Posted By Janet Lawson, MFT on May 26, 2012

Spring time is blooming at Autistry this year. We saw an amazing array of projects created in the Build Workshops: guitars, tanks, a Theramin (look it up – it’s cool!), an original board game – Touchdown Trivia, treasure chests, Life Action Role Playing swords, airplanes, Dr. Who and the Tardis, wonderful dragons, a quilt, a dress, the trailer for an upcoming film project, a pendulum clock! Supporting all this creativity is certainly challenging the Autistry staff and keeping us all on our toes. And we love it.

Our first Puppet Core Workshop was a tremendous success. The students created several different types of puppets and gave a demonstration at the May Open House. Courtenay and Melissa will be teaching the Autistry Day Camp July 9 – 20. They will offer another Puppet Workshop in the fall semester beginning in August. Stay tuned for details.

Several Autistry students participated in a panel discussion at the Marin Autism Collaborative Annual Meeting held at the Buck Institute earlier in May. The panelists spoke honestly and eloquently about their experience as individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders at school, in relationships and on the job. The audience was spellbound as the students, ranging in age from 15 to 40, recounted personal stories of pain, humor and pride. The response has been overwhelming. We have been asked to participate in several other events bringing our voices to the discussion of autism.

The Open House on May 20th was absolutely fabulous. We had over 100 people show up to view the projects, watch the films, experience the puppetry and enjoy wonderful food. These events bring the families together and give all of us a chance to talk to one another. A big Thank You to all the folks who donated to our Let There Be Light Fund. We collected enough to purchase new bulbs and fixtures for all the overhead shop lamps and rent the scissor lift so we can reach them. We even raised enough to purchase some hard hats to wear while working – very important for those of us on the ground.

I have saved the best news for last: this week we received a call from the Bothin Foundation. They are giving us a grant to purchase a laser cutter, a ShopBot and a 3D printer! With this equipment we will be able to launch our first Autistry Enterprise. To provide jobs for teens and adults with ASD has been a goal of Autistry since day one. The Core Workshops are designed as pre-vocational learning experiences leading to employment and/or college. But we have long understood that many of our students need actual work experience before entering the general employment arena. With this very generous grant we will be able to provide that experience.

We are looking forward to a great summer!

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Posted By Dan Swearingen on May 23, 2012

A very controversial food. We serve food at all of our workshops including a full sit-down lunch with dinner style food during each four-hour workshop. We serve food for several reasons. Since many of our students are still teenagers, they need to eat well and often. We also use the sit-down meals as a socializing and social skills opportunity.

In our home life Janet and I are on a strict gluten-free, casein-free (effectively dairy-free), corn free diet which we undertook on behalf of our son. Ian benefitted greatly from this diet and it allowed him to transition to being medication-free and improved his performance in school. For ourselves, we have found this to be a very healthy diet and plan on continuing. I say this mainly to indicate that Janet and I were predisposed to look hard at foods we serve and observant of their effect on the students.

Food seeking behaviors (and misbehaviors!)

Many of our students, perhaps 25%, need some small amount of food nearly hourly. At the studio this will be in the form of potato chips and fruit snacks. When they have this food handy they are better able to attend to their work and their behaviors are calmer. That said, about 10% of our students will noticeably over-eat if the food is not limited. Not surprisingly, these same students are overweight.

Sugar seeking overlaps general food seeking habits in our students in a complex way. We long ago banned sugar and sugar free soda but make unsweetened fruit juices and seltzer water freely available. However, one day a parent brought a cold case of Coke-a-cola to the studio for a pot-luck later in the week. Probably 75% of our students (including ALL of the overweight overeaters discussed above) displayed a complete lack of control about grabbing for the cokes and also drank several each. This frenzied behavior reinforced our commitment to keeping these drinks out of the studio.

