Accessibility NYC Meeting Recap: Uniquely Normal: Tapping the Reservoir of Normalcy to Treat Autism

Just starting off, welcome to Accessibility New York City meet up. I want to give a thanks to Thought Bot for providing the space and the logistics and everything else connecting wires ask stuff and White Coat Captioning for the captioning. And I'm going to hand off for the introductions.

Hi, everyone, my name is Abby. I just wanted to do a quick introduction of the fabulous speaker that we have today who is Robert Bernstein who wrote an amazing book called Uniquely Normal. Which is actually and I don't know if he would say this an award winner, twice. Once for parenting, right?

Yeah.

Won an award for parenting. And also, has a forward which I thought was really cool by Dr. Templing Grandin who says Uniquely Normal will provide practical ways to work with the full spectrum of individuals with autism. So without further ado, please welcome Rob.

Yay.

ROB: Thank you, Abby. And I know we have a wide audience. I am not speaking to parents of autistic kids, I understand that. Like Abby said, this book won an award for parenting. What that meant to me is if you have a child with a behavior issue, then you see my approach to behavior problems. And what it's not is an award reward/punishment kind of interaction with the kid.

You don't react to the behavior. You try to find what's underneath it. So I'll talk about that when I introduce my approach a little bit. But let's see what I have here. This is we'll skip that. The awards. So I'm looking to try, again, try to something more universal in terms of what people need in getting by this world and getting things successful.

I thought of, boy, how do you change someone's behavior? All right. That's a general statement. And I have number one respect, listen and understand. And there's no number two. Somebody read this book and said, I know what this book is about. It's about you're listening to people. Wait a second, it's a book on 27 case studies where I work successfully with these kids and/or adults and you see exactly what's done in order to get these people to be more successful. And listening. And I realized, in a way that person's right.

Listening and respecting and really, really understanding the person from their point of view. That's what that's what I'm about. That's what this book is about. I'm not here to talk about the book. But I can't separate myself from it too much.

So I have here just a darn minute, yesterday you said X equals two. So the reason I like this slide is because of the teachers' reaction. The teachers are mad at the kid because he's saying, yesterday, you said X equals 2, and today it equals 3. It's obvious from the teacher's point of view, but not the kid's point of view. But the teacher's taking almost offense.

And parents, the kid doesn't listen to us and we're offended. Why aren't you listening? It's obvious. Why don't you do this or that? And she's not connecting listening, understanding, this kid. And here's another I don't know what that's called a millipede. Watch my step?

What are you, a wise guy? So it's, again, it's this kind of thing where people need to connect with other people. So that's kind of you know, what I'm emphasizing here. And my orientation. I mentioned this before about reward and punishment. Do you know Skinner?

Do you know behaviorism? Do you know that at all? People are shaking their heads. BF Skinner at Harvard figured out this Skinner box. It's the he's the father of behavior modification. And the Skinner box is where a rat would hit a lever and get a reward. Picture a graduate student giving, you know, a pellet every time he hits a lever, which would do what? Increase the behavior. So a reward increases the behavior.

And if you want to change somebody's behavior using behavior modification, you give a reward and that increases the behavior. Pretty simple. You don't like the behavior and a lot of behaviors won't like this idea but it's part of their system. You have to give an aversive stimulus or punishment. It's part of the same thing. You don't like, give a punishment, you like it, right? We all know this. This is so I'm in graduate school. Well, and I'm in college and this cartoon was outside. I went to a behavior school. That's why I could criticize behaviorism because I understand it. And here's one rat telling another one that you could picture a graduate student, right? A person giving an award, a reward or pellet every time he presses it. So what do you think the caption's

going to be? All right. I'll do it this way. Have we got this guy trained? Every time he pushed down the lever, he gives us food. So but it there's some truth in that, though. Right? He got the graduate student trained. So if you think about it, our kids or our loved one or our parents. We're trained to fill in the gaps.

We're trained to fill their needs. I mean, I've done this hundreds of times. I'm on a line lined up in one of the Chinatown, wherever and I'm online and I see a kid behind there and I go, oh, I ask the kid something, I don't know. How old some question. What happens? The parent answers. Why don't you let the kid? I want to see what happens with the kid. You know, and this happens all the time. We're always filling in for our kids.

