Anat Baniel on Children with Autism

This article is from the Huffington Post and is written by Anat Baniel.

3 Breakthrough Steps for Helping Your Child on the Autism Spectrum

Posted: 04/13/2012 6:50 pm

Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the alarming statistic that one child out of 88 is diagnosed as having an autism spectrum disorder, a huge increase over the past 10 years. Are these children doomed? Absolutely not. A variety of behavioral therapies and other interventions can help the child on the Autism spectrum make great strides. My message to you is that there is hope for even greater outcomes for these children than we have come to expect. New scientific research has created breakthrough possibilities of helping the child on the Autism spectrum by reducing the brain's compulsivity and helping it become the brilliant brain it is built to be.
For that we need to stop trying to "fix" the child and start creating conditions that help the child's own brain to do its job better.
The brain of every child needs to do two somewhat opposing things. The first is to constantly seek new ways of doing things through the creation of new neural connections and patterns. The second is to groove in and turn into habits the effective new patterns, be it in movement, thinking, feeling or emotion. This is what is happening in the brain anytime a child learns something new, such as walking; what was at first impossible or difficult becomes "second nature" as the child's brain refines the patterns to perform that activity well. Typically, the brain of the child on the Autism Spectrum tends to create a limited number of very powerful habits and to have great difficulty with the complementary, open-ended process of creating new patterns and new possibilities, resulting in the rigidity we often see with children suffering from this condition.
The following helps to illustrate how we can help the child with Autism transcend his or her current limitations.
I first saw Jonathan when he just turned two. He recently was diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum. In addition to making no eye contact, he was not speaking nor did he respond to his name. He had difficulty eating and refused most foods, and when people were around he tried to hide under furniture. During his first session with me, while sitting in his father's lap, he repeatedly arched his back, threw his head back and let out a cry as if his brain was stuck on an automatic loop unable to do anything else. I saw in Ryan a brain that was having great difficulty making sense of all the input and stimulation coming in.
I began very gently and slowly to move Jonathan's pelvis and back. In the beginning, he didn't seem to notice himself or me. A few minutes later, as I very gently and slowly moved his foot, Jonathan became suddenly very still and began staring at his own foot, then straight at me, then back at his foot as if he was feeling it and seeing it for the very first time in his life! Jonathan was coming home to himself. As "small" a change as this might seem, it was a moment of transformation for Jonathan, changing the way his brain had been working. After this first session Ryan's parents reported significant changes in his behavior. After two weeks of sessions he was eating much better, beginning to talk, interacting and playing with his brother and eventually with other kids.
What happened and how does this apply to you and your child?
Every child's brain is like an information "Cookie Monster" -- the brain needs lots of new information to grow and develop new skills. The source of new information to the brain is through the perception of differences. Until a child feels and notices a change or a difference in what they feel, hear, see, smell, or taste, their brain has nothing to work with. Before this differentiation takes place, it's all a blur, like background noise, no matter how clear it might seem to be to us. We can drill the child for hours with some, or little outcome. But when we help their brain get better at noticing differences, almost anything we do with the child will help them improve and almost always at a staggering rate.
Here are three ways you can help your child's brain get better at perceiving differences and getting the new information it needs to heal and learn:

1. Movement With Attention: Take a few minutes, 3-4 times a day, and guide your child to pay attention to what they feel as they move. As they are doing this, observe the immediate and remarkable changes beginning to happen in your child. Automatic, repetitive movement provides little new information for the brain. When your child is attentive to what they feel as they move -- their brain begins forming new neural connections at a staggeringly rapid rate -- that is when transformation happens.
2. Slow: Whenever you observe that your child has a difficulty or seems to "not get it", slow him or her and yourself way down. This change alone can bring about remarkable transformations. Fast, the brain can only do what it already knows. Slow gets the brain's attention and provides the time for the child to feel themselves and for the brain, once again, to notice differences and get new information to work with.
3. Variation: That means instead of trying to have your child do things the "right way", become playful. Guide your child to make lots of mistakes - to do the same thing in many different ways. That provides the brain with lots of opportunity to perceive differences and get the information it needs.