The “fruit” juices have some perils too. Bought before we looked at it carefully, a lemonade we buy at Costco turns out to be sweetened with cane sugar and causes the same grabby/frenzy behavior we don’t like about sodas. It is otherwise not too bad so we experimented and have found that diluting it about 25% with water vastly reduces the grabby behavior so we surreptitiously dilute all the bottles before they get to the lunch table. Grape juice has the same problem and we dilute it as well, and again this reduces the “pull” almost all of the students are helpless to.

Effects of Food and Sugar

Once they eat the food – does it help or hinder? Most students benefit from having healthy-ish food handy. By “healthy-ish” I’m including snacks like potato chips. For our chronic over-eaters (again about 10% of our students) they eat to diminishing returns: they eventually eat until they suffer some sort of food crash so the overeating affects their productivity and they show reduced energy but their mood appears well regulated (no outburst). Once we have determined that someone is an overeater we gently regulate the amount of food they eat so that the overeaters end up with portions similar to the other students.

For most of the students, sugar affects them pretty much the same as other snacks, which is to say that mainly it has a positive/neutral impact on their mood and functionality. This is somewhat in contrast to a lot of information out there regarding sugar but this is our experience.

However, for about 10% we see a “sugar crash” almost immediately, practically before they finish the sugar loaded food. Their crash consists of low energy, reduced ability to attend, reduced ability to avoid OCD behaviors, and foul mood. This group clearly should never eat sugared food and yet they constantly seek such foods. An example is a student who would drench their meat dish (usually chicken) with a BBQ sauce that was heavily sugared. By the end of the meal this individual would be in a sugar crash and would be grumpy and unproductive for the rest of their studio time that day.

Overall: going low or no sugar is certainly a safe choice. Fruit is great but even junk food such as chips seems to be at worst neutral – as long as they are not overeaten.

Individuals who are sugar sensitive clearly must avoid sugar to remain effective and productive. For those individuals we will be working closely with them and their families to come up with strategies to avoid those foods that do not work for them.

As I said above, this is our experience observing the students we work with. Your mileage may vary.

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Posted By Dan Swearingen on May 23, 2012

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Posted By Dan Swearingen on May 23, 2012

We had our Spring end-of-semester open house last Sunday, May 20. Our last open house was in December of last year and we have grown quite a bit. We had over 100 friends and family.

many of the student projects were on display and there was a table devoted to instruments the students have made or are making. We’re currently making guitars (electric and acoustic), dulcimers and a theremin.

All for now! This is Abe’s latest project: a working Cogsworth clock.

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Posted By Janet Lawson, MFT on March 29, 2012

We had a wonderful spring Spinathon on Sunday, March 25th. The skies threatened rain so we held the classes indoors. I am always amazed at how spacious the small Body Image Fitness Center is. We had lots of people, lots of projects and overflowing food tables and there was still room to mingle and chat. We’ll post photos soon.

Michael and Christine Lopez were gracious and generous hosts and have invited us back for a fall Spinathon in October – so keep those pedals turning!

The Tiburon ARK did a great article on the event which you can find here: Spring 2012 Spin ‘n Sizzle

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Posted By Janet Lawson, MFT on March 18, 2012

Autistry just experienced another growth spurt! In the last few weeks we have welcomed 8 new students. And we have a new staff member, Amelia Sandy. Amelia will graduate from San Francisco State in May with a B.A. in Art and Psychology. She is an accomplished artist, an avid adventurer and, according to our most critical gastronomical critics, she makes a mighty fine grilled cheese sandwich.

Job creation for our students is the next crucial step for Autistry Studios. And we are working hard to launch our first Autistry Enterprise – currently called Autistry Railroad Products which will initially produce model structure kits in laser-cut wood and plastic formats. This company will also provide on-demand CNC flat cutting services to order. For small work (thin sheets on the order of 2 x 3 feet) the work will be done by a laser cutter. For larger work (up to 2 x 4 x 8 feet) the work will be done by a computer controlled motor tool called a ShopBot. We foresee the creation of a wide range of jobs matching the wide range of abilities of our Autistry students. To support this effort we are seeking about $50,000 for capital equipment and seed expenses.

