“I’m carrying on colouring in, Isaac’s doing train because he’s got in the blue zone,” observed Tabitha a tad timidly.

“This train terminates at Stanmore, please alight here, to take all your belongings…” announced Isaac a fair few decibels over the din of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields art and brass rubbing café-come creative space. Whilst flapping his hand over his face and pitch perfectly screeching the sound of the refurbished 4235 Jubilee line carriage car (I think).

Before interjecting formally and firmly, “yes, daddy and Tabitha, I’m a bit blue, forward-slash, yellow, at this moment in time. Continue with your masterpieces please while I do train.”

We obeyed, naturally, knowing the power of ‘train’ for his equanimity. A few people may have looked up at this atypical to and fro from their art pieces – turned heads, tutted a little – but if they did, I didn’t notice; I genuinely don’t these days. A calmer me, a more comprehending world,who knows?

This run of the mill familial interaction is one of the pacesetters for our family days. The catalyst for our collective composure, such an anathema to days gone by, being the coloured coded Zones of Regulation, one of the dozens of devices pioneered by Isaac’s school. A happy place, full of hope and populated by heroes.

Isaac, the industrial sized sponge, can recite and scribe the Zones of Regulation in long form with inch perfect detail. As if his life depends on it (it does). He’s learnt it, now he lives it. Every nugget and nuance.

It’s stuck to the fridge in his diligently honed-by-school handwriting. I’m regularly drawn to it. Too exhaustive to execute word for word here, its premise is colours to describe zones – blue, green, yellow and red – which are so much more than simple moods. Each colour using related and relateable units; yellow, for example is silly, wiggly, frustrated, excited, loss of control.

The Zones of Regulation permeate Isaac’s every mental state at the moment, verbatim. They are the neat logical feelings he can visualise and verbalise. Sown together they make his soliloquy. Through which he can express and explore all extremities of all emotions. His real-time GPS system into his truth at any specific time.

Journeying between zones is not without its pain and persecution. Vexation to contentment, like crossing continents. But he has the method.

As do we. If he’s the solo performer, he’s playing from a score that allows us to syncopate with him like the most rhythmic of backing bands.

What’s more – and it’s not an exaggeration to go all eureka here – I’ve come to realise that devices like the Zones of Regulation have a universal advantage, yielding significantly more than simple overtures to help typical people overcome challenges associated with autistic people. The Zones of Regulation assists me, my wife and daughter, to quantify our own feelings, independent of Isaac – and, I imagine, the wider population in general, with a link to autism or not, would benefit too. It is an accurate and easy to digest deconstruction of mood in a world where the mental health narrative is pricking up all sorts of unexpected ears, yet often without the necessary panaceas.

Of course this universality is not to deny that this is one of his school’s multiple and highly personalised techniques to specifically meet the challenges of autistic people like Isaac. There is an unrivaled team of highly trained specialists at Isaac’s school whose autism expertise and methods are transformative to Isaac, such is their particularity to him, his autism, dyspraxia and ancillary differences.

His need for the Zones of Regulation at the arts and brass-rubbing centre for example (whilst clearly adaptable for all his states, anxiety, moods, whatever) could actually have been triggered in his mind by sensory overload linked to his visual dyspraxia; a part of his neurology that impairs his visual, motor skills, hand-eye coordination and all their relationships to one another. He sees everything – hence the often impressive photographic memory – but editing and filtering and shaping and manoeuvring can be a struggle and a strain. He ‘brass rubbed’ efficiently but swiftly. After which the desk with its messy pens and paper, crayons, colours, fingerprints, noise must have morphed into some sort of Jackson Pollock painting whose form and order and how to decipher is somewhat challenging. The Zones of Regulation was the lifeboat

As I’ve adhered to, they are one jigsaw piece in his school’s interventionist and integrated therapeutic approach which includes one to one psychotherapy, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy that is skillfully tuned and tweaked to make him thrive at all times. It provides the pivot for his promise and potential.

But whilst the uniqueness of Isaac’s complex needs and social communication difficulties never leave me, as if scrawled on the back of my hand, the far reaching, adoptable-for-all strategies are paradoxically becoming clear.

The school’s cohort of innovations are so instructive. So many of which, to the layman like me, feel like a laddering up from some of the thinking of the late, but eternally enlightened, neurologist, Oliver Sacks, who helped us understand the typical brain through broad studies of all types of consciousness and brain wirings, as his writings, Rivers of Consciousness concur. For example, in one study, he was dismayed by others’ views of an autistic man as a copying machine, instead emphasizing that it “wasn’t all comparable to a mechanical process, with a distinction, discrimination and recognition of visual features.”

