We know that children with neurodivergent traits are more vulnerable to exploitation and crime and are hugely over-represented in youth justice. As part of our Neurodiversity Month, we’ve asked Levelling the Playing Field researcher Morgan Mitchell to look at how sport and physical activity practitioners can best engage those with autism, one of the most common neurodiverse conditions.
I was inspired to read about Wolverhampton Wrestling Club and their new project for autistic young people. The club’s award-winning founder, Ranjit Singh, has built what is surely one of the most inclusive sporting environments in the country and this initiative takes that to a new level.
A coach, mentor or volunteer shouldn’t ‘special case’ or single out a participant with autism. There are several astute adjustments you can make to your delivery which will improve their understanding, engagement and wellbeing - which will hopefully help your other participants too.
The great news is that people with autism respond really well to sport and physical activity. They struggle when things are unstructured, when they don’t know what to expect and there aren’t clear rules and boundaries. A sport session that has all those elements is an environment that gives them the best chance to thrive.
When expectations don’t match reality that’s distressing for someone with autism, so outlining what you’re going to do in a session and your expectations of the participants within it are a good starting point for getting the best possible response.
There are several key points around communication that must be borne in mind.
Non-verbal communication – eye contact, hand gestures, facial expressions etc – are all difficult for a neurodivergent young person to interpret. They all add extra contextual information that they may struggle to take in. If occasional gestures match the information about what needs to be done, that is usually helpful, but constantly moving hands and changing expressions just adds to the weight of stuff they need to process.
The same is true of verbal communication – volume, intonation, expressing emotions, changes of pace and use of things like sarcasm, humour or catchphrases: it all adds subtext which needs decoding, a process which those with neurodiverse conditions may well be struggling with anyway.
So, keeping a clear and consistent communication style is vital. An autistic young person typically likes having expectations set and then precisely met. Outline as crisply and plainly as possible what’s going to happen in your session, remain consistent and on-task and ensure deviation in your communication and schedule is kept to a minimum. That, after all, will help everybody in your session (whether they’re neurodivergent or not) and will make your environment fully inclusive.
Another aspect that will help individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) – but also all your participant group – is tweaking the ways you ask for feedback from them (for example, to check they’re OK or have fully understood instructions).
Neurodivergent kids rarely make eye contact so their levels of engagement or understanding may be difficult to gauge. To do so,the timing and the phrasing of your interaction with them is important.
Away from a group setting, once everybody has got on with a task, you might like to ask, ‘Was that OK for you Sam? Did you understand?’ - as opposed to asking ‘Are you listening to me?’ in front of the others.
There are ways of phrasing and framing an enquiry that will work best for each neurodivergent young person. The acronym WINGS (Wonder, Imagine, Notice, Guess, Sense) is useful here. “I wonder if you might like to....”, “I imagine you’d like it if we....”, “I notice that you’re finding it a bit tough to....”, “I’m guessing you’d prefer to do it another way....”, “I’m sensing that…”
These open-ended phrases give the participant space to give you good feedback and help them explain how they’re experiencing things, how they might be included better or how a task can be tweaked to suit their needs. You may suspect they are distressed or withdrawn, but this method avoids mentioning that emotional stuff outright (which they may well find uncomfortable) and gives them the opportunity to confirm whether your assumption is right.
Individuals with autism generally don’t experience social interactions as being rewarding in the same way as typically developing children. Social stimuli such as a smile, a friendly chat or verbal praise don’t elicit the same dopamine hit.
Their motivation is better stimulated by non-social ‘rewards’, such as achieving a set task successfully within certain boundaries. This means it’s even more important to make sure that the practices and games you include within your sessions have clear rules. Rules will help create a framework of expectations that all young people, especially those with neurodivergent conditions such as ASD, are able to use to frame success – allowing them to experience successes within such games as rewarding.
Overall, it’s important to remember that variation is the norm. When it comes to our brains, no-one is the same. We are all neurodiverse. What’s more, one child with autism will have very different traits and ways of processing and responding to information to the next. Making your sessions as open and inclusive as possible will ensure no-one, whatever their strengths, challenges or idiosyncrasies, gets left behind.
Mina photo by James Lee on Unsplash