Harnessing your child’s special interests

In Conversation with Sarah
My name is Sarah. I am a speech and language therapist. I’ve worked in the NHS for about 20 years, and I’m also really pleased to be part of the team here at Autism Clinic London. And I’m here today to talk to you about special interests, because one theme that we often find in the autistic community is that autistic people often have got an ability to really hone their interest and their attention onto some specific topics, and that can be really, really helpful to them.

In many areas of life. It can help some autistic people to really achieve excellence in that area of interest. And I want to talk about how we can foster that and use that ability to build connections as caregivers and parents.

So I think if I’m thinking about my own friendships in life, often where those friendships have begun and friendships have lasted my entire life is actually the beginning of a shared interest or a shared lesson in life, and often our friendship is built around that and then evolves into something more long-lasting.

That special interest gives you an opportunity to build that kind of connection and that kind of shared passion with your children. So I think historically, some methods you might find out there for working with children who are autistic might include you as a parent, almost becoming the barrier between the child and that thing of interest. You might be encouraged to kind of hold it out of the child’s reach to almost encourage a child, almost as like the carrot, to behave in a certain way or do a certain thing in order to get that object.

And in that sense, it’s kind of the opposite of building connection. But actually, the more that I work and reflect on my experience both as a therapist and as a parent, what I want to do with my children’s special interests is the opposite. What I want to do is I want to be the person who can engage in that topic, whatever it may be, with as much enthusiasm or excitement as my child does.

I want to be the one who provides the object of fun, rather than the one who becomes a barrier to it. So if my child loves dinosaurs, I want to love dinosaurs. I want to know everything there is to know about dinosaurs. I want to think of new, creative and fun ways to play with dinosaurs. You might want to look on Pinterest or Instagram to see what other people are doing with dinosaurs, because you might find your child might be more willing to try something new.

If that new thing involves the thing that they already love, you might want to bring them an object that is really similar to the dinosaur they love, but slightly different to begin to broaden the way they engage with that, but through the thing they find fun and threatening. So my encouragement, particularly for those of you children who might be an early communication stage, is use your child’s special interest as a place for connection, a place for bonding, a place for fun, and a place for excitement. Do the most fun thing with that object that you can, because that is what your will make your child want to come back for more.

Thinking about special interests, perhaps for children who might be older or might have a more flexible use of language, what I found in my experience is that sometimes, if you’re able to use that special interest, it can be a way to help children understand slightly more abstract or difficult concepts.

So there is a young girl that I worked with for a long time who found her emotions very difficult to conceptualise; she found it very difficult to regulate her feelings. But I think that’s because she found them really, really hard to understand. And the word soup that often surrounds emotions, the way that people would throw different words out, describe the same feeling in different ways or with different terms for her, was very overwhelming.

And so she would have moments where her anger would become something that she wasn’t able to control. Now, for her, she really loved the film Lilo and Stitch. Stitch before the remake, the original, just to be clear. And so for her, when she became angry, the language that made sense for her was to refer to that feeling as ‘Stitch’.

So she would say, I had ‘Stitch’, meaning that she had become very angry, and that was a way that she could conceptualise that emotion and put it into words. That really helped her to navigate that very abstract idea. And so we just entered into that with her. We used that interest that felt more concrete to help her explore something that was more difficult.

Actually, sometimes when we use what does feel understandable to children to begin to touch on the things that are more conceptual or difficult, it can really, really help. So we use that special interest. We harness it to help take us to what’s more difficult. So with the girl who used Stitch, actually, we started by referring to ‘Stitch’. Once she felt more confident with that, we’d made her some charts that included those images. Then we began to add words that other people would understand because obviously, Stitch was a helpful coach, for those of us who knew, but when she went to secondary school, it wasn’t going to help her form tutor. So once we knew that we had an agreement of what stitch meant, we were then able to layer some extra language on and we coded that for her.

So we said, actually, it’s okay with people who know what the code means. We can still use this word. It’s not a problem, but other people might not know.

Something else that can be helpful, if your child has got some special interests that are perhaps a bit more niche, or other people find harder to understand, I think it can be tempting to want to shut that down or to close that topic, but I find sometimes what can be more helpful is to ask my child to explain it to me as if I didn’t know anything about it.

Explain it to me as if I’m mad. Explain it to me as if I’m an alien, because that way it helps your children to understand or grade the fact that not everybody would have the same degree of passion as them. It can help them to work out how much to say, or how to explain to other people and let us know they’ve got something they can tell you. They can educate you. They don’t always have to be in the role of the one who receives information, but actually, it’s fun for them to teach you, so let them teach you about it. You might learn something new.

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