker or sensory avoider or can differ for different things so maybe someone really likes loud noises and but they don't like a fast mov
ement or maybe they like I mean I think of it it can be different right for everything they might like their song really loud but they might not like your song really loud so but somehow they might have hyperactivity to the sensory input um and then we can go to the social communication deficit again this can be verbal or nonverbal um and then the difficulties in relationship development maintain maintenance and understanding this one I wanted to point out that it is a two-way street um we a lot
of times want to provide therapies and things to help with these communication issues with these um relationship issues and sometimes it's a two-way streight sometimes we have biases that are blocking us from developing and maintaining a better relationship with people on the a Spectrum um it takes only seconds for someone to judge whether or not they like another person and sometimes that can be really uh debilitating for people on the autism spectrum or especially when it is face to face beca
use they might present differently um like they might be flapping more and that might throw someone off um but it's important to understand that gaining relationships with people on the spectrum is going to be a two-way street and it's important to adjust your biases and your um mentalities on people with Autism in order to develop relationships with people on the Spectrum um okay yeah I think that's good you can tell the I I covered a lot of the topics all right so next we're want to look at th
e autism spectrum a lot of people think of it as being aign from like less autistic to very autistic but that's not actually how it looks because autism is a dynamic disability and it has so many different I issues and challenges and strengths that can affect the individual so we have like social differences interests repetitive Behavior sensory sensitivities emotional regulation and all those things some one person could have really like their s their special interest they are super focused on
but they don't really have much sensory sensitivity or they're a really great um communicator but they're really bad executive functioning or somewhere in the middle so every when they say one met one autistic person you've met one autistic person that's really what they mean because every autistic individual has their own rainbow of their own personal autism spectrum that they are coming to your day with and that can even look different sometimes if you're tired maybe your executive functioning
isn't so great so that's going to change for you and it's kind of more growing and changing and that person is in each individual is coming with their own personal rainbow just believing and asking them is a really good thing another thing on this is high terms like high functioning and low functioning are harmful and outdated because they really kind of imply that somebody who's high functioning doesn't need any supports or Services if they have they have you know they have a job and they're a
ll together and they don't actually need any accommodations which isn't true they could have a lot of they could have accommodations they need they could have struggles in a lot of different areas but still be able to carry on a job and all those things that would people would look at as high functioning and vice versa you need when a person is low functioning the the people often will talk about people who don't have speech as being low fun functioning but that again is not indicative of any ot
her part of themselves we always say to presume competence if the person even if they can't speak or whatever you presume that they know what you're talking what you're saying to them how you're interacting with them unless told otherwise so because it's so Dynamic it really just is a beautiful thing to understand and just coming to every person with that understanding is really helpful so another thing people often think of is that autism is for kids like once they turn 18 they're going to grow
out of it it'll get better they'll grow out of their autism it'll get fixed or cured or something of that nature and that's not the case at all autism is literally how your brain's function the brains look differently under MRIs and they're these aren't going to go away as you get older so as an autistic individual gets older they're still going to have those sensory considerations they're still going to have communication needs they're still going to have self- stimulatory behaviors and what w
e want to talk about is that masking is when an autistic individual pretends to look more um not autistic to look more normal or neurotypical so that they can fit in and but it doesn't work very well we look at our little Donuts I love this visual representation of it because this poor Donuts being made fun of and he's molded himself in to be like just like these long johns are they're still like you're a weirdo and we don't want to them any autistic individual to feel like they're weird or any
of their behaviors or their the way that they hold themselves the way they communicate there's nothing wrong with that we want them to be their authentic selves and it's really important that we start that with small children so they learn and they know from the onset that they are good what they do how they move and how they live in the world is perfectly acceptable and wonderful and all those things because masking we have discovering now as all these adults and being introduced uh diagnosed a
nd found from The Lost Generation that it is really really damaging to your mental health to mask and so we want all of these children to grow into adults wonderful autistic adults and really be able to be part of our society so we want to make sure we encourage everyone to just be the eles so I just told somebody in the chat I would talk about this in a second so one of the challenges that um autistic individuals may face is communication and that can look like a wide variety of things and for
