I talked with an 11 year old about the soul

So I am an RBT. I work with kids with autism and takes tons and tons of data about their behavior to help manage their behavior so that they can lead more fulfilling and self deterministic lifestyles.
When I first started I was doing early intervention therapy (the most important kind) with toddlers. But I needed a shift from clinical work, I loved all those kids dearly but clinical work is the fast track to burnout.
So now I do in home therapy with a preteen. As most preteen this kid is getting into his more moody behaviors, and is really starting to recognize that it’s kinda fun to be bad. So in trying to manage these behaviors I realized it’s probably best if he understands why we do everything we do.

This kid is partially nonverbal; he speaks under a few circumstances (1) when emotions are high [high favor or avoidance] (2) high focus (3)scripting. With the plethora of behaviors that a lot of autistic individuals tend to express, most people jump to conclusions about their ability to comprehend or understand the world around them.

With all the clients I have worked with they are hyper aware of everything to a degree in which their expression is inhibited. Like for this kid, his brain is wired in a manner in which every thought and every feeling is felt to a maximum, a slight graze is a tickle that send him into a laughing frenzy, or the new hyper fixation of the week pops in his head while working on a math problem and we have restart from the very beginning.

So I had to think. This kid doesn’t see the point of me being here. I come over we do these problems, write sentences, practice manding and I go and it seems like a waste of time. So at the start of our sessions in the last week of January I started talking to him about my purpose being here and what not.
Even when it seems like these kids are in another world they’re listening, they’re always listening.
So I started at the top. I am here to help you manage your behaviors to help you live more self determined lifestyle in the future so you can be as independent as can be.
But how do we go about that?

It was odd, in one stream of consciousness I just knew how to explain everything I’ve been doing, I’ve reflected about it before but actually sitting down and explaining it all to this kid solidified the reality of my work.
*I also wrote this entire post in one stream of consciousness I’m sorry for any typos and grammar errors*

We use a lot of different mediums to help you think and express yourself. But first we must categorize our types of thinking and expression. I wrote on the whiteboard before us “Abstract” and “Conceptual”.
Abstract thinking is our spontaneous aspect things that are more innate to us, when it comes to our expression this would be like our emotions like laughter and crying (in his case spontaneous movements as well), while our conceptual side would concern itself with things like language math and our ideas of self.
For this kid his abstract ideation is great, he wears his emotions on his face and lets everything flow through him in an expressive frenzy. But our abstract side has no limits, it goes until our body breaks. The abstract side of us makes itself known through most people in art in some shape of form. I feel this usually comes to be known through something like drawing, painting, and the nonverbal side to music. The atmosphere of the word that is constructed. The parts that make you feel something.
The conceptual adds to that and takes it further. Its where abstract ideas are given limits and can be developed. Let’s take the sentences I write with this kid as an example, the emotion of the day are felt as I walk in, he’s usually happy, but his bodily expression varies, if he’s happy he’s bouncing around wall to wall, if he’s a bit more worn down from school, he’ll most likely be on his tablet on the couch or drawing on our whiteboard, if he’s feeling down or tired he’ll be laying on the couch watching whatever his little brother is doing.
Since he never directly tells me how he feels unless it’s on his AAC device I make assumptions and play hand games with him to gauge how he’s doing. In this series I go over what we will be doing for today and explain the purpose of everything too. Setting him up to understand our routine.
When I was talking to him about my purpose and why we are working to develop him in these different ways he was fixated and focused on the whiteboard I was using to provide the visual for this whole thing.

The overall abstract concept I was going over with him in that week was “Focus”. The base layer to develop any idea that comes to us and follow through with its creation.

He has excellent focus in catching the hook of many of the abstract concept that come to him, but even then his focus is scattered, one topic of interest for 2 minutes to another for 5 then to 1 jumping all over the place. He follows them all to completion as he needs to complete the script.

But how do we stay focused on a task for long periods of time? How do we stay focused on something that we don’t want to particularly do? That is what I have to teach.

I spoke on and on about how people do a billion gajilion different things to help themselves focus, the most common I think is meditation.
But there is something else too, artistic therapy. Many of the lessons in abstract and conceptual thinking exist in our artistic self expression, it is a matter of doing the hard part and doing it.

That hard part is what I am here to help him with! The guide that is needed to help you on your journey of self development.
But even my existence and job had to come from the same processes that I am teaching you. My position was born from the abstract, unquantifiable expansive with a role but unsure how to be brought forth. It’s conceptualized and set with bounds, with bounds it is crunched and able to be expressed in multiple ways by multiple people.
Even the ways we take data follow this process, but there’s a catch. With every point of data (outside those that simply look at the rate by which a behavior occurs) there is a layer of irrationality that persists.
This irrationality can’t be quantified. The irrational is you. The circumstances that made you, the history of life poured into your individuality, the chaos of life that led to your expression. The only way to understand this irrational wouldn’t be to understand you and your body but to understand all of life.

Your soul. Like consciousness, it’s within everyone and everything. All things with shape, all things, all, have soul. The body simply gives it a bound to express the irrationality of it. Although we seek aid and manage the behavior the core of it comes from an irrational base, but so does mine. As my behavior is irrational and inconsistent to other so is his, and as I have been able to change my own behaviors so can he. The point our sessions isn’t to change who you are but to equip you the ability to learn who you are and learn to teach yourself bounds.

Our first step of this is focus.

We work on manufactured tasks to aid with conceptual and abstract focus. Whether it be with math problems or making scenarios with toys and writing about. Our first step is increasing our ability to focus.