Once upon a time, there was a little boy with autism who needed to learn how to tie his shoes. Teachers, parents, and clinicians came up with a methodology to teach him starting at age 6. By age 13, he had met his goal and could tie his shoes.
The little boy found it difficult and actively resisted learning this skill. Even though he yelled and tried to pull away, the clinicians were insistent and gave him rewards of candy and smiles when he accomplished any small step to the overall goal.
When he finally achieved his goal and tied his shoes, his support team was overjoyed at his success.
Two years later at age 15, he learned how to type on a keyboard and wrote how that was the worst day of his life. During those seven years of learning to tie his shoes, day-after-day he felt coerced and humiliated over being made to do something against his will. He asked them why they didn't just go out and get some sneakers with velcro fasteners and let him work on things more meaningful to him. He told them he felt invalidated because they made him work on their goal for him. It was their goal, not his.
There are lots of morals to the story, here. The boy thought the moral of the story was to really look at what is important for someone. In his case, he felt that age-appropriate interests, reading, and current events would have been a better focus than to spend seven years teaching him to tie his shoes.
The moral of the story from my perspective was that his support team was not really listening to him. At the time, he was only able to express himself through his behavior, not having developed more effective communication skills, yet. Listening to him regarding his preference and validating his desire not to learn to tie his shoes might have actually worked toward happily and peacefully having him want to learn this skill in the future.
Story adapted from Seven Keys to Unlock Autism by Hall and Isaacs
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