Asperger's Teens are Also Just Teens

As many of you know, I'm in the process of earning a masters degree in counseling psychology. Along these lines, my new job involves teaching social skills to young people with Asperger’s Syndrome, via theater work. Before I started, I knew a little bit about the disorder itself, and the people who deal with it. I learned a lot more during training week (and all the reading that led up to it). But nothing can prepare one for the infinite variability of real people.

My students are all teenagers, from 15 to 18. I’ve lived with them only five hours a day for a mere two days (and a bunch of talking and writing about them before and after each day, as part of the job). What has struck me more than anything is the same thing that stood out when I started my internship at a college counseling center this past school year: People are people. With disorders, without disorders, these kids are basically typical teens. They are warm, smart, funny and talented. And they are exasperating, underachieving and worrisome. Sometimes all in the same kid. Sometimes all at once.

It’s been very poignant to watch them quickly divvy up into cliques. Each kid is falling into patterned teenage behavior that serves the purpose of identifying them to the larger crew: “I’m a cool kid. You can’t touch me.” Or, “I’m hilarious and over-the-top; I’ll do anything goofy to get your attention.” Or, “I’m mature. I don’t notice the offensive things you do, so don't expect me to join in.”

The particularly difficult thing is to watch the “cool” kids. First of all, they are, of course, anything but. Moreover, though, every once in a while, a little fissure appears in their veneer, and what peeks through is an eager little kid (much littler than the age they are trying to act) who just wants to play. One of our projects in our brief time with them (the summer session lasts only six weeks) will be to see if we can help those young people to let out their inner kid, before society gets them to squash it for good.

That’s a pretty good description of how I want to approach them. I’ve already slipped into a more parental, finger-shaking mode, and I know very well that will just put us on opposite sides of a six-week war, with no winners. We don’t want to represent “society” to them. We want to help them at least take another step in learning who they are, and bringing that wealth to each interaction out in the world.

More thoughts on this anon.

Constraints and Creativity

This summer, my job will be helping to teach kids with Asperger's Syndrome social skills through the practice of theater games and projects. To prepare for this work, the director of the project assigned some very interesting reading, including Improvisation for the Theater by Viola Spolin (got to love that name). While laying out a plan for teaching improvisation skills, she also manages to ladle in some pretty interesting comments on the nature of creativity and mental health. Like this one:

Abandoned to the whims of others, we must wander daily through the wish to be loved and the fear of rejection before we can be productive.... Having to thus look to others to tell us where we are, who we are, and what is happening results in a serious (almost total) loss of personal experiencing. We lose the ability to be organically involved in a problem.... We do not know our substance, and ...insight is lost to us.

Theatrical improv exercises, as Spolin lays them out, provide one great workshop for resolving this problem:

The energy released to solve the problem [of improvising a scene], being restricted by the rules of the game and bound by group decision, creates an explosion -- or spontaneity -- and, as is the nature of explosions, everything is torn apart, re-arranged, unblocked.

I haven't tried her method yet, of course, but in theory, I agree with her and am excited by the possibilities. As a life-long creative person, and as a student of counseling psychology, I am energized by the connections between solving creative problems in my work, and "solving" the "problem" of daily life. Her books hints, not so subtly, that these two dynamics are twin siblings.

She isn’t talking about psycho-drama (experiencing emotions based on my past, on-stage). She doesn’t think that’s what helps us in this way (it might help in another, more cathartic or insight-oriented way). The exercise of setting up a creative challenge is more like life itself, and, if properly harnessed, could be a more suitable way to build day-to-day efficacy and agency.

In both life and her exercises, one has the ever-exciting task of "making something from nothing." I feel that challenge upon sitting down to write an essay or song -- and upon waking up in the morning to face an average work-day. They two are not identical, granted, but the feeling of starting each them is somewhat the same, in my experience.

In creative work, Spolin argues that we work best when we dream up certain constraints upon the "something from nothing" challenge. If set up adroitly, the tension between the rules and the creative freedom creates energy that intensifies the creative flame. And, of course, the constraints are built right into daily life, as we know all too well. But how often am I able to see them as factors that can elicit and intensify my sense of personal power and wholeness, as can the constraints in a creative game?

Food for thought as I read on and prepare for the week-long training starting a week from today.