Karin
Well-Known Member
Quote from Understanding: The Free Therapy
"Autistic kids learn social behavior much better from things like movies, books, and Nintendo games--you know those things that they fixate on, quote from, and obsess over--things you're supposed to limit or take away altogether?
For me, movies are a great social learning tool because they're non-threatening, they require no response, the viewer is invisible to the players in the movie, the stories illustrate major issues of human life, AND they can be rewound and replayed. I learn important social lessons from movies."
This so confirms my own impression of what my spectrum daughter gets out of watching Disney Channel endlessly. Even before I knew of her being on the spectrum I told people I had a suspicion she learned about life from watching those shows.
Some of the episodes are actually hard for me to watch as they involve people misunderstanding each other, being mean, feeling embarrassed, etc., but I can see that as you watch the episode many times, the situations feels less difficult for my oversized empathy to deal with. Same thing for my daughter. Thankfully I never tried to cut down on her tv time, sensing she needed it.
"Autistic kids learn social behavior much better from things like movies, books, and Nintendo games--you know those things that they fixate on, quote from, and obsess over--things you're supposed to limit or take away altogether?
For me, movies are a great social learning tool because they're non-threatening, they require no response, the viewer is invisible to the players in the movie, the stories illustrate major issues of human life, AND they can be rewound and replayed. I learn important social lessons from movies."
This so confirms my own impression of what my spectrum daughter gets out of watching Disney Channel endlessly. Even before I knew of her being on the spectrum I told people I had a suspicion she learned about life from watching those shows.
Some of the episodes are actually hard for me to watch as they involve people misunderstanding each other, being mean, feeling embarrassed, etc., but I can see that as you watch the episode many times, the situations feels less difficult for my oversized empathy to deal with. Same thing for my daughter. Thankfully I never tried to cut down on her tv time, sensing she needed it.