some people that means that they don't have access to verbal speech they cannot speak for some people it means they cannot speak in every situation like the person in the chat had mentioned that they their grandson or somebody talks around their parents but they don't talk around their grandparents or people at school and that is completely normal it's why I don't know probably some level of anxiety or Comfort or thing of that nature but they are just aren't able to use speech in those situation
s some people go to U like they call called selective mutism where there're they lose all access to speech where they would would be able to give you a whole dissertation before and then they lose access to speech because of the situation that they're in but for some people they just never have access to speech or it's an emerging um thing that they're working on so you these are different tools that you may see people use out in the world to communicate better starting with like the basic sign
baby sign I haven't really run into any autistic individuals who use sign totally but I'm sure it's totally possible um just to be able to get those basic needs across like eat bathroom so that it really eases that frustration when you give them these tools so they can communicate some things because could you imagine being in a world where you couldn't say I'm hungry or I have to go to the bathroom and all these adults around you are just wondering why you're screaming giving them ways to be ab
le to communicate in different op options and different opportunities really gives them that voice and gives them that ease and the ability to advocate for themselves another thing is over on this left hand the boxes let ex see my cursor it this is called a PEX system a picture exchange communication system and it really is little like tiles they have different things on them a lot of basic communication needs I've seen some moms with some big old binders of a lot of different options and you ca
n go that route for sure and it just is just so that they they can point to their basic needs and communicate when you put these pictures on a device and that device is called an alternative ad vented communication device or commonly referred to as was an AAC device and they so they have all the pictures and kids can or anybody can create sentences some of them can type out words and it'll speak for them there are professionals living professional lives doing working regular jobs speaking and do
ing everything with speaking through AAC devices using either pictures or typing things of that nature so it's just another form of communication and I always say I don't care if they're skywriting I just want to hear what everybody has to say so all forms of communication are valid and beautiful and also we have another one called spelling which is when people this often comes to people who have um physical disabilities like a praxy or things like that but even without that some people just don
't have access to verbal speech have found spelling as a means to be able to communicate and they um so they point to the letters and spell out something and then they have a communication assistant Who records what they're saying and they can either say it for them or they could type it in chat depending what you're doing and there's actually a wonderful movie we screened last September that called spellers about the people who are utilizing this and it's a beautiful story about so many people
were silent for many years and they they had no idea that they were having they were Brilliant Minds in their being but they just weren't able to express themselves and spelling has made a huge change in a lot of lives giving them access to communication to be able to speak what they're saying and let people know what's going on with them Jade so again this is more about communication um so you may we also didn't say a lot of times people with Autism and again this isn't everyone but avoid eye c
ontact and so with that sometimes it might seem like they're not list listening or they're not understanding and that's definitely not necessarily true um so they may seem indifferent um Kate talked a little bit about the situational mutism um echolalia is when they repeat or Echo something a lot um they may have an odd speech pattern it might sound robotic or it could sound maybe different um tones you might have tone problems with putting the wrong the right emphasis on the wrong sele um stuff
like that so there are ways Sor um but there are ways that we can help with that with the communication issues giving more time to process what you're saying using very clear and concise language a lot of yes NOS can be helpful for some people don't rely on subtext or social cues um and using their special interest to try to communicate and connect in some sort of way is also a really great way to again to facilitate that Gap in um in the bond is using what you can do and how you can help to br
ing those communication difficulties and differences together um giving very simple one-step directions maybe it's one at a time um also you can ask a clarifying question like did you understand that did it make sense to you um avoid metaphors and S ASM if possible and again everyone is different and so you're going to have to figure out just like with any relationship and any person that you're in in a relationship with whether that's friendship family anything like that you're going to have to
figure out who you're talking to what things you can say to them what things you can't say to them and it's going to be the exact same thing for someone with autism so next slide Kate and so these are some more of our Social Challenges so you may see someone who has an in who does inappropriate laughing or giggling so maybe you you think that they shouldn't be laughing at something um I have a permanent awkward smile for a lot of things so if we're talking about death this is my face this is wh
