One of the members of our newsgroup went to a conference and heard a lady called Carol Gray speak. Carol Gray is the woman famous for developing a technique known as "Social Stories" for helping autistic people learn about social behaviour, based on the ancient idea of telling illustrative stories.
But Carol Gray didn't always believe in such benign methods - for many years, she was trained in the old Behaviourism methods. It was her interactions with autistic people themselves that lead to her questioning what she had been taught and eventually lead to the development of her "Social Stories" methodology.
This is how her annecdote was reported by our group member, a parent of an autistic child:
Carol told us this one story she told about a girl called Becky. She told it to illustrate how what many of us NT's take for granted as 'unspoken' knowledge needs to sometimes to be spelt out to our AC children.
One of Carol's first students was a non-verbal girl called Becky. Carol never believed she would be capable of mainstream schooling or speech. Becky's eye contact was non-existent, so (Carol claims this to be the first of the many mistakes she made in teaching AC children) she half filled a spray bottle (like the ones used for misting plants)
Whilst working one-to-one with her she would spray orange juice into her mouth whenever her eyes passed hers.
Anyway years went by and Becky improved dramatically and went to school. Carol still saw her regularly and promised her a charm for her charm bracelet for each year she completed. Carol very happily announced that they are now on their second
charm bracelet.
Every year before xmas they would meet for lunch and exchange gifts. Becky never in all the years they met ever mentioned the fact that Carol had once been her teacher. Until this one xmas lunch when she out of the blue said "There's been something I have been meaning to ask you for a long time. You were my teacher once weren't you?"
Carol thought OK here comes. "Yes, Becky, I was."
[Incidentally Becky's eye contact never improved. In fact Carol once asked her if Becky knew what Carol looked like, she said "Yes, I look at you when your not looking."]
Becky then asked "Why did you squirt me in the mouth?"
Carol tried to explain that because of her lack of eye contact she was using it as a means to increase this. Becky who was sitting in a booth at the restaurant they had chosen for lunch began to laugh hysterically, so much so she actually fell sideways, bobbing up every so often before disappearing again.
Carol frantically tried to explain that she meant no harm and she was just trying to improve her eye contact...
Eventually Becky calmed down and said to carol "Do you know what I thought!!?"
"NO"
"I thought you thought I was a plant!!"
You see in Becky's mind she actually thought that it was possible for Carol not to realise that she was indeed a person, not a plant. Why? Because no one had ever told her that Carol knew the difference between plants and people! Becky lacked Theory of Mind; she lacked the ability to imagine what was likely to be in Carol's mind. Therefore, what is obvious to many (that people generally don't mistake children for plants) was not obvious to her.