And so, they're training us. So there's some truth in this little joke. So my approach is not behavioral. I made this slide to kind of explain who I am and where I'm coming from. And everything else after this will be from this perspective. And the whole book is from this perspective. Uniquely Normal.

So the behavior and the reason I the way I developed this was from a medical clinic where I speak on a regular basis in the city Pediatrics 2000. And there's a physician there who loves my approach. And I have to say, okay. There's a medical model. And he knows this, that's not what I'm doing. The medical model or the behavioral model, you have a behavior, you label it, Anxiety Disorder, whatever. And then you take medicine or you change the behavior in a superficial way. And then you and that's it. You give medicine and that changes the behavior. So it's really linear. There's a and you know, it's great if you have diabetes, you take a pill, you have no there's something to be said about that. My approach is a cognitive approach and it's behavior. Seeing how the person's

mind works. I change that. And that in turn changes the behavior. What happens during this process, if you have a kid who has behavior issues or autism or other issues, they that often gets better. So a lot of kids who come to me that are autistic actually wind up being not so autistic anymore. You know. Even though it's supposed to be a permanent disorder. Or, you know, whatever. So that's where I am. And I call it a cognitive approach. And I'm looking for underlying reasons for the behavior.

These are questions I was going to ask you about workplace issues, friendships, standardized tests, about being happy. So if any of these issues kind of hit home, just let me know. Because then, I could talk for, you know, five minutes about friendships. What does a genuine friendship look like? I had one person, again, 30 year old in the book who lost four jobs. And so, how do you get him to be successful on a job? Standardized tests, I help one person, that same guy, actually, take a nursing test. I forgot the name of it. But the standardized nursing tests, he was only one of he was the only person in the history of Columbia Nursing School to fail the test twice.

I was able to help him understand how not to be self defeating, basically. Self destructive. We could talk about what I did and how I did, you know, with him. Self esteem issues, happiness, I used table tennis therapy. I own that term. It's an amazing game. Finally, a reaction with table tennis. It's amazing. And I might have here somewhere an article that was written about table tennis. And since you I got a positive response, table tennis is an amazing, amazing game for understanding the way somebody's mind works.

So you don't have to be aspberger's. There are plenty of egocentric people. I have the ball and he's not serving me. And I said, wait a second, don't say I'm not ready. If you have a perish with that problem, right? If it was you, you would just wait. But if the problem is, hey, I'm in my own world, I don't care about you. I have the ball, I'm serving it. Then, he's going to do it even if I'm not ready.

Here's the beauty of table tennis. The beauty of table tennis is that I could give them another chance. I could make believe I'm fixing my pants and tying my shoe. I could give him 20 chances for him to do, what? Stop himself, think, do whatever he needs to do with his mind and then, wait for me and serve the ball. And that's when the therapy starts.

I stopped myself, oh, wow. Could you stop yourself when you're in a lecture and you have to listen to your teacher? Or listen to a look at a performance? Can you stop that and kind of do what you need to do and for somebody else? For a friend who say you're not so ego centric. So here's a good example, I'm leaving my editor's house. And it's snowy and I slip on her steps going down, you know, her place.

And what does she say? Be careful. I turn around, I go, you're laughing, I turn around, and I say, oh, thanks a lot, Judy. Yeah, you're supposed to tell me that before I slip. Right?

And this is, sort of like punishment doesn't work. So looking at a behaviorism because we've talked about that. So let's say your system works, okay. That I should be careful.

What does that really mean? That means, the next time I see her next week before I leave, I have to think about what happened the week before that I should be careful. And, like, it's almost impossible. Especially if you have issues. You know, if you have problems, that's impossible. So that's it doesn't make any sense to punish somebody for a behavior, in a way, because you really want them to change their behavior before they do it.

Right? And now, you're sitting there saying, what do you mean? That's impossible. Table tennis could do that. In that example, they could change their behavior because I've given them 20 times right in that example. That's kind of where I'm coming from. And that's a good example of a cognitive approach as opposed to behavior approach, right?