We are also very excited about the upcoming opening of Sweetwater Spectrum in Sonoma, a residential community designed especially for those on the autism spectrum. We are exploring the possibility of opening another Autistry workshop facility in the city of Sonoma to offer our Core Prevocational Workshops and employment opportunities to the Sweetwater community and all eligible families in Sonoma and Napa counties.

And, did I mention, that it is Spin Time!?

Sunday, March 25th we will have our 4th Spin ‘n Sizzle fundraiser at Body Image Fitness, 23 Reed Boulevard in Mill Valley. Come for an hour of spin, a BBQ and to meet many of the Autistry families. We will have some of the very cool student projects on display. Spin sessions begin at 10am and go to 3pm – the BBQ goes all day. This is always a great event – exercise and lots of food! Click here for more information. Email janet@autistry.com to sign up.

Hope to see you all on Sunday,

Janet, Dan and the Autistry Team

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Tags: Ameila Sandy, social enterprise, Spinathon

Posted By Janet Lawson, MFT on February 23, 2012

This is a great event – great exercise, great food, great people and all for a great cause!

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Posted By Courtenay Bell on February 1, 2012

When Dan and Janet approached Melissa and me about potentially teaching a puppet class, I was excited and apprehensive at once.

“What if the students think puppets are lame?”

“What if they get bored?”

“How will we get them to be expressive without unintentionally directing them into something they are not?”

This last question was the most daunting. I have been teaching for five years and inevitably students will copy exactly what you do in hopes of pleasing you. I will admit now, however, this should have been the last thing on my mind. From day one all four young adults have come to Saturday mornings engaged, motivated and most of all true to themselves.

In being so individually self-expressive, we have all learned incredible things about each person. Be it an affinity for Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musicals, a childhood love of Disney films or Super Mario Bros., and hilarious social commentary; these young aspies are passionate, creative and expressive.

After revealing these facts about themselves something more amazing happened than sewing, gluing, or bedazzling; genuine social interaction that was unprompted, naturally rhythmic and challenging for even a cunning linguist like me!

In these lunch time conversations they have beautifully navigated topics from pop culture references, Aspergers humor, and social interpretation, critical thinking about literature, all the way to cartoon Batman versus live action Batman.
(Holey social diversity, Batman!)

As a person who grew up with Aspergers and experienced so many awkward lunch conversations that left me confused, hurt and withdrawn, seeing this blooming of social skills brings tears to my eyes, and a hope in my heart that more people like these students and me can have an Autistry experience just once and feel what it’s like to be understood, heard and appreciated for our uniqueness.

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Posted By Janet Lawson, MFT on January 7, 2012

Fabulous first meeting of the new Autistry Puppet Workshop led by Courtenay Bell and Melissa Diaz-Infante! The students made stick puppets of themselves. Over the next couple of months they will make several types of puppets, build a puppet theater and stage, and write/perform/film several short puppet plays. Lots of fun!

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Posted By Dan Swearingen on January 2, 2012

Many years ago Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror) graciously invited me to share in his Five Things You Didn’t Know About [Jeff Atwood] (and [his] office) post. I’m reposting it on this blog since Autistry is very much my life now.

I too have been humbled and impressed by the other people’s stories in the Five Things meme so here are mine:

1. I am baffled by other people’s fascination with professional sports.

I can identify with playing a sport – I just cannot understand the motivation behind the activity and entire economies driven by watching, talking, and writing about sports. That a city cares whether or not it has a football team and whether they have a nice stadium when at the same time its schools suck makes no sense to me. That a soccer fan needs to throw a beer bottle at someone who does not like their team makes no sense to me.

2. My family set me up to meet a girl they thought I’d like – and it worked.

I met my wife Janet at a family Thanksgiving dinner after months of my family telling me “oh, we want you to meet this girl we think you’ll like.” We’ve been together since that day in 1987.

