Review of "Stranger in the Family" Documentary
[Image Description: Screenshot of Stranger in the Family title opening part of documentary; "Stranger" is in left-aligned whitish-clear bubble text", "in the" is in whitish-clear bubble text right-aligned under the last 2 letters of "Stranger", and "family" is in whitish-clear bubble text right-aligned under "in the." All of the text is also outlined in black over clouds in a sky as the background with the Real Stories' icon in bottom right corner and minimized with "REAL STORIES" in white font with green background]
For my Fieldwork in Education course I am taking this semester, I had to watch a documentary about three families' experiences with having children with autism who reside in Australia and their work and success of starting a specialized school called "Stranger in the Family" and write a review about my thoughts about the short movie and what I learned from it. As usual when it comes to my school assignments that are relevant to my blog, I have decided to upload this one as a blog post.
Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurological disorder that can cause an individual to struggle in a variety of developmental areas, especially speech-language and social-emotional skills. Real Stories' Stranger in the Family is a very informative documentary about autism I learned more information about this developmental disability from it along with gaining an even better insight. While I knew that the condition causes one to struggle with developmental skills, I did not know that it typically affects specifically four or five of these areas. I also found it interesting to hear another person just to their child to get the help they needed instead of a cure when one of the mothers shared that. I am not a parent yet, but this has always been the perspective that I have had as someone with lots of experience with helping the disability community and who wants to become a parent one day and if I have a child who has any disabilities in regards to their struggles since it could happen to anyone. While it is not something that I would wish upon anyone, I would just want my child and the rest of the disability community to get the help they need instead of curing them. The other new information that I learned about autism from this documentary includes development, symptoms, and treatments.
Every journey with disabilities is different and all disabilities have a variety of symptoms to look out for and multiple different beneficial treatments. Besides difficulty with speech-language and social-emotional skills, other symptoms include but are not limited to difficulty with motor skills, self-feeding, self-regulation, sensory skills, eye contact, play, poor working memory (WM), and other developmental skills. Self-feeding is a skill that I never knew individuals with autism may struggle with; however, it makes sense due to their difficulty with fine motor skills. Suddenly overtime, unfortunately, some children with autism may regress in their development; this means that many of their developmental skills may start to decline meaning they lose them making it difficult to learn and perform life skills. In addition, I did not ever think about the fact that children with autism struggle with playing, but that makes sense too due to their difficulty with social skills and making friends. While autism is not an easy road, there are many types of treatments that can be beneficial to the autism spectrum community; these treatments include but are not limited to speech-language therapy, occupational therapy (OT), one-on-one intensive therapy, Early Intervention (EI), and ways to accommodate them. Accommodations and management techniques that can help individuals with autism or who are on the spectrum going into an alternative environment to regulate oneself when unhappy, allowing them to use the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), or Sign Language, imitation, providing them with "first, then" explanations, and opportunities to make their own choices when possible. In the documentary, I observed that when Patrick was upset about something at school, one of his Special Education teachers took him into another room to calm himself; this is helpful to prevent meltdowns from potentially distracting others and to give an individual on the spectrum the opportunity to self-care in a more calming environment. Sometimes individuals with autism are nonverbal, but this does not mean that they cannot communicate at all. So, that is why PECS and Sign Language serve as beneficial nonverbal communication techniques for them. Imitation is a teaching technique helpful to individuals with autism since it is so visual and people with autism are typically visual learners. In addition, PECS can also accommodate visual learning styles. "First, then" explanations are helpful for explaining routines to individuals with autism since they are typically very ritualistic. Giving choices to students with autism tends to be a very effective behavior management technique because it boost their self-esteem since they are contributing something. Also, since they have difficulty with being flexible, it allows them the opportunity to sometimes get what they want while also learning that they cannot always get what they want as part of life. As an educator, I will always continue to do my best to help children of all abilities improve in their development through what I learned from this documentary.
Related Links:
If you are interested in watching "Stranger in the Family", you can click below to watch the documentary on Real Stories' YouTube channel. Let me know your thoughts, anything you learned from the documentary, etc. in the comments too. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
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