at my face is going to look like and that might seem really inappropriate but it is my way of dealing with what we were talking about um and so that might occur um they may seem totally indifferent maybe you're talking about something awful and you're trying to get them to express something and they have a blank slate on their face doesn't mean they're not listening or that they they don't care it just might be the way that their face is um I talk a lot about like I don't know what my face is do
ing please don't rely on that use listen to my words um and let me express myself that way because um yeah and another interesting thing is I have my son with autism who's seven and my son who doesn't have autism who's three and I could not pick up on the baby cues the baby facial expressions or anything and I I really thought it was just me it might be me and him right because then when I had my second I realized oh he makes so many facial expressions and it's a lot more obvious to tell what he
is thinking in but my oldest with ASD just had a very limited expression growing up that it was so hard for me to tell again that didn't mean that he didn't have feelings or interests or anything like that it was just really hard to tell with his limited facial expressions so they may also not understand appropriate volume so this can be really loud talking really loud or maybe talking really really really really quiet um and yeah um yeah there's lots of different options here um mental health
challenges with anxiety depression PTSD are going to be higher with people with ASD um and there's lots of statistics on that they kind of range all over the place because it's really hard to get people to tell you you know how depressed are you in in all the time um and they may not make eye contacts they might seem blunt or direct and again that doesn't mean that they don't care about you or anything it's just going to be their way of communicating um I used to laugh inappropriate times I stil
l do and Echo from for y yep definitely good examples in the chat box sorry I'm reading them I love them I love fa yeah text messages can help for sure using figuring out ways to communicate with people that just because it's not the neurotypical way doesn't mean it is any less important or beautiful or wonderful so I love that don't lose hope she said um yep you can go go to the next slide okay so we're going to move on to talking about sensory considerations and overload this video is um just
an aims to give you the experience of what it could be like for one autistic person to experience a situation it's just an idea for things um it can be a little jarring at first so you can turn down your volume or whatever but I want you to be mindful the fact that autistic individuals don't have a volume button to turn down so if you're uncomfortable lead into [Music] that [Music] w [Music] oh [Music] [Music] we [Music] all right so um sensory challenges are something that can be a challenge fo
r autistic individuals either like Jade had talked about either being hyposensitive or hyper sensitive so they could either have they're very sensitive they all something that would be small to somebody else is Big to them or vice Versa it doesn't really affect them as much and that happens a lot with like touch and things so we know the sensory system right so we know sight touch smell hearing and taste we know how all those could be Bright Lights uh lights that make noises the smells other peo
ple's perfumes the just loud places in general foods that are not good to you touching when you don't want it my daughter if you touch her head you could touch her most other places but if you touch her head it's over for you um so all those types of things are just different options and different there things to consider things that oops sorry we what uh senses we don't often talk about are Inception so Inception is the feeling of what's going on in your body the things that we don't generally
think about but they're innate feelings like hunger needing to go to the bathroom um your heart rate racing being tired feeling sick having something wrong and the pain inside your body and not knowing those can people with Autism can have intraception issues where they don't feel those things as well so but they don't know that they're hungry they're not aware that they have to go to the bathroom they're not aware that they're sick but just because they're not consciously aware of it or able to
communicate that to you doesn't mean it isn't affecting them my daughter is just when she about turned eight we just recently have gotten to the point where she can really understand that she is hungry and that hunger is fixed by eating now was she hungry before yeah absolutely all the time but instead she was just hangry and didn't want to eat anything but candy because she wasn't hungry and what's the point and so she would eating was a very hard thing for us to get her to do but she still ha
d all those feelings and all the repercussions of not eating of being actively hungry they were there they were just bugging her and breaking down her ability to handle the World At Large without her being able to to directly interact with them proprioception is your place in space like how you move about the world how you feel about uh how how far away this is or that is there's a really fun way to test your proprioception so everybody can do this ready if you close your eyes and put one arm ou
