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Facilitation and Its Limitations.

Facilitation is a gift not a skill, like musicality or athleticism or artistic ability. I facilitate with Mom because she is a motor movement initiation cue. To "do it" is what she screams to my senses. I facilitated with Mary Lapos as an open room. She offered up all that she was for my use. I facilitated with Linda as a helpmate. Each of their motivations differed , but they share a motor ability to move me and drive me to see myself as an answer. I see my response and they make way for a typing of it. To use them is what I do. But they also drive my action to initiate. I start and flow as a single movement. It carries me along. I feel the start, then my body can take it from there. Not everyone can facilitate, just like not everyone can sing. Think of it as a melody composed as duet. Each has their role and the two work together. It is a partnership and you have to forget your oneness over another. Most are leaders or followers. FC is for team players mostly absent a special relationship. I have FC causal. Mom is a "do it" cue. Mary was a team player and Linda was a necessary to school work answering. Only all my facilitators held high hopes for me as a person. Not all have a respectful approach. Not all have the inner tuning to do it. Not all trust the communicator to want to communicate. There are many reasons for facilitation to fail. Some are even our own : to not want to share, to not know how to think in communicative language as a question or an answer or as a thought concrete. Moving from sight thought to words is a learning process. Moving from emotion to thought ties is a real difficult transition too. So much of communication is based on sharing an emotional experience. To not have the tie of emotion to your experiences limits the wish to communicate. You don't see the way we see. It is like having a conversation with a foreigner, commonality is lost in the language barrier - or motor barrier. For all the obstacles it is a miracle that facilitation works at all sometimes. Sometimes there is no miracle.

FC - A Visible Help For a Vision Problem

Today I started using a new board - Black on white, with the middle keys highlighted in yellow. It is a wonderful help. My eyes have difficulty tracking a line. Mom used to highlight my reading material to separate the lines for me. Every other line she would highlight. To facilitate, I use the facilitator's eyes. A bump is up, a tug is down; then I just go across and pick the letter I want. Typing independently is different. Only my eyes can I count on then. This board helps my eyes stay a course. It is a wonderful simple aid that both eases and speeds the process. If I can see better, I can type easier. I owe Todd a big thank you. I am sometimes surprised at what comes out of communication, even arguments. Mom learned something from something she did not want to think was true. Honesty is always best. When asked, I told her I do use her eyes as facilitator. To see the need is always to find a solution with her. Now my work at typing is easier. I wish I could say I thought to tell her of the need. I did not. Sometimes autists do better to think in answers then in questions. James Todd is the one who sparked the conversation that revealed it. He is a skeptic but a responsive one. I might have enjoyed working with him if he would have given me a chance at personhood. But I am a ghost to him so it is not possible. Acknowledgment of body and soul and mind should not be too much to ask. No hard feelings, just regrets. I will keep working on my typing.

Mike

Ready to Type.

I am ready to type. I want to type about life as an autist. I am about to undertake a huge task - the changing of a mind. Motivations can be a tricky thing. Unless they are pure, influence is a false assumption tied to motive not truth. If they are pure, influence is a matter of showing a greater truth. Influence becomes tied to the credibility of the speaker or the obviousness of the truth. Where truth is hidden among untruths or just hidden from view, reason gets applied. But what reason? Five sense reason or multi-sensory reason? I am reading The Seat of the Soul and the author starts with the mirage of survival of the fittest. Five sense reasoning says survival of the fittest is the most advanced of species, but we know this is not true. It is the altruistic act that sets the most advanced apart. How do you explain this? The soul speaks it to you. This is my task, to help another to understand the workings of the soul. It answers all questions unknown. I pray for the grace to say it right. It is important so others will have continued opportunity. It is about them. No more, no less. I am an enigma of two worlds, capable and incapable. This is the purpose God fashioned me for. Pray for me that I may do him service well.

Facilitation: A Cost Too High to Pay?

http://www.science20.com/countering_psychology_woo_and_science_asds/facilitated_communication_price_too_high_pay-75597

I agree with this blog. FC is dangerous. So are knives, and guns, and words wielded irresponsibly. It is in knowing the danger that we avoid it. It should never be wielded as a sword, rather as a tool for advancement of skill. I type independent at times if really important. FC was the path to independent typing for me. To put myself on display asks alot. But, I would work to do it under the adverse anxiety of it if it would serve others. This is my question. One voice, is it enough? Will it take two? Or will each be disregarded as the oddity rather than the rule?

People will believe the worst of people. It is the real lesson here. Mankind is capable of such grace and such evil. I am not a pioneer by nature. Is that cowardice? I am about to do the unthinkable for me in committing to put myself independent on tape. I wish Dr. Todd knew the cost of that

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I am lost for words of late. For me, life is a mental process, not a physical one. My physical is limited. My mind is limitless. But, putting words to thoughts is tricky, just as with putting words to pictures, words sometimes fall short.

I have experienced so much these past few weeks, of life and death, and hopelessness and hopefulness. Each breeds the other in an intricate connectedness of time and space. One person's tragedy is another's opportunity to soul shine. I am talking about random acts of kindness, the human capacity to empathize and act.

My Aunt just lost her child. Despite her personal pain she reaches out to another whose loss will be her, for her family. She revisits pending death in honor of her friend's life. How strong is the human spirit. How fragile is life. It amazes me, the strength of soul hidden in a fragile physical form. We celebrate the fragile body as being life, but it is only a mirage of life. True life is in the soul, a soul that ultimately seeks freedom from the physical through death. Death is life everlasting. Love is what binds the two, the physical and the soul. To make concrete a life is an act of love's remembrance. To move from the physical to the soul is an act of love's receiving, God's love spilled out to us. Love is the cement that binds all.

Facilitation: Quiet and the Value of Planned Noise

"Quiet" is a misnomer for the autist. It is "quiet" in my house now as I listen to the blaring of what are just background noises to you. The computer buzzes, refrigerator hums, and dish washer wooshes its way through cycle. I am distracted by all; each takes its turn. Sometimes a planned noise helps create what is quiet for me, it sings a soul song. I put on the radio and let the rhythm sooth my soul. It organizes my attention, focusing it on something singularly directed.

Facilitation is an exercise in dealing with background noise. Each variable in typing is its own background noise. It is easy to get lost in it. What is needed is a focus point. For each of us, the focus point may differ I think. For some, it is the message itself. For others, it is an internal rhythm set to type to. I used to type from the feel of Mom's heartbeat throbbing in my finger. Now I try to feel my own heartbeat as rhythm. Some work to the rhythm of returning to a common end point. I type moving letter to letter, but it might have been easier to learn to type as endpoint to letter to endpoint, repeat. The freezes you see are hiccups to our motor rhythm. Using planned noise can help with it. Your prompting is a form of planned noise. In building independence the key is to transfer the source and control of the planned noise from you to me. Depending on the autist the necessary sensory mode would vary as effective. Visual sound I can't talk to. I don't experience it. But I imagine a visual field could be designed with flow. I use auditory and tactile sound to move past freezing. The sound of a feedback stylus (a clicker pen), the sound of a token hitting the board, the rhythm of a piece of music or ticking of a clock, each is enough to move my motor past its natural stall point. Finding the right planned sound is an art beyond skill, individual to each of us. But finding it means first knowing enough to look for it. It is all I can offer you sometimes; to know what is the question.