I’m Linda I’m like on the verge of an anxiety attack so bear with me wasn’t expecting quite this many so it’s gonna take me a moment so if I suddenly tear up my apologies but hopefully of all the panels people will be understanding okay so like I said my I’m gonna cover basically autism in general this is the serious part I’m going to assume that most people who are here have a clue what autism is and that’s why they’re here but I figured I should do the official part then I’m gonna do my personal angle that’s me as A mom so you’re gonna see a whole lot of pictures when I just tell you a lot of stories and then where I want to go with this both as a scientist and as a public administrator I also if you see included a moment at the end where I get Completely and totally overwhelmed for a moment and then open for questions I really did try to account for everything I didn’t account for this though so I guess first I should give you a quick little thing about me and why it says like as a scientist in public admin as Well as mom currently I teach biology for college and what I normally tell them at the first day of every class is I’m also a high school dropout so I’m like a weird one I finished ninth grade and didn’t go back and then I went back To college in 2005 and once I started going to college I liked it so by the end of 2009 I had a bachelor’s in biology and a bachelor’s and philosophy jumped right into masters where I then worked for the Masters of biology Masters of Public Administration where I Then fell in love with the idea of public administration so now I’m currently working on my doctorate of Public Administration I don’t have stop that’s pretty much it um when I get to the personal angle as a mommy you’ll understand more of why the public admin but I wanted to give you a Clue because I have a whole lot of weird hats basically to get everywhere okay pervasive developmental disorders PDD this is what used to be the umbrella that everything is under I don’t know if everybody knows now as of May the ruling is that everything is just autism there Is no official Asperger’s anymore it’s just autism so I just wanted to cover these are the older names but I want to make sure you’re aware of what they were a lot of people basically say that you can see a lot of the symptoms as early As newborns or infants a lot of them not until later and the higher functioning I think I get to that in a moment tend to be much later and you then run into a lot of people who say well you can’t possibly be autistic they would Have been diagnosed when they were 2 and that’s not true and so that’s it’s kind of like my big old soapbox right there some of the symptoms for the PD DS tend to be like using an understanding language difficulty relating with people and objects events unusual play with Toys and other objects in other words we like things nice long straight lines they’re pretty difficulty with changes in a routine and familiar surroundings we like everything to be nice and predictable orderly which is why I was laughing that everybody was very nice about filling in their seats and letting People know it so much better okay hey I was the squisher and the main thing earlier today it was driving me crazy oh it was hard people got mad at me okay now children with PDD you’re gonna vary widely in abilities and intelligence and behaviors this is why You can’t simply say well I can tell somebody is autistic by looking at them that’s a load of crap everybody is different some might not speak at all others might be in certain phrases others might be just unbeli intelligent it’s kind of just like what they call neurotypical the normal people You’re gonna have all scales and like I said that’s kind of my soapbox issue right there repetitive play skills and limited social skills are normally rather noticeable and unusual responses to sensory information like loud noises and lights are also common what that is known as is comorbidity where it’s more Than one thing at a time and that one normally falls under the line of sensory processing disorder and a lot of children have the sensory processing disorders they go to get checked out then they get diagnosed with autism and then people forget about the sensory processing disorder and say oh this will Fix everything and it doesn’t so they’re two totally different things yeah we’ve been down that road okay now autism when it was kept separate from just the regular PD DS autism was considered the most characteristic and best studied we used to have classical autism or autistic disorder known as ASD And that was considered the most severe the main features of this would mostly be impaired social interaction sometimes they don’t want to answer to their name not making eye contact not looking around to people stuff like that but everything else might seem rather normal or they could also seem completely like Every other kid but then as they get older they just kind of gravitate this direction you guys ready for the first picture here we go can you pick my son that has Asperger’s believe it or not yeah he’s having a good time he’s wearing his social shirt which says you Read my t-shirt that’s enough social interaction for today I got him that for Christmas two years ago almost every time I go somewhere public he puts that on we have pictures of us at medieval times this and not everybody else is smiling he’s people come up is he having fun he’s like Waving the flag but it’s not that he’s not having fun it’s yeah that’s him and that’s part of the autistic part they don’t get the social cues they don’t understand the tone of voice he’s 14 now we’re going through that where I have to explain to him he’s hurting my feelings When he says it like this and I’m like I know you’re not meaning it but tone really does hurt so this is one of those issues now high-functioning autism this is at one end of the autism spectrum this tends to be more of what I leaned towards the high functioning and aspies Asperger’s even though Asperger’s technically doesn’t exist and everybody keeps telling me I have to remember to say that otherwise it doesn’t match the medical stuff I’m still always gonna say Aspie well these guys signs and symptoms are less severe and most of the time they tend to have average or above Average intelligence the picture there if you could see closely is just an image a recent one of my son where he got birthday money in August and most I’d say probably much children are gonna do something and buy nifty little things the first thing he did was he got himself ordained online Because he’s trying to start his own religion he hasn’t decided what yet but then he could decide how many holidays she gets off school if it’s a religious holiday what he’s holding here if you can see very closely as he also bought himself a title so legally he is and I am telling You exactly what it says grandmaster brain wizard you can actually purchase a title online I think it was 30 bucks so we have these we’re about the frame I’m as soon as we have the money for it but ya know unlike other forms of autism a lot of times this they actually might Want to be involved with other people they just don’t know how to go about it they don’t quite understand the jokes the jibes the little you know different types of emotions they’re not great at reading the facial expressions or body language however Jacob can tell you quoting straight from a book or a Webpage exactly how to tell if somebody’s lying which way their eyes go and everything you’re supposed to do but when it’s face to face it doesn’t work he knows it here but not here this is just more information about Asperger’s basically they want to know everything about their topic of interest And when they’re talking about it they don’t have a clue whether or not you care about what they’re talking about and you might be walking around the house and they’re following you room to room and they’re telling you all about the physics of Star Wars which we went Through that we actually have a book he had that when he was eight then we also have minecraft that ones at least more interesting we did the dinosaurs you know right now he’s on a rant about William Shakespeare and he wrote an essay on why Romeo and Juliet should not Be taught in school and he and his conclusion begins with something along the lines of it’s not really a love story it’s a three-day relationship that ends with more deaths than the average serial kills in a year or I’m sorry in a lifetime when it great yeah his III sent it to His teacher and said you know good luck and she replied and said she actually agrees a lot so so you guys at least get the idea now again a little bit more of the serious Asperger part a lot of times developmental delays and motor skills Jacob my little one he was actually Walking at seven months freaky and I didn’t even write it on the calendar because the seven month old was not supposed to walk and it was really freaky so it died didn’t count it however not really coordinated so the year he decided to try out