In Her Own Words: Anat Baniel talking about the Anat Baniel Method

A great interview with Anat Baniel here.

KIds Beyond Limits-review 3

Review from a Mom in Portland, OR who writes a blog about her life as mother of identical twins, one with cerebral palsy. 

 

REVIEW: Kids Beyond Limits by Anat Baniel

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Note: The following review assumes you've heard of the Anat Baniel Method (ABM). It is the primary methodology we use with Malachi and we've found it to be very compelling, though we are not without criticisms. If you follow the linked text above, you can read everything I've written on the subject.

So, I had very much hoped that I would have finished reading Anat Baniel's new book Kids Beyond Limits: The Anat Baniel Method for Awakening the Brain and Transforming the Life of Your Child With Special Needs by today, its release date, but I have to admit that I haven't. I've read most of it and skimmed through the rest.

I received an advance copy to review about a month ago and the bottom line is that I absolutely love it. But even though the book is short, only 288 pages, it has taken me an incredibly long time to read it. That's because it's just packed with things that, well, kinda blow my mind. I've found I have to put the book down at least every chapter to think about how I can integrate its philosophy into my life and the way I deal with Malachi. And I definitely can't read it before bed or I will be up all night thinking about it.

So it's been slow going. But I know for a fact I will read it through again as soon as I finish. And I will make everyone who interacts with Malachi read it. And, if I can, all of you people read it.

If you happen to have read Anat Baniel's first book, Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality, you already know her so-called Nine Essentials: Movement with Attention, The Learning Switch, Subtlety, Variation, Slow, Enthusiasm, Flexible Goals, Imagination and Awareness. These are also the basis of her new book, but I found Kids Beyond Limits to have much more practical advice, useful anecdotes and personal insights. It also seems to reference many more scientific studies than I recall from Move Into Life, and has extensive footnotes. For anyone who enjoyed Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, I would consider this a practical guide to that inspiring round-up of neuroplasticity success stories.

What I really loved was that Baniel describes in detail what is going through her mind as she treats kids with special needs and it helped me realize that more than anything the Anat Baniel Method is about how you treat kids with special needs rather than what particular movements you do. Therefore, I really consider this a book that anyone and everyone who interacts with special needs kids should read.

For others, the titles of the Nine Essentials alone might be enough to help them remember what to do in their daily interactions with kids. But for me, I've found more success with pulling out some key phrases that I repeat to myself as I interact with Malachi. Here are a few:


What is obvious to me is not obvious to him. Parents know instinctually that this is true in certain cases. For example, just about everyone would know to keep a newly crawling baby away from ledges. Even though the consequences of gravity are obvious to everyone else, the baby has not yet learned this. Baniel takes this concept a step further and shows how kids — all kids, but particularly those with special needs — are not aware of things that we consider to be obvious and this is the source of much of their dysfunction. For my son, this means that even though he arches his back all the time, he might not actually be aware that that is what he is doing and that it prevents him from accomplishing things like rolling over. So, I've started to play a game with him called "arch, flat, curl" where I playfully point out what he's doing and even accentuate it a little bit with my hands. This has very quickly taught him the difference between these states and he can now curl over to lay on his side pretty much whenever he wants to.

How can I "differentiate around the edges"? Baniel uses the phrase "differentiate around the edges" a lot and by it she means that you start with something the child can already do well and then see how you can build on that — slowly and incrementally. I'm finding this to be easiest to apply in my verbalizations. I have always babbled along with Malachi and Jaden, but now I can add in a slightly different vowel sound or play with my tongue a little more and see if they follow along. Very often, they do, and Malachi has even begun to push his tongue out the left side of his mouth, which he has never done before.

Sloooooow. OK, so this is just the title of one of the Nine Essentials, but it's very useful and easy if you can remember to do it. Just slow down. I take a few beats longer to turn the page, or wait a little longer after pointing to an object they know the word for or take 10 seconds to pick him up from the floor instead of five. What's the rush?

