Aspergers and Theater

Asperger's Syndrome is usually classified as a kind of high-functioning autism. The person is often quite intelligent, but is unable to understand other people's emotions. Most of us learn as infants how to read other people's faces and tell their emotions, but the AS child seems to use a different part of the brain, and has a lot of trouble piecing out what other people really mean.

Stop and think how much of the meaning of an ordinary conversation is contained in the tone and body language you employ. And how do you decipher this often dreaded exchange?

He: "Is something wrong?"

She: "No, everything is just fine."

Depending on her tone of voice and which way her eyes are looking, this could be a tender moment or the overture to a dish-slinging serenade. Imagine not being able to tell which was about to happen!

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Since studies suggest that the AS child uses a different part of the brain (a part related to mathematical skills), you can't teach him to "read people" in quite the same way as you could somebody else. You can already find programs to try to teach you how to recognize and interpret different facial expressions: and books, card games, and computer programs to go with these. I cannot easily evaluate these, except to authoritatively state that they aren't quick solutions. (In fact, the children involved were bored out of their gourds: probably because they couldn't understand the game.)

Even if you train a child to recognize emotions in others, he still faces the problem of communicating his own emotions in socially acceptable ways. In "social stories" the teacher devises a concrete situation based on some incidents the child has encountered, and the teacher and child step through the story deciding what should be the next response and why. (These have proved very useful.) During the course of the lesson the two may work out a number of different protocols: "If the bully says X you can say Y." Of course, the child finds that putting the lessons into practice is harder than talking them out with the teacher.

In an extension of this, the child and teacher spend time acting out the scenes. This is labor-intensive, but seems to be helpful.

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Suppose we give the child not just social stories, but more detailed theatrical training. "Stand here. Point your head towards him. Open your eyes wider. Say the last part of that sentence a bit more slowly. When you want somebody to think you are interested in them, don't just look at them, turn your torso to face them."

Some people already use a theatrical model to teach more severely handicapped children their social stories, but this is a little different. I propose that we try to teach them body language and tone as well as their scripts.

An actor has to be intentional about how his body looks and his voice sounds. That is just the ticket for an Asperger's child. And the theater gives you scripts. Unfortunately most of the interesting plays don't have scripts that fit an ordinary day. "Alas, poor Yorick!" I believe we could find a wide enough sample, though, and make sure these are carefully practiced.

The act of shaping your own face to express some emotion ought to help you recognize that same shaping in someone else. (Mirrors help the acting instructor here: the child sees himself and the instructor making faces.) Having the expressions in context helps a lot in remembering their interpretations.

The context of the play lets you show explicitly how meanings change with body language.

At least in theory this sort of training gives the Asberger's child most of what he needs to learn about emoting and recognizing emotions and their contributions to conversation.

So we need

• Acting instructors who can deal with children, and are very patient. Everything has to be spelled out.
• Somebody to teach the acting instructors how to deal with Asperger's children. Teaching the teachers will be a big part of the job.
• Plays that are interesting but still have some ordinary conversation. I don't think writing our own is a great idea, unless we have some hidden Shakespeare handy.
• Other actors who are not AS children, so the instructors can focus on only the child's part in the play. Perhaps these could be other parents? If so, the parents need some acting instruction too.

There are a few issues that need attention:

• Most conversation in plays and movies is actually stylized, and not quite like real conversations. Real conversations have a lot of redundancy and subtle breaks to allow turn-taking.
• How many AS children can a single instructor deal with at a time? (One is obviously best, but very expensive. Maybe several instructors in the same room with several children?)
• How many AS children can you have on a single set? How wide can the age range be? (This matters a lot for selecting the plays!)
• By construction, this is not one-on-one training, but two-on-one: the teacher and the other actor(s) together with the child. It is obviously quite labor-intensive.
• The degree of movement and facial expression suitable for the stage, where you have to convey emotion to the back rows, is not so suitable for ordinary conversation. Is movie acting different from stage acting?

I think it can be done. I don't see any show-stoppers yet.

Revisiting marriage policies

Questions about marriage policy are hot topics lately, but most of the debate seems to miss the point.

Some things we learn from simple observation:

• The institution of the family predates every government or ideology.
• Everybody is part of a family. Some of the members may currently be dead, but they were family once.
• Governments exist to support people and families, not vice versa. I'll grant that this isn't perfectly obvious. This notion was pretty revolutionary when it was introduced, and megalomaniacs in halls of state and halls of academe the world over still reject it.