t in front of you Palm facing down and make sure your eyes are closed when you do this you take your other finger and you point to the center of your palm that's down over here how close did you get did you actually get on your hand did you get some other random place that is just one small representation of how your understanding of your sense in space so I've heard people call like the ADHD walk or whatever when you're avoiding corners and running into tables all the time it comes into play wh
en the realization of you're standing way too close to somebody or way too far away from somebody all those types of things there's just a lack of understanding for them in that way and then is the stipular sense which is your your movement sense and it's how your body moves through the world and the feeling of it can affect your balance and things of that nature vestibular input like swinging and rocking and things of that nature can be incredibly or some can be incredibly regulating to the sen
sory system and so that's what leads us to stemming stemming is Shelf atory Behavior it's that repetitive behavior that they're talking about in the diagnosis and there are things that you can do to that there the very classic one is like a little boy flapping his hands it could be pacing back and forth eolia Jade mentioned earlier as another form of stemming it's like repeating phrases or words over and over and over again or even just making a sound like ah um I have some friends who make loud
shouting noises all the time but they're not mad they're just making loud shouting noises because that's how they stim um Jay Max is showing you her things I always play with fidgets my desk is covered in toys because I can't my brain doesn't operate unless my hands are doing something stemming is incredibly helpful to everyone that's we really really try to normalize it this may look strange in public especially if somebody's having bigger stems running up and down a grocery aisle or something
of that nature but there's but it's super super helpful to calm the nervous system to give your helps your brain work people actually listen better when their hands are busy so the whole old adage of quiet hands open ears isn't really functional you that's why really encourage all sorts of stem toys and all sorts of things in classrooms and the world and everyday life to help people have that regulation everybody stems to some degree if you're biting your nails shaking your leg all the those ty
pes of things how do you move to make yourself feel better yep clicking pens all those things and they could turn into you know all sorts of greater things but we really just want to send it home that stemming is fantastic noral and great sorry James I something do okay all right so um now that you've known all this information about their sensor needs and things that people go through in the world when they have autism um what is going to happen when you're going to work with someone meet someo
ne if you have a family member if you have a student um uh because of this knowledge uh we always say well now we've given you this training now you can ask if anyone that you're going to come in contact that has autism if they if they need accommodations um and so we're going to talk a little bit about what accommodations can look like um if someone is overstimulated for some reason I can use an example of um my son if the lights are too bright and there's people laughing and talking and everyt
hing he can get very agitated he doesn't like crowds he doesn't like going to um malls and anything we went to Disneyland and it was it was a 4-Hour experience um and uh so what I always want to talk about is is that I have a I try to always get him a break space wherever we are so if we're on vacation I try to hope that he has his own room to be able to take a break and his in my house obviously it's his bedroom um uh if you are not able to create a Brak space um and Brak spaces can look very s
pecific um depending on uh everything that you've learned here could they you could fill them up with fidget toys um you can have boxes of earphones in rooms or in a place that you know that there's going to be uh somebody who who needs extra accommodations um hats hoodies sunglasses um so those can all be in a break space um if you can do not have a break space can they sit in a different space um if you're going to be talking about things that they need to know uh what kind of terms and visual
aids can you give them if you're working with someone that needs to accomplish certain activities um make a list before that uh or if you're gonna want to know something that like oh please don't do this or please do this um if someone can visit the area um it's always good every time um my kids have gone to a new school or to a new doctor I always try to go to the office or to the school and tour first um and uh a lot of times what you can do to do that is take pictures of those areas um an of
fice a school if they're going to go visit a family member for the first time take pictures of them like who is this person this is your Aunt who is this this is your cousin um and you can do that and that's called a social story so you can be like this is the house that we're going to to go spend time with family and you take a picture of the house and then this is what the living room looks like um but when I do that I always try to think what can I do to accommodate when we do do things like
that and of course I have like a very big car that I have lots of things in and where my son can hide and listen to music and everything if if anything gets too too much um every time we do these trainings people always ask us like what happens when this when this student does this or when my nephew does this or my brother does this can how can I help them um and what I always say is that it's very hard for us to give you specific how-tos um uh how to do certain things without us knowing your br