I'm trying to change the way somebody thinks. So in this accessibility group, some people think, oh, I have trouble doing something. All right. I'm going to see how their mind works, see what's stopping them from, you know, doing something successfully. Maybe, they're impulsive, not reflective, whatever, and I can help resolve that. That's kind of where I'm coming from. George the Genius. This guy, again, he was one of my hardest most difficult cases, I even wrote that down, 62 years old. He was a genius. He designed, developed, made and produced eye equipment. He competed with Zys?

One of these big companies. Like 180 IQ or whatever. Now, when I work with somebody, and you could understand this. I need to see the struggle in how they think.

You know, I need to give them something they can't do. I have to give something they can't do to see how their mind works. Well, I have a closet full of chemistry experiments. I have experiments that have to do with well, it's legal, I have a license for this. Sodium in water, you get an explosion. If that doesn't interest somebody, I don't know what. And then, we figure out, you know, I have I couldn't do chemistry experiments or chess. I own the term chess therapy. I use that therapeutically. Table tennis therapy, I don't think I own that. Nobody better take that. But, yeah, I use that.

But I couldn't do chemistry, he understood it, light years. I had to think of something that he couldn't understand. So what did I do? I went to my friend Will Short's the editor of the Times? It's more than Temple Grandin that I know. I see him a couple of times a week. This is my and I'm going to blow this up, 39 across, I don't know if you can see it. 39 across, it says lead story in tomorrow's newspaper. Okay? Not only as an aside, the people who know Will, this was my favorite clue. And I found out like a couple of weeks ago, this was his favorite clue and his favorite table. This is his favorite book, it's out of print. I had to go online and find a way. And I have, like, five of these things for people who

like Will, I have them sign this. It's in here. And okay. Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper.

And what does that mean? That means on 39 across, it's blank elected. So the next day, the very next day was the election of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper You can see how that's going to be a big problem.

Right? Lead story. And just to skip let me see, oh, good, perfect. At the top of this, of the puzzle, I know it doesn't matter if you read it, or not. But to remind me that ABC there were so many calls to the Times, how could you know? What's going to be the answer? Let me go back. If I can here. Okay. So here, let me tell you this. 39 and 43, right? We got that. 43 is the word "elected." I should have told you that, right?

43, E L E C T E D. That's the word elected. We got that. Now it's seven letters for 39 across. Presidential race, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, what's 39 across? What do you think?

What? Clinton, right? C L I N T O N. Perfect. Bob Dole is see, this is too smart of a group.

So people looked at that, said Clinton. How could you they were irate. It was on ABC news the next day. How could you possibly put Clinton? How dare you predict the right?

And Will said exactly what Joly said, Bob Dole is seven letters. Now, you're doing the cross word puzzle, how could they both be right? The way they'd both be right is that take a look at this 39 down, right? Let's take a look at 39 down, right? 40 down, right?

It all has to fit. And watch. You're going to let's go on. That's that. 39 down, and I have a blow up of it. Black Halloween animal. So B for Bob, bat, Clinton would be cat.

No, way.

ROB: I know, I know. It's total genius. 40 down, French word, Bob, B O is we, Clinton, L to him. Yeah, that's how it all worked.

And just kind of genius. Now, the reason I'm showing you this is because as you probably know, George couldn't figure it out. He was so I said he said what you said. Oh, it's Clinton. I go, how could it be Clinton? Will would lose his job. He can't have that. And I swore could he figure it out? He's a genius, right? Could he figure?

Yes, of course, he could figure this out. Right? But he didn't want to. He was just so tell me, I said, I'm going to tell. That's the point of it is not telling you. I want to see you struggle. It has to be how could it be Clinton? He said it over and over, again.