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• Left to their own devices, people tend to form families.
• Left to their own devices, people often try to get the benefits of relationships without meeting all the obligations. (And so they duck child support, "Why buy the cow...", etc). This is both unjust to the other individuals and bad for society as a whole.

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• Culture is not codified, but is usually more potent than laws for determining behavior. Chesterton once said that an English gentleman would rather commit any crime than walk down the street without his pants. Times and customs change, but the force of custom doesn't.
• Laws can modify culture over time. We went through a long and deliberate effort to demolish racist laws and racist customs, and have had substantial success. There's still racism, but much less (just read the history if you doubt it) and the force of custom represses expression of racism.
• It is easier to make things worse than make them better. Always.
• There are always unintended consequences for any law. That doesn't mean you don't need the law, but it does mean that you have to be alert for problems and for loopholes. It was never the intent of the Great Society policy-makers to discourage welfare recipients from marrying or to keep them from getting part-time jobs or to create a culture of dependency; but they did all three. It took us an unconscionably long time to start trying to tune the laws to fix the problems.

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• The nuclear family of husband and wife and children is only part of the family. A family also has brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and cousins of various degrees.
• A marriage not only unites a man and woman, but also links two families.

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• Although children are dependent when young, all other family relationships involve obligations of mutual support. The degree of support is greater the closer the relationship, but brother and sister, grown child and parent, cousins, etc have varying obligations to help each other. This is recognized around the world, but we usually neglect it in popular culture and in law here in the US.
• You pick your spouse, but not the other members of your family. That does not excuse you from your obligations to them. You are not free to abandon your family, like them or not.
• Your obligation to live honestly outweighs family obligations. A criminal must not be sheltered just because he is family. I'll grant that this is not a universally accepted principle. In some cultures family ties are more important than any law of man or God. I'm going to stipulate that they are wrong, at least insofar as the laws of God go.
• Family obligations are huge. As Maggie Gallagher pointed out, the duties of parent to child or the duties of taking care of a sick spouse demand a degree of commitment that cannot be enforced by laws. Only love supported by custom proves adequate to motivate the sacrifices required. In traditional families it is normal to find parents working extra jobs, giving up luxuries, and so on to provide good educations for their children. What kind of law can you enforce to make a father work a second job to pay for a better school for his children?

The obvious objection to my sketch of the "big picture" of families is that it doesn't reflect the situation on the ground. The idealized lily-white suburb is peopled with nuclear and sub-nuclear families who send Christmas cards to their cousins; and the black enclave may have few marriages of any description and a lot of grandparents caring for children.

Perhaps this "situation on the ground" describes the people you know. Nevertheless we're still a nation of immigrants, and the recent immigrants still have and respect the normal human family structure: the "extended" family.

It seems self-evident that our customs and laws ought to support family structures and obligations of the usual "extended" type, and not just the nuclear family. At the moment we seem to disparage it.

Even if we set aside the obligation of government to provide the mechanisms that recognize and encourage families, the social and economic benefits of "extended" families seem clear enough:

• Fallback support for nuclear families when someone loses a job or gets sick. You can have targetted support, with no administrative overhead. We would potentially have fewer who needed welfare (The last time I checked, most welfare recipiants only needed support for a few months.)
• Encouragement and training for new parents. Parenting skills don't come automatically. Experienced relatives are a great boon. Those of you who've been parents: imagine a sister or cousin taking a few days "family maternity leave" to help out when your first was born.
• The increased security and stability for children has immense payoffs: children of divorces, with little other family support, are far more likely to be unsupportive of their own children, and far more likely to be criminals. The social cost of uncared-for children is very high.
• There are some economies of scale when families try to afford housing, for instance. If your objective is to sell as many houses as you can, encouraging people to buy large houses as a family is bad; but if your objective is to have people housed, then its a good thing if several income-earners chip in.

Tax law doesn't recognize any kind of family mutual support obligations besides that between spouses, and no other kind of support except that of "dependent." Tax law doesn't recognize what you and your three siblings each contribute to your widowed mother's support unless one of you gives over 50% of the total.

Insurance rules are similarly restricted.

When we tried to suppress racism, we used a combination of laws and moral arguments to change actions and attitudes. If we decide that we ought to support the "extended" family we will likewise need to change not just the laws but the attitudes. That's not easy, but as we've seen already we can deliberately change the culture.

