Framework Soup (and No One Agrees on the Recipe)
W
wade neumann
Notes. Thoughts. Big Ideas.
Category
- Autism
- Therapy
- Rants
- Parent-Guilt
Another juggernaut 80 page report... and another framework.
Pages of graphs and beautifully formatted charts.. plenty of words I'm not sure I can catch the gist of..
Another therapist has dreamt up another abstract simplism to tell themselves when Makos behaviour is "working".
And each time, there's a hollow in my chest that gets a little deeper.. Not because the people bringing these behavioural frameworks don't care, they do, but because each one tends to arrive as if it's the only way, and my child is expected to meet us there. He's needed to adapt again.
Pages of graphs and beautifully formatted charts.. plenty of words I'm not sure I can catch the gist of..
Another therapist has dreamt up another abstract simplism to tell themselves when Makos behaviour is "working".
And each time, there's a hollow in my chest that gets a little deeper.. Not because the people bringing these behavioural frameworks don't care, they do, but because each one tends to arrive as if it's the only way, and my child is expected to meet us there. He's needed to adapt again.
"Just toss the old model aside please kid! - This one is shinier!"
I'm living in fear for Mako. For if, to stretch his already limited capacity across yet another attempt to manage his behavioural reality.. another therapist proposing a framework to annex the last framerwork.. and the massive, giant shame here is that they don't quite speak to each other. Mako is being asked to translate himself for the sake of others, depending on who's in the room, with a degree and a day-rate... As a parent, that starts to feel less like supportive movement and more like fragmentation, another version of explaining away Mako's normal - instead perceived against community normal.... and it's hard not to wonder why the responsibility keeps landing on him to adjust instead of us choosing something elegantly coherent and meeting him where he actually is.
It raises a quiet question that screams in my chest, underneath all of this: what if the issue isn't which framework is best, but the assumption they all share?
It raises a quiet question that screams in my chest, underneath all of this: what if the issue isn't which framework is best, but the assumption they all share?
Because most frameworks built around supporting autistic children begin with the idea that a child can regulate, choose, and communicate in ways we recognise, at will, and on the spot, yet only if they're guided correctly.
What if that capacity isn't consistently available?
What if the behaviour we're seeing isn't a failure to communicate but the only communication currently accessible?
We rarely pause long enough to define what "normal" looks like for that specific child, actually I want to repeat it plain:
What exactly does Makos normal look like to us, and do we see it that way??
Mako's baseline, Mako's patterns, his way of being when things are actually going well - has anyone ever asked??
What if that capacity isn't consistently available?
What if the behaviour we're seeing isn't a failure to communicate but the only communication currently accessible?
We rarely pause long enough to define what "normal" looks like for that specific child, actually I want to repeat it plain:
What exactly does Makos normal look like to us, and do we see it that way??
Mako's baseline, Mako's patterns, his way of being when things are actually going well - has anyone ever asked??
Instead, his 'behaviours' get compared against a lowest-common-denominator kind of shared, neurotypical reference point, eye contact, stillness, verbal response, signals that make sense to us because we've agreed on them, sometimes.. Without a clear picture of the child's own baseline, we end up asking the wrong question. Not what state is this child's nervous system in, but how close does this look to what we expect, and that's where definitions drift. Regulated ends up meaning “looks right,” and dysregulated means “doesn’t”—even when a child is quiet but shut down, or loud and moving and still very much present.
When those mismatched assumptions are layered across multiple frameworks, the load doesn't disappear, it just shifts, and too often it lands squarely on the child.
How fair is it that the child is left switching between systems, spending energy just trying to keep up. when a green light of emotional regulation gets confused with mountain metaphors.. I mean abtract visual ideas to delineate subjective experiential divergence.... = framework soup.
What gets read as inconsistency or resistance is often the strain of carrying conflicting instructions.
What gets read as inconsistency or resistance is often the strain of carrying conflicting instructions.
It's not so different from a building where the engineering doesn't quite line up, where trusses are designed for one set of supports but installed upside down. The structure might look familiar at a glance, but the load paths are off, stress gathers in the wrong places, and over time you start to see cracks and warping, not because the materials are flawed, but because the system lacks coherence. In the same way, even thoughtful frameworks can create pressure and breakdown when they're not designed to work together, and the part that gives way first is the one with the least spare capacity. That's why the question has to shift away from which framework we prefer and toward something more fundamental: are we actually understanding the state the child is in, and are we building around that, or are we still asking them to fit the structure we've already decided to use?
For real, we're literally asking these kids to describe their own deficits for our own understanding without a baseline of their 'normal', so that we can compare them to conventions they can't meet. It's ugly, people.
I'm sorry boy. I apologise for all the times I cant translate these messes for you, while holding your hand, letting you borrow my nervous system so that at the very least, we can hold hands with love in our hearts.
For real, we're literally asking these kids to describe their own deficits for our own understanding without a baseline of their 'normal', so that we can compare them to conventions they can't meet. It's ugly, people.
I'm sorry boy. I apologise for all the times I cant translate these messes for you, while holding your hand, letting you borrow my nervous system so that at the very least, we can hold hands with love in our hearts.
open to feedback on honouring these kids and educating nased on their
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