Isaac neurological mechanisms definitely appear to bias retention and visual imagery – masterfully so. His memory abilities glide the up escalator whilst his comprehension struggle behind up steep stairs. Aligning the two is the school’s work of art, applied with distinction.

His current fascination of Monopoly plays this out. A regurgitation of the entire rule book, community chest cards and all, plus a desire for every type of edition – there are many – demonstrate Isaac’s natural talents and enthusiasms-come-obsessions. The playing bit, with its strategy, abstract banking and buying and competitive subtleties, have initially had to be a little distorted by him. Patience can peter out too, naturally.

But a gentle yet effective wrap around plan of role playing at school, thought-through social situations and stories, and appropriate conversations, are edging him towards an understanding. Again his needs haven’t just been met, they have had a halo effect too. He exudes a kindness when playing over a competitiveness. His sister has joined in. She’s learnt to play in a different, more cohesive way. Both are reaping the rewards.

And I can get much more specific in this area of tailored techniques not just having a halo effect, but in of themselves having the ability to help typical people in all areas.

When it comes to eating, for so long, Isaac has held on to jagged rocks over terrifying ravines, however ravenous. The thinnest of diets – identikit, uniform, limited – directly due to his autism. Through Isaac’s ingenious occupational therapists’ practices and ideas, some deeply considered eating spaces, indoors and out, allow for experimentation through increased frequency and exposure. A kind of transferable cafe system for safe eating, comfort and experimentation.

Plus providing opportunities to prepare, create, cook is a constant, meaning a slow but steady reduction of inhibitions. Whilst once he’d regularly recoil from anything sloppy, he now participates, for example, making a pizza from scratch choosing the toppings making a margarita pizza and one with mushrooms, peppers, pepperoni and tomato.

New textures, new visual presentation, a sustained sensitivity to sensory needs, an allowance for imitation. With joined up work with my wife from home, his diet has diversified, not just demonstrably, but beyond where I dared to dream.

“Look at me putting this most delicious salmon – with NO burnt bits – in my mouth. You better be proud! Yum, I’m peckish, it is most delightful. Mmm, deliciously placed on my plate.”

As I’ve said, autism is at the core of this eating strategy. Yet could be applicable to all. The extraordinary ingredients that have contributed, might help the many, many people, young and old, who encounter eating troubles.

Similarly, in these times of conflicted conversations around– and confusion about – male tenderness or toxicity, Isaac’s school’s autism-inspired nurturing of any behaviours, thinking and developments that are sensitive to gender is phenomenal – and could be implemented anywhere and everywhere.

Instead of some of the slapdash, preventative or even punitive approaches I hear of, what I see is Isaac immersed in a black box of mental health techniques that are cementing such solid ground for his transition through the perils of puberty and into young adulthood. Hard working, brave psychotherapy of course, as well as small discussion groups around mature topics, and an ever considered balance of walking and exercise clubs and wellbeing sessions. All personalised, part of the curriculum, transparent and understandable.

In particular, at age 11, his sex and relationship education is highly appropriate and life affirming. A spelling out, and breaking down, of truths and hard facts. Benefitting from his lack of embarrassment and love of logic, snigger free descriptions of all things sexual and various reproductive organs are delivered to me, as are his eye watering questions.

This simplicity, storytelling and honesty definitely has its roots in the language work Isaac receives. Loosening the literal ties, dissection of idioms and metaphors; he is learning conversation skills and he constructs and commutes with a charm and single-mindedness:

He’s forever the clinking of cutlery on a glass, raising his voice whenever a discussion is swaying, announcing, “please can you stop now, I’m getting a little confused. So let me get this straight; should I be reading between the lines at this point?”

His own elaborate chat may meander (he makes the onus very much on him!) but that healthy environment he’s taught in means a beautiful politeness and poise. When the first girl joined his class, he told me he would “welcome this wonderful young woman to my school.” And over lunch showed his consideration by, “kindly asking her what zone she is in, and perhaps she’s feeling a little yellow like me.”

When Isaac was diagnosed over eight years ago now, I knew what lay ahead was a lifetime of learning. What I didn’t envisage was the extent to which that learning would reach beyond autism itself. It really is the most human of conditions.

Leave a Reply

.