And I realized, at least this gave me the main hint of what's going on in his mind. If he deemed oh, and I should say this, the problem that he came in with me that his wife wanted him to see he because he just retired, she wanted help, and go to the store for groceries, she'd give him three things to get and he didn't get it. Couldn't get the free things that his wife wanted, right? Why isn't he bringing these home? And in the beginning you'd probably say, I don't know, that's my job. I have to figure out what's going on in his mind. So what this told me is that the presumption is that he can do it if he allows himself to think in a certain way. He's smart enough

to figure this out. He was so impatient, my reaction to this was he just doesn't think it's important. He can't figure out these complex ocular theories, but he can't figure this out. And I've seen this with a lot of geniuses. They are just locked in to what they feel is their thing. And when you ask them some simple thing, a relating, you know, you'd be surprised who is supposed to have Asperger's. Bill Gates is supposedly has it, but they have difficulty in the simplest of things. With him, in this case, it wasn't you know, something physiological. He didn't deem it important in his mind. When he doesn't When I told him this, he says, okay, that's it, that is it. I said, okay. Fine. You've got to change that when you're going shopping for your wife. Other than that, you could

I don't care, you can do whatever you want, you can be yourself. That's the whole thing with this kind of therapy, if you want to call it that, that I do. I call it therapy. That he's in control of being successful. So he can be himself and, you know, ignore the rest of the world and do whatever he wants. But when it comes to something important, you know, for him, it's listening to his wife, for somebody else who is listening to her college class, somebody else listening to the teacher. For somebody else having a relationship, we have to actually listen to the person you're dating or being with. Right? It's really in control of what you need to do for yourself. And that's why this that's why this approach

works. I think, why it had some success. This is an interesting case that there are different stories about this guy. I came across this last night. And I said, this might be fun to read. He I asked him about where he eats lunch every day. And this is high school.

And he said, he eats lunch in the computer room. And I said, like, every day? And he said, yeah, every day for four years had lunch in the computer room because he couldn't speak to anybody who he doesn't already know. He can't approach any stranger. And that's just him. And I'm not going to get into details. Unless you want me to.

Because of his problem. So Richard came for a session after his first day of work. It was really hard, he said, and a lady got mad at me, why? She said I made her the wrong thing. This is in a bagel shop. What did you make her? Mustard and butter on a Sesame bagel.

He made her a mustard and butter sandwich. I said, mustard and butter? Who eats mustard and butter? Richard said I said, no one eats a mustard and butter sandwich. But they do, he says, they order weird stuff. And I never found out how that happened. But I did tell Richard he should always repeat orders back to customers to make sure he knew what they wanted. That's like telling a first grader to do graduate school work. It's almost impossible that he's going to do that. So I asked the owner all right, so I hand to find here's the key, when you're changing someone's behavior, they're not going to listen to me, not going to listen to a friend, they're not going to listen to a parent. The situation may change. He's working at the store, getting paid. It's part of your

job to say something to that person after you give them the bagel or the coffee. You have to say something. Have a nice day. Come back whatever he has to say something.

I had the owner say, that's part of your job. So that was something he should listen to. Is the sound working? It's playing. Yeah, you could stop it for a minute. Thanks. Meanwhile, I'll keep talking. What I was going to say about this kid, after the coffee shop is it on? We've got to say something, it doesn't even matter why. You have to keep the conversation going. That's why she left.

I think she

I know, but the conversation would've sorry. Tried to stop it. If you started something. How old is she? So the point is that he said, I heard it a hundred times. He said, oh, she had to leave. Well, yeah, but if you kept talking, she wouldn't leave. But that's part of, part of his issue. Now I should continue with what I'm saying because it's a great story. I'm sorry. I've got to yeah, just press it, again, and it'll keep going. It was sitting there in the shop after his time behind the counter. And as we're sitting down, I'm saying hello to this elderly woman.

And, you know, we had, you know, 20 second conversation. And and we sat down. And he said, she thinks you're weird. Because I did something that he would never do, start talking to somebody. She thinks you're weird. He's been told thousands of times before, maybe more, by all his family, that it's okay to ask somebody for homework. Right? Or whatever.

So this situation is a real situation. I said, when this woman really leaves, she's either going to leave in front of us or the other way. Where I said if she leaves in front of us, I'm going to take a chance of embarrassing him. And I'm going to approach her.

So she leaves. I said, Lily, was it okay I said hello to you? She said, of course, I'm by myself. It's it was terrific. And then, I said, he thinks that you would think it was weird. And then, she looked at him. Now, she her height was like this. He's tall. Their eyes are about even. She's standing and he's sitting and they're about even, you know.

