Becoming More Whole

 Today at the learning center my boss went out of his way to let me know how pleased he was with the work I've done with two autistic students who are now assigned to me exclusively. The assistant manager also chimed in about what I've done with another student who often started crying during tutoring sessions with other tutors. 

Right now I would attribute that to my understanding something Blaise Pascal once observed some 400 years ago:

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

I'd put it a different way at first, that ideologies are based not on facts but on emotions - on the way that they want the world to be - and those wishing to appear intellectual would then proceed to rationalize their ideologies - mainly to refute liberal "intellectuals" people spouting their ideologies. However, it eventually dawned on me that when someone's choices are motivated by fear, no useful discourse could occur until they first felt safe. And so I made a conscious choice to address fear when I perceived it to try and make others feel safe first. And this is what has led adapting my methods of my tutoring/teaching. I did some research on ASD and learned how to address the most common things that make people on the spectrum (my polite way of describing people with autism) feel comfortable. And one of the first things I learned to do was always to ask: "do you need help with that?" after giving them any sort of direction. Also, it helped to understand that people on the spectrum seem to be most comfortable with a set routine, so whenever someone with ASD had their curriculum changed, I always told them something along the lines of: "This is new. I know this might make you uncomfortable, so we're going to work through this together until you're comfortable with the new book and you understand what's expected of you." 

My boss had told me a while back that one specific student talked about me every day at home after i started working with him, but today he relayed to me that the student's mother told him that he still gets really excited when he knows that he's coming in for a session, and that it would bother him if he was late due to traffic, etc. I had no clue. 

Another student and I got into a recent discussion over the definition of the word "applaud". He first commented that people should already know if they did well and shouldn't expect to be appreciated. I responded by telling him that if he ever got married or had a girlfriend, they'd expect him to tell them that he loved them more than once in their lives. His response that that he was never going to have a girlfriend because it would be too much work. The next session he'd decided that he'd have a girlfriend as long as she bought him stuff.

The thing is that I used to find working with these students draining, but to my surprise, I've found that I've actually become fond of these students - not in spite of their... I was going to say disabilities, but quirks is a lot less pejorative - but rather, because of them.

And I can embrace my own imperfections and love them as well.