Have you ever noticed:

At public places you see lots of people happily listening to music with ear phones and tuning-out the rest of the world. Like, who cares about strangers anyway, or

When you’re walking to the office, you might be so busy planning your day in your mind, that you fail to notice you already turned the corner or maybe even almost bumped someone, yet still you hardly noticed, or

When you get so excited, you just have to clap your hands?

These are all normal reactions to different stimuli.

These are exactly what autistic kids do. These are normal reactions to different stimuli. They are NOT an indication of a deficit. The only reason why it looks strange on them is because they are not verbal enough to tell you what the stimuli was. And they would much rather continuously act on the interesting stimuli than respond to boring people.

This is where investigating on what stimuli caused the behavior helps. The best way to investigate is by “joining” your kids. That way, the child will begin to see you as just as interesting as the stimuli and more relationship is built.

Building a relationship through “Joining”. It works like this: you don’t expect your teenaged daughter to share her deepest boyfriend secrets with you as soon as you ask, “Hey, who are you dating?” You have to talk to her first as if you were her, until she is comfortable enough to tell you her secrets.