And she looks at him. And he says, no, it was so nice having this little conversation. It was normal. She used the word normal. I couldn't design it better.

Because he thinks he's weird. He does. If you ask him, he'll tell you he's weird. His friends think he's weird. So weird is, you know, how he describes himself. She's saying, it was normal, it was lovely, wonderful. She goes on and on and on. And she leaves, and now, it's my job to say as little as possible. So I said, what do you think? And he says, well, I guess it's okay to say hello to people. This is after four years. I saw this kid for six weeks because he was going off to college. But at that certain point, he was ready to accept the truth. And then, literally, the next week, he's off to college. And he called me and I said, okay, this is the test. Who do you eat lunch with? Do you eat lunch with

any? That's the litmus test. And he said, as if nothing has happened in the past, he says, oh, I have two sets of friends. One set of friends, you know, like to party, and another set of friends, like me, are very shy. So I switch off eating with different people every and now, I just heard like a few weeks ago, he's married, he's working in the city. And yeah, he loves his job and he's, like, you know So, yeah. That's all in the book. But it gives you a sense of my approach and how I work.

So, yeah, they're good stories. You're going to like this. You're going to like this, Alex. On a scale of emotional development, what is number one? Do you know that? Erickson scale, the scale of emotional development. You ever have that in college? Psychology?

Physical development is easy. Right? You start crawling at 6 months. Right? And there's a whole scale, right? So people say, well, it has to be a scale of emotional development, where the last, you know, towards the end is independent and being independent, right?

The very first thing, and you can look this up, unless they've changed it is trust. So we're talking about a 2 year old or that feeling of there has to be that kind of trust in order to have normal development, emotionally, there has to be a sense of trusting somebody. Right? Your parents. Let me see. Should I read it first? So you want to yeah, let me play if this first and then I'll read it. Now, you're going to know a little bit about me. This is the dialogue. I take my session. This is literally what happened. Alex, I'm going to order a pizza. What kind do you want? Plain. I'm going to have mushroom, that's what I'm saying to him. He says, plain, I said, I'm going to have mushrooms. How many

slices do you want? One. Okay. I said. I'm going to order a mushroom pie with a couple of plain slices. Simple. Mushroom is good. I could eat mushroom.

Hmm. All right. Well, which do you like better? Mushroom or plain? Actually, my favorite is pepperoni. And I go, well, okay, all right. Now, you know me a little bit. I want to know what's going on in here. Right? Again, it's not, like, a check if you got it right, or not. Which is what most of education is. I said, wait a second. Actually, you like pepperoni. It's your favorite, I ask him. Why didn't you say so? I don't have to have pepperoni all the time. Okay. That doesn't really say much. Now, I'm testing him. He said he'll go for mushrooms. So I said, I'll order all mushrooms. His favorite's pepperoni. He's going along with the mushrooms. And I say nothing. And then, I said, Alex, if I asked you, again, what would you order now? Quiet. I guess, I would have pepperoni.

All right. We're back on track. So why did you say plain? I work with kids who don't talk at all, it's great working with people who can talk. Because you get this. Why do you say plain? Do you know the answer to that? No, you're going to find out.

Let's see what he says. Why did you say plain and then mushrooms? Because plain popped into my mind first, then mushrooms. Okay. So now we're getting some insight into how his mind works. Okay. But you just told me you prefer pepperoni.

Why didn't you speak up when I said I was ordering mushrooms? When I say something, I stick with it no matter what. All right. So now we're on a and I go off. You're going whoa, and I'm going, whoa, too. So I say, that would cause you a lot of problems.

His eyes lit up, it does. I often buy things I don't want because when I get an impulse to do something, I have to stick with it. We're getting insight into himself. Now, this is a great I'm glad I included this. Because this is what if I if some teacher or some parent says this, I would yell at them. Now, I'm yelling at myself. Now, listen to what I say. I say what everyone does and I did it, too. I said it to him. Why don't you just boy. You're going to feel differently from now on. Why don't people say, why don't you just click on these few things and go on this and upload it to your website? And I'm going, just? I have problems with this. You know what I mean?