other or your student or your child um or your client or your patient um so when I show when we show you this thing of accommodations I really want you to kind of also put in your pocket that you're going to be an investigator anytime you get in contact with someone that has autism so oh they do seem agitated what can I do to help them um and you know you can offer these accommodations so where could you provide a quiet space um are fidget toys allowed how can you make comfortable to how can you
make it more comfortable can you turn off the Turn Down the Lights maybe it smells weird in there can you take them to somewhere different um what permissions do you need from your supervisors your uh bosses um your family to be able to make these accommodations and how can you yourself do to accommodate uh a person with autism and then let's go to advanced notice um autistics often prefer routines and rituals um and we talked a little bit about that on the dsm5 um that's why it's important to
always give advanced notice before you do any changes um in a routine that you have already established with someone who has um autism so if you work with someone and the routine ready changes advance notice if you have a child that's going to be doing something different advanced notice if you have a student that uh is GNA be changing teachers or changing classes advanced notice and the bigger the advanced notice the bigger the time that you have to give so um an example would be like my sons h
ave to get ready and go to their grandparents and so what I do is I put a timer and I say hey you have 20 minutes to do whatever you want and then after that we start getting ready to go see Grandma and Grandpa um and that uh really helps they'll they'll just start finishing whatever they're doing and they're getting ready for that transition um but if we're going on vacation um I have to do social stories I have to do um like this is the hotel where we staying at I have to make sure they have t
heir little backpacks full of everything they need fidgets art supplies and everything um and I give them probably like a week's notice of events notice so more time or less can be identified depending on what you know of your autistic person and again that's that investigative police really get to know who you're working with really get to know what makes them comfortable what makes them um feel centered and grounded um and how to help and so the more you invest get get to know the person the m
ore you're going to be able to give advanc notice and give accommodations y awesome so Kate you yeah do we have time for the video yeah I think so okay I'll well this is a video about um what to do when meltdowns or overloads happen so we'll let her um she she describes it really beautifully and and so we like this video autistic meltdowns are not a tantrum they are a neurological overload gets the body physically prepared to fight and fly by releasing lots of nasty stress hormones our brain act
ivates cortisol adrenaline gets your heart pumping the blood delivered to your muscles so you can fight or run away flee the situation the difficulty is that autistic people will become overloaded from a lot of things because we are sensory sensitive cognitively overloaded the adrenaline your heart's racing so much and you're sweating so much you can barely even think I don't even know what I'm saying I feel like I need to fight the situation to survive why does this happen triggers baby trigger
s Iceberg Theory we all have a conscious and underneath that in the unconscious and the subconscious are memories and other past traumas which we all keep bearing we may be triggered because a routine has broken we feel anxious outside of that so we control a lot of the things in the environment to make it predictable some artistic people when they melt down will shut down completely freeze and go inwards on themselves and I know that feels like you go completely numb all the awful bad feelings
come over me and I can I actually Come mute like I don't often speak for an hour or so when I'm in those States speaking about it makes me stem because it's a physical response your autistic person cannot help this it is not deliberate it is our jobs as adults to react appropriately to autistic distress and Trauma see which one you think is more helpful I'm having a meltdown and I'm hitting myself and I'm throwing things everywhere I'm telling you that I hate you and you're saying yeah well I ha
te you too and I don't think you're great either and your behavior is disgusting and I'm never going to give you that present and I'm canceling in your birthday party the autistic person will fight and fight and fight because they feel it is the end of the world and they have nothing to lose so try this I know you are sad I know you are angry I am sorry you are in pain how can I help is there anything I can do would you like me to go away would you like me to be quiet do you need a minute do you
need a glass of water you need a pen and a paper to show me can you show me through a movie or in a book can you draw how you feel what are you afraid of validate your autistic validate how terrified they are in that moment even though it doesn't make sense to you they may fight it they may say to you of course I'm not okay speak autistic speak in Blunt factual re logical terms say I know you're not okay I know you are sad if you are finding that you are becoming overloaded from the Meltdown ta
ke a step back that's not not planned ignoring that's you going away to get a drink to look after yourself regulate yourself so you can be better equipped to help that person in distress but you cannot do it if your fight flight has been activated and you're fighting them as well if you're in a situation with your meltdowns and you're asking why is this not getting better ask yourself are you fighting the Meltdown as well and if so we have a few people in fight flight here and all of it needs to