There are consequences of this sort of effort. Emphasizing family obligations means that divorce should be very hard if there are children to be supported. We would be deprecating the irresponsible drift from sex partner to sex partner that young men find so popular. For a substantial fraction of the country, we would be reminding them that they have obligations to people they haven't seen in years. We probably wouldn't get the right model of joint ownership on the first try. And if we try to shoehorn civil unions into this we'll wind up with a dog's breakfast of a mess. Civil unions focus on adults, not children.

Prayer Tables

If we are a "holy priesthood," for whom do we intercede? Only each other, or non-Christians as well? If we intercede for others, how do we do so?

With a public prayer table?

There are 3 types of prayer tables: In church, at Christian venues (like concerts), and at secular venues (like fairs or block parties).

Many churches have a prayer box, where you can drop in a prayer request. Some also have a prayer room, where you can go to pray with someone.

A prayer table at a secular venue is like that at a Christian venue, but with stronger accountability controls, more training for outreach, and more training for the servers for dealing with hecklers and pranksters.

So consider the prayer table at a Christian venue.

At Christian concerts, you find sales tables and information tables.

Set up a table with 3 or 4 people to sit taking prayer requests and praying with people. The servers commit to praying for these requests for a week. A large sign tells what we do (pray for your requests) and who is sponsoring it (a church must sponsor tables to make sure that we have accountability, and don't have charlatans or gossips manning the table).

People can leave prayer cards in a jar, which the servers will pray for for a week. No names are required.

Remember Mark 11:24, Mark 11:25-26, and Matthew 6:7-8.

Some people will want answers to questions about God or doctrine. Keep a Bible (maybe some freebies too) and gospel tracts handy. Servers should admit their ignorance about subtle details, but be able to explain the gospel. DO NOT deprecate ANY Christian denomination. That is not the way of service here. It is probably not a good idea to strongly deprecate non-Christian groups either (atheists, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc) because that's not what we're trying to do.

Some non-believers and immature people will make fun or propose rediculous petitions. Politely decline.

Don't get involved in any politics--local, national, or international.

Some people will want to sit and talk. We need polite ways to cut to a specific request if a line forms.

Some people will need counseling. We need a list of clergy or other counselors--counseling is not our job.

Some prayers will need a bit of clarification or generalizing. For example, needing money is pretty non-specific. Does the person need a job, or need money for something (rent, etc)? Try as much as possible to avoid changing the central request. If there are issues that need expansion, talk about them (ask "Is this . . ." questions) before praying.

Some people will want to confess sins. Our servers must be very discreet. We don't offer cheap confessionals. The servers must refer back to the petitioner's preacher/priest, remind them of the command to "go and be reconciled to your brother" and emphasize that only God forgives. If we allow confessions at all, they must be private and follow the rules that apply to counselors and priests. No records.

Beware of carrom prayer requests: gossiping or bad-mouthing someone in the guise of asking prayer for that person.

Sample: Pray that God will forgive X; thank God that He does forgive; pray that X will stand firm in repentence and fill his/her life with good work instead of the sin; and that X will be reconciled with whoever he/she may have offended with this sin.

Again: Remember Mark 11:24, Mark 11:25-26, and Matthew 6:7-8.

Church Alternatives to Halloween Parties

Whether or not we think Halloween satanic (I don't), it is indisputable that the costumes and themes are now amazingly vile, expensive, and without any redeeming entertainment value. Yet Trick-or-Treat seems to be so firmly imbedded in our culture that children feel deprived if not allowed to participate.

We can bite the bullet and refuse to participate, or we can try to modify the celebrations to serve benign ends.

Children like candy and parties, like dressing up, and like being a bit weird. We can accomodate them.

Imagine a church party celebrating the saints and martyrs of history. Different aged children have different parties, of course. The youngest kids get “bathrobe and prop” costumes and act out scenes like David and Goliath (whiffle-ball slingshot?) or Samson with the jawbone of an ass or Gideon. (I grant there might be an issue finding volunteers to be Philistines, who only get to be defeated.) The altar faceoff between Elijah and the priests of Baal could get nice and noisy.

Do we have enough women? Most don't seem to have distinctive enough costumes. This may well prove a show-stopper.

Older children could pick from the saints and martyrs, and tell their stories when called on. St. Sebastian would be nice and popular (stuck full of arrows), but costumes might prove a bit undistinctive in general. This requires a greater emphasis on the stories—can we work on story-telling skills here?

What is this for?

In blue-sky planning, you devise a scheme for solving a problem. You then try to flesh it out. In the process you discover all sorts of side effects and collateral problems; and usually the scheme is impractical, if not impossible. But often the scheme morphs into something humbler and more practical, and every now and then even workable.

So don't laugh too hard. Follow up and fix it!