I'm doing the same thing with him. Why don't you just think before giving an answer or making a decision. He just told me he doesn't think, he's impulsive. But here I go. Why don't you think before giving an answer or making a decision? Just know, you could have thought about what kind of pizza you like, come up with an answer that felt right.

Okay. Thought for a minute. When I think about something, other thoughts come into my mind. Like, a tidal wave. I can't think straight. Do you lose track of the original question?

Because I think that's kind of what happens. Exactly. So I just go with whatever pops into my mind and stick with it. So I tell him, if I can get you to think in a way that enables you to make a decision you're happy with, would that be good? Yeah, that would be good. So it goes on. But it gives you a sense of what I do and Alex.

So now, I need your help. How much time we want time for questions and this and that. And you know, I have slides about being happy. You might appreciate this, actually. Here's a kid who is not going to be happy no matter what he does. He has figured out you know how you figure out things about yourself? He's figured out he's never going to be happy.

So you might like this. It's I know. Oh, I asked him if he could get passed not enjoying himself. That's important because the question isn't on the tape. I asked him if he could get past not enjoying himself. So Joly, could we get this? Let's see, if you can go back, go back. I think I spelled the word past wrong.

Would you say that's a true statement?

I think there will only be not enjoying myself.

Very well put. That's why I like you so much. You're great. You are great. Only a person who really knows himself could say that statement.

Okay. I'm going to continue with this.

I got 100, like this week, I got 100 on the ELA test. And I was one of only two people that got that 100 on that ELA test. Still didn't feel that great. It didn't make my day. It should have made my day. It didn't make my day. It should have made my day.

It should have made my day, but instead of feeling great about this hundred, you wind up with a lot of negative thoughts of some sort.

Yeah, I mean, I always find the negative of something. If it's not related to the subject, then I can destroy that happy feeling.

So, if we could practice somehow

Okay. He's an expert in not enjoying himself. Now, let me see the next thing. Now, I'm going to need your help with this. I don't know if this is the same session or different session. I found a way of getting to his mind. And getting him to turn this negative into a positive. So we can I could play that or we could go on to other things.

Play it.

All right. It's, you know, therapists and teachers, I think, would find this especially interesting. By the way, the premise is

Oh, I didn't keep it. Okay. Okay. I have it on another. I thought that would be too much. But all right. We'll save that for another time. And this is the mother saying that he's happy. What's this? This is an interesting tape of how, again, there's like a low self esteem.

She'll be home Thanksgiving?

Yeah. That's true. And I'm not social enough to feel like I can hang out with her.

Right.

That's just my own struggles, again, now. I feel like I did connect with her but I didn't want to follow through with it. In the first 20 minutes of the car ride she was, like, oh, I throw house parties sometimes. Would you be able to come? And I was like, sure.

But then, I was like, I would love to, after four hours

So it's that same mentality. He again, he is some his problem, one of his problems is he never asked anybody a question. And you're standing there saying, that's impossible. With Will that school in Poughkeepsie, Vassar, playing table tennis, because he's a table tennis guy, and this woman came over to me and said hey, you're Rob Bernstein. Your card is on my mother's kitchen table. I said, look, your mother said something about your brother having trouble asking questions. He says, he never asks any questions. And I realized it was really true. Yeah, he doesn't ask questions. So I brought him to Occupy Wall Street. Have you been there? Were you there?

It's pretty cool, right? And you have this guy from Minnesota with long hair. And you can see he's really into it. I said, I heard this is really disorganized. And how do you get your food? Said, no, look over there, there's a pile of food piled up of packages of food. I go, all right. Go to a family of four, two kids, they're from Delaware. I said, well, what do you do? We think it's a better civics lesson than staying home. I took him out of school. Everyone had a remarkable story. Of course, I asked my friend here to ask, ask him, no, no, no, no. But he saw me ask these people. Got remarkable stories, we came back, I had this on tape and I showed his mother, and his mother almost

started to cry. He said to me, I guess it's okay to ask questions. I see that nobody made fun of you. No one thought you were stupid. Everyone asked. And you said, what was the word he used? You ask mundane questions. That's what he said. And you got these responses. And from then on, his problem with that problem is 100%. It was 100% resolved. That now, he's able to ask, you know, you talk to his mother in high school. He would never ask anybody for any homework or this or anything.

So in of course, you know, I understood how his mind worked. I did my thing and he was ready for something like this. And that one, hey, you know how you all know the way we learn is not incrementally. We learn by realization. Right? You realize things. You go, oh, okay.

You get that moment. That's really how we really learn about things. And that's what happened with him. Got it. Wow, no more problem. Let me see. That's sort of interesting.

We're supposed to end in what? How much time do I have really? There's an article with table tennis. I'll send it to you, if you want it. And, yeah, didn't get, you know let's see. Yeah, why don't we open it up for questions? So that's pretty much. And I'm so happy that when I came to this group in my mind, it's so diverse because people would have all kinds of needs. What are you guys interested in? Well, it depends on the people.

It's not defined as accessibility, it could mean almost anything. Go ahead, ask me anything about anything.

So I can start off. So thank you so much for coming, this has been super fascinating. So it sounds like for the examples that you've given, there have been some kind of realizations that people have had through you walking them cognitively through something. So asking questions and kind of holding their hands through analyzing the behaviors that they went through and trying to kind of get from them where their minds were at that point. Whereas, for another technique seems like you're kind of leading by example. So, like, showing somebody by going up and asking somebody questions or going over and saying hello to people that you can demonstrate that, no, this can be okay. What other kinds of techniques do you tend to use? Or what kinds of things

do you find help people come to these realizations that they've had maybe a lot of trouble arriving at?

I'll give you an example. But I try to do a lot. I have an office in Westchester in Dobb's Ferry. I want to bring these people into real situations. So here's an I'm bringing this person into a restaurant, I know the owner. So that's nice. In case, you know, there's a difficulty or a tantrum or something.

And the owner comes up, sees this kid has some kind of boot on his foot. Says, you know, I had that same issue with my foot, and I didn't really know what position to sleep in. And could you tell me what how you do it? What position works for you when you sleep?

Now, you can understand this. He says, absolutely nothing. Doesn't answer it. She walks away.

And I said, you know, she thinks that you're not friendly. Right? And he said, why? I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything. That's interesting. He didn't say anything. And how could she think I'm not friendly? I didn't say anything. And it's just, again, it's this egocentric kind of thing. So we spend the next ten minutes explaining the owner Stacy really doesn't think you want her to think you're not friendly? No.

And, again, a behaviorist can tell you what Stacy's thinking because they're looking at behavior. I know she thinks you're not friendly because she walked away. I know that. And he doesn't like she thinks he's unfriendly. So, then, I get her to come over ten minutes later. Again, if you don't get a chance then to get if he doesn't get a second chance and third chance, then there's no therapy. Why should he get better? And this time, he realized that. But the point is, what the question is. This is probably the first time that he before this, he was basically locked into his own thought patterns. He didn't realize. And this is where the cognitive approach comes in.

He literally didn't realize that other people have an impression of him. That's huge. We all have that. You know, oh, I better wear this or that.

No, he literally did not have that concept that other people are going to have an impression on him. Imagine going through life like that. You can't function. So how do you resolve it? This made a difference. So, yes, I said I go by example. But I try to capture that moment that's going to make a difference to that kid. And I could just give you example after example of doing that sort of thing. Yeah.

I was curious. I know in one of your slides was the example of the young man convinced he couldn't achieve happiness. We didn't get to hear the second part of that. Would you mind telling us how that resolves?

Well, okay. There were different issues with that. But he was a perfectionist. He got 100 on that test. So he got a 98 on a test, he was so upset that he didn't get 100, he ripped up the paper and he didn't go to school for two days. So this is this is really his perfectionist attitude was really, really serious. And so, I said to him I said to him, would you have been happy with a 67? He said, yes. Because then, I would accept that I didn't know the stuff. With a 98, I should have known the stuff. He finds a way of being so I said, okay. So this kid was, well, two stories with him.