3. I am an Astrophysicist by education.

My career in software was a profitable side-effect. In school I was interested in everything and focusing on one thing to get a degree was a challenge. Science seemed to be a recurring interest and my employer at the time (Hewlett-Packard) would pay tuition in that area so I chose to major in physics. After my BS I changed schools to work on a Masters. I was at Cal. State Northridge and they had a world class solar observatory and the astronomers were nice to work with so my M.S. in Physics was based on research into the solar magnetic field structure’s relationship with gas brightness and velocity. For my Ph.D. I wanted to work on something other than solar astronomy so amongst the multitude of choices I had (I think it was two) I joined the astronomy department at Indiana University, Bloomington. I was there five and a half years and finished my coursework, my Physics and Astronomy Ph.D. qualifying exams, and made good progress on my dissertation research. However, family and financial pressures precluded my staying the extra one or two years it would have taken to complete my Ph.D so I left IU with a “thank you for playing” Masters in Astronomy. In the mean time I had picked up good programming skills that people were very interested in paying me for.

4. I am an artist by inclination.

My family is populated mainly by performing artists and musicians. Throughout my life I have built things with my hands and the design and construction of structures of fantasy remains my hobby. I’ve focused on model railroading but I also draw and build other 3D art forms. The artist in me determines whether I’m interested in a project: if there’s room for creativity I’m interested. If you just need me to turn the crank, I’d rather be digging ditches.

5. I’m a recovering Aspie (link)

This might be something you already know. In which case my not realizing you know is a demonstration that I have Asperger’s Syndrome. That’s an Aspie joke.

I was not diagnosed until I was in my 30s. I had always known I had to work especially hard at things that appear easy to people around me and all my life I have been known as “really smart – but weird.” It has been really helpful to have a diagnosis. It hasn’t changed anything I do but it has helped me feel vastly better about the coping mechanisms I employ. I still have most of the traditional problems Asperger’s deal with. Let’s face it, most good software developers are what we call “on the spectrum” so I’ve always fit in really well in good development organizations. However, unenlightened employers almost invariably feel I’m stubborn and arrogant when I’m actually very shy and I strive very hard to be a nice person. As far as being stubborn, I like to think I mitigate it by usually being right (although I now know it usually doesn’t matter that you’re right, I’m still naïve enough to be surprised). Fortunately, I’ve had enough really good employment experiences over the years to be comfortable with what part is me and what part is them.

In my fourth grade class we had a two day workshop put on by representatives from NASA. The Space Race was big in American life at that point. The activity was a simulated mission to Mars with the class divided into mission control and crews of two ships traveling together. On the morning of the first day we were informed that one of the ships had crashed on the surface of Mars and was unable to make the return flight. I was in charge of life support on one of the ships. In a few minutes I provided a solution with charts and resource burn-down graphs. By doing that I effectively ruined the next day and a half of the activity for the whole class.

Soon, after days of tests and interviews I spent less and less time in my regular class and starting in 5th grade was moved to a special class with a only six students (2 each in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades) and told I could study whatever I wanted. I studied the history of transportation, astronomy, puppet theater, building geometric shapes out of manila folders, whatever my interests wandered to. As a class we regularly left school and took a bus downtown to get books out of the San Francisco main branch library as needed since we exhausted the resources of the school library after a couple weeks.

For the next three years I was in the San Francisco schools I never sat in a regular classroom and had the most fun I ever had in school (until graduate school). Every now and then someone would stop by with a textbook and say something like “Dan, you really need to learn some math. Work these chapters, please?” A few days later I’d hand in the work and could go back to following my interests.

When I was middle-school age I moved away from San Francisco. High school and college were much harder. Many teachers mistook my shyness (silence) and inability to flow with the program as stupidity. They would put me in remedial reading one week and only to return me to “A track” (college prep) the next after demonstrating reading over 1200 words per minute (as high as their machine could go). I graduated high school with a D-plus GPA but nearly maxed out my SATs. Only in graduate school and when working on a Ph.D. in astrophysics was I having fun in school again.

I’m a former United States Marine. That probably should make six things you didn’t know about me. I put it here in the Asperger’s portion because many of my most effective coping mechanisms were learned during training in the Corps and I’ll always be grateful for that. I also learned how to get shoes REALLY shiny.

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