Require less evidence to be happy for his growth. Yes, I did just see Malachi's leg move in a way I haven't before. It's OK to be happy about that. I don't need to have him repeat it immediately to prove it to me and I don't need to keep those happy feelings in a penalty box in my head just in case he never makes that movement again. Neither do I need to wait to be happy until I see him incorporate that leg movement into rolling over. I saw him do it with my own two eyes and he's never done it before. That's enough.

Concentrate more on the process and less on the outcome. This one is really hard for me. Like, really, really, really hard. I'm constantly fighting back voices that say: "If there are no outcomes, what's the point?" But I feel like there is something very valuable there so I'm going to keep working at it. As Anat herself says, if she were required to directly "make" a child perform a certain way, she would have no idea how to do it. She just concentrates on improving their quality of movement and the rest takes care of itself.

Wonder what he'll do next. This one has been great and I've been really surprised and delighted at the results. Whenever I catch myself about to "help" him, I still my mind for a second and wonder, with rapt attention, what he'll do next. More often than not he does something useful or unexpected. For example, today, he was trying to roll onto his side to get a small toy car. He was straining and tensing his legs so much that he would never get fully onto his side. Normally, I would pick up his top leg and push it over towards where he wanted to go. This time I just watched for a second. Then, very gently, I poked his hip and wondered what would happen. Almost immediately, he brought both of his legs up and curled his body to get much closer to the toy car. I didn't even realize for a second or two that that was my desired outcome because I was so intent on simply observing. And the best part was that it came from him which — obviously, but it wasn't really obvious to me before! — is where all of his movements are ever going to come from.

Kids Beyond Limits Review 2

From Amazon.com by one of Amazon's Top Reviewers

 

5.0 out of 5 stars Patience and Rewards, April 30, 2012

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) 

 

This review is from: Kids Beyond Limits: The Anat Baniel Method for Awakening the Brain and Transforming the Life of Your Child With Special Needs (Paperback)

In what is one of the most erudite, sensitive, and genteel books published about children with limits Anat Baniel quietly discusses her phenomenal success dealing with children once thought to be impossible medical problems. This book is not only for parents of children with special needs, this is a book that should enjoy a wide readership as the world is gradually becoming aware of the possibilities that lie within the brain. Using the tutelage she received from her mentor Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, Anat Baniel seems to have happened upon her Method intuitively - the mere holding of a child who seemed to lack all possibilities of the brain connecting to the rest of the body, a screaming child whose parents were desperate for relief, and finding that through touch and concentration the child not only calmed but became able to connect synapses to enter the world into which she was born. `Through the years that I have worked with Elizabeth we always made a point of identifying and building upon PRESENT ABILITIES rather than focusing on her disabilities, transforming the abilities we had identified into greater abilities, again and again.'

Thus began the Anat Baniel Method - a technique that utilizes simple gentle movements and focus - a technique that requires profound hours of patience on the part of the giver as well as the recipient, and the recipient may have autism, Asperger's Syndrome, ADHD, Cerebral Palsy or other developmental disorders.

The first three chapters of this book serve as an introduction to the science of brain function and the alterations that are manifest in the disorders mentioned above. After urging the reader to digest the information and alter the mindset as set forth in these chapters, then Baniel presents the Nine Essentials that define her method - Movement with Attention, Slow, Variation, Subtlety, Enthusiasm, Flexible Goals, The Learning Switch, Imagination and Dreams, and Awareness. The heading for each of these `nine essentials' does not begin to imply the significance of change that they bring. Following these essentials acknowledges `the ability of the brain to change itself in ways that defy our normal expectations and the perceived limitations in the child,' or in other words, neuroplasticity.

Dignity is a word that comes to mind as we read Anat Baniel's fine book - dignity and respect for children (and adults) in patiently accompanying the `limited' child to awaken the brain to form new patterns, patterns that then allow the child to function in a manner that creates happiness rather than fear, mistrust, confusion, and frustration. This is a little miracle of a book, highly recommended. Grady Harp, April 12