Juggling as an intervention for young people on the Autistic Spectrum. Presented at CAMHS conference 2013

Juggling as an intervention for young people on the

Autistic Spectrum

The trouble with Harry……

Behaviour that challenges

CAMHS

Anxiety

Anxiety

Interventions

New obsession

Juggling – an investigation

• Hear the voices and experiences first hand• Small scale• People with learning disabilities have been largely overlooked

• Review of current educational interventions suggests flexibility in those with ASCs

• Semi structured interview• Two participants • University ethics

Findings…..• Aiming high/starting small

• Partnership learning

• Amazing play

Aiming high/starting small

I always start off with a trick…. I always show them a trick where I spin a ball on a really long stick and juggle at the same time. I always explain that that trick took about 3 years to learn. The trick captures their imagination but also the fact that it took a long time to learn and I always say in learning that trick it’s helped me to learn a lot of other tricks. (Juggler)

Aiming high/starting small

• I normally structure the first two or three things so I’d start off with some scarf juggling and scarf juggling is a nice thing to learn because within a matter of minutes they are actually learning too……. And again using scarves and feathers it slows the whole process down and gives people time to think about it

Aiming high/starting small

• I think a lot of the time it is the 1-2-1s [learning support assistants] faces they’re a bit like Wow! You know, they [the student] would never spend that long doing something like that. (Juggler)

Aiming high/starting small

• Juggling is a good idea; because I learn about new tricks and I’m able to sort of work and help [another juggler] do juggling workshops and helping people learn. (Student)

Partnership learning• Student: He was in a juggling act, long time ago I think……I had juggling balls. He showed me how to juggle with them.

• Interviewer: Did that take very long for you to learn?

• Student :56 minutes. (Student)

• He teaches me all kinds of stuff to improve my juggling and stuff and he breaks all of the stuff down into little bits so I can understand it a bit more. He tells me to slow down and not to rush, practice makes perfect. (Student)

Partnership learning• I’m chatty and I’m talking to people, make everybody my friend, that’s what I do, very friendly with people so like I say with the classes with special needs, yeah, as soon as they’re coming in, I’m not ignoring them it’s not just a case of you know we’ve got to sit them down and we’ll do the work. I’m welcoming them in, I’m talking to them, I’m making little jokes and I don’t care if they get my jokes either, you know. I’m like that with everyone. (Juggler)

Amazing play• I had one particular school where I had a letter back actually saying that one of the children apparently had got such low self-esteem, he’d just been doing the juggling and I’d said practice makes perfect and if you can’t do it, just tell yourself you can do it, you’ve got to tell yourself you can do it. Then apparently another child in his class said I can’t do this and this kid said no, remember what Gabe said. So he was actually taking those skills he’d learnt about circus into the classroom as well. (Juggler)

Amazing play• It’s fun. My juggling friends are all really good jugglers and they entertain me when I’m all in a bad mood. (Student)

Amazing play• I dunno, I just got no feelings when I juggle. I can’t think of anything. I just think about the juggling. (Student)

Conclusions• Becoming a master

• Raise expectations

• Different is ok

• Learning can be fun

Thanks for listening

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