Autism Survival Skills
“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.” Horace Mann, American Educator, 1796-1859.
Good habits make everyone’s life easier. When faced with difficult situations, they allow us to react the right way without conscious thought, leaving us no time to choose otherwise. Good habits must be carefully developed and good habits require maintenance.
As an autistic person, I find that good habits are a must. In my head, I can learn how to do physical activities, but my autism keeps me from relaying instructions to my body to do those activities. To master the simplest of tasks, I must form the task as a habit. Habits are the best way that I can function in my daily life. When I form good habits, they help me to do self-help tasks such as eating with silverware, putting my clothes on, soaping myself in the shower and pouring water in a glass from a faucet. Good habits must be taught over a long period of time and are also hard to break.
Habits are also my biggest problem - not all of my habits are good ones. Bad habits lead to compulsive behaviors like grabbing peoples’ soda cans or biting my hand when I am angry. Bad habits can develop suddenly, like a forest fire, and are very hard to extinguish. I could list all my bad habits here, but there isn’t enough ink in my cartridge to print such a list.
Autistic people aren’t the only people who depend on habits. Coaches use practices to instill good habits into their players, so that under game pressure they will do the right thing without hesitating to think about it. Good students develop good study habits. Diabetics develop restricted eating habits, as do heart patients. Many people make exercise a daily habit. Those who take their religious life seriously develop their spiritual disciplines, such as devotional time, fasting and meditation, into daily habits. A habit is a way to incorporate good things into your life.
There is a web site called habits-of-mind.net which advocates “habits of the mind.” They say, “A Habit of Mind is knowing how to behave intelligently when you DON’T know the answer.” They also say, “A Habit of Mind means having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known: dichotomies, dilemmas, enigmas and uncertainties.”
Again as an autistic person, I would change this definition somewhat to fit my life and maybe yours. I would say, “A Habit of Mind means having a disposition toward reacting safely and sanely when confronted with an everyday situation, which I would otherwise not be able to cope with.”
As an autistic person, I don’t ever act in what is considered a normal fashion. If I haven’t developed good habits, my responses to daily circumstances of life are way outside of the accepted norms. If I have good habits in place, they lead to what appear to be rigid behaviors. In either case, I don’t appear to be acting intelligently, even though I am quite intelligent. Good habits do help me cope with daily life, however.
Today and in every day that passes, we weave another thread into the cables, which become our habits of mind and, unbreakable, they will last us a lifetime. That cable is literally my lifeline.