He was ready to go to a mental hospital. It was a Saturday afternoon around 2:00, I remember. His mother calls me, I'm taking this kid to a mental hospital. Ill walk into the room, he tells me I'm going to a mental hospital right then and there.

And what happened? His mother said that she hates him, he kicks her, and that, you know, the issue is nobody knows what she didn't know what to do with the kid. So he's going. So what do you do at that moment with this kid who hates, you know, he hates his mother said he hates him, and he kicks her and they're going. What do I say to this kid? I said, whose fault is this? He says, well, it's my mother's, clearly.

Okay. So I said, and his mother's in the kind of kitchen listening to this. I know that but it doesn't matter to me. I said, but you're the one going to the mental hospital. And your mother should be the one going, right? If it's her fault, but you're the one who is going to go. You know what's going to happen, I have a lot of people like this.

You're going to go, they'll give you some drug to calm you down and in a day or two you're going to come back home, your mother's going to be here, nothing's going to change and your mother's not going to change. And when I said your mother should be the one going and not you. He kind of calmed down, he agreed with me. The mother later was really angry at me, right? So he says, okay. Yeah, you're right. It's stupid for him to go to a he realized it doesn't make any sense. I said, okay. And now I always as you know, with the table tennis, I always go a step further. I go, all right, that doesn't really now that you get that. That's not going to resolve what's going on. I said, well,

you're going to have to apologize to your mother. Goes, what do you mean? You said my mother's the one should be going. I said, I know, but somebody has to be the grown up one around here. Really. And, like, that was the whole thing. I said, look, you're going to make peace. And to make peace, you're going to have to apologize to her.

And he wound up because you're going to be going. Just because you understand it, you're still going because she's still angry. So he apologized to her. And, you know, problem for the moment solved. So what do I do with this kid who is going to almost just disassociated himself from school? He was into video games. Gaming, and you know this better than I do. And I don't know anything about this. But creating games.

Real Engine? You ever hear that? I never heard of it. So this was his, this was his thing. And I said, you know, I'm going to bring someone in. Had this guy Dan from camp called him up. Dan, I'll pay you, come, help this guy with gaming. Right? So they're in my office. You know, I really try to learn from other people, you know, and I try to say, wow, this is cool.

I was totally lost. But they were doing you know, manipulating whatever and doing all this. And I said, you know, I saw what they were doing. And it was incredibly sophisticated.

I said, man, they could maybe use you at NASA. This is, wow. You know. And it gave him a sense of self instead of dropping out of school, which is what he wanted to do. He alienated himself from his parents and was living in his little cave downstairs away from everybody.

Only came up with food. And he was totally, right? And now, this game him some life. I said, wow, you know, he wound up going to he's probably still in Rochester Institute of Technology majoring in I don't know what. But it's some kind of gaming. You know, now he's in college and he's being successful.

So that's the back story on the kid who decided that he's never going to be happy, again. Yeah.

Yeah. My question is more like a closer question. Is that cool?

Closer?

Unless anybody else?

No, go ahead.

I was wondering where we could buy Uniquely Normal, your book?

Amazon.com should have it. Thank you. Yeah.

Okay.

And I have a couple of copies here.

Cool.

But, yes. Thank you. Amazon, yeah. I like the title.

I do, too. I think it's beautiful.

Uniquely Normal, okay. Tapping should be into Tapping the Reservoir of Normalcy to Treat Autism. That's how I feel. That there's something there that we need to surface. So if we go through each one of these, you know, it's there, but it just needs to surface. And that's what I'm trying to do.

For example, you know, you have a kid or a person who is a little behaving and now suddenly the behavior's absolutely perfect. And the speech is perfect and they're explaining things right. Everything is great. And you're saying, man, I wish it could be like this all the time. This is like an accident. And I'm saying, wait, I want that to be the norm. Find a way of, hey, that thing that behavior that you saw is wonderful, I want that to be the way he is all the time.

All right. Rob, thank you so much. That was awesome. [ Applause ]

And thank you, everybody. Thank you Thought Bot for the space, and White Coat Captioning, thanks, have a good night, everybody.