be deactivated autistic meltdowns on so hopefully you can see why we love that video um she just does a beautiful job of of explaining a lot of stuff um and Max has said it already and I think Kate's probably said it and I'm gonna say it again too people always want when we do these trainings they want real like show me what this looks like show me what I can do tell me I want more examples I want I want more examples of this and that but the the thing is is everyone is going to be so different
and we we can talk about this for hours we love to we'd love to do more trainings we love talking about it this hour is so short but at the end of the day it's going to be very person specific um and yeah but but there are some that you can help that can help in general so for meltdowns what can we do maybe clear the space maybe go to a different room if someone needs a different room um ensure safety we're never advocating that people are getting hurt um that just because someone is autistic t
hey have the right to hurt or punch people or hurt themselves sometimes that's really difficult um so we want to ensure that everyone is safe in the environment um manage a sensory if it is a sensory issue if you if you can somehow like someone suggested headphones if you can get headphones if you can get sunglasses um sometimes there's smells that's my really big sensory issue um so yep uh get grounded yourself this can look like being emotionally grounded or actually just sitting down on the g
round when it comes to maybe smaller people like my little son I can sit down on the ground and um still maintain safe environment so that he can see that calm I'm relaxed and I'm here for him and what he needs um but that can also be just your self- grounded like she was talking in the video do you need to go get a drink of water so that you can be regulated yourself and they can feel that regulation and you can help there um again manage your own emotions with that um what are you depending on
the Meltdown big or small what are you bringing to it that might be making it worse or can you manage your own emotions first and help that get better um remember that they're not trying to manipulate you so just because someone is is crying doesn't mean not just crying but inelt on that they're just trying to get what they want um sometimes it can just be that they cannot fathom or understand the situation that they are in and that might seem like they're trying to get what they want but not b
eing able to perceive the situation that you are in whether that is a sensory thing whether that is that McDonald's ran out of ice cream whatever that might be can feel like life or death can feel like fight or flight um and then also behavior is communication so if someone is screaming that means something is happening right um they're trying to communicate something um and it is going to be hopefully as an ally your job to try to figure out what that communication is um if they can't do it app
ro if they can't do it in the way that you perceive um and another thing that I just wanted to make a side note um I would never recommend holding someone down unless there's an extreme safety issue um we we don't sometimes you might think like oh they just need a bear hug but that can be even worse in a lot of situations so really knowing your person knowing what they want not just your person but also not um seeing oh sorry just because we give you this information and you see someone in a mel
tdown if you don't know them them don't go interact right there could be their mom could be trying to help them and if they asked for help then okay but don't don't be like I know what they need they need this and this and this you can try to offer water or something like that but um yeah don't just presume that because you took an Autism training that now you're going to know everything that they need okay but on that note we I know we're just on time so I'm just going to do quickly but we just
thank you guys for being here and we want you to join us in allyship and the all the work that you do however you interact with autistic individuals um just to speak up to Advocate to encourage others to to Advocate as well to engage in things and communicate with us and let us know all your information so we can share it with our people we're always will to build our resource lists so thank you guys so much we'll stick around if there's other questions or whatever if this if Selena's okay with
that and but thank you guys so very much for everything yeah thank you thank you everyone thank you Kate Jade and Maxine oh there's a great question in the chat is there a group support group for Native parents oh I would love to create one so um I was I was born and raised here uh my grandmother was full-blooded Pas Yaki and then my great-grandmother was also fulled I I was raised on the reservation um um and I facilitate the parent peer support group so for me that is the native group just be
cause I am native um but I'm also black and I'm also Mexican um and uh we have it virtually the first uh the second Wednesday of every month and then we have it in person um the fourth Thursday of every month um and I would love for everyone to be able to come and uh and you'll find that uh the experience of being a parent or a caregiver with someone that has op ism is very um similar in in all uh demographics of people uh it's it's a hard journey and um and to know that you're not alone and you
can do this um and there's like thousands of us we We Are Legion I always say that we are legion um that we just you know please I I'm inviting you to come to my peer parents support group and see um how you like it and if not then you know I can also make another one um as well so we had a monthly meeting down here before Co but I lost touch um Monica Romero had asked if they had a monthly meeting down here did Max answer your question or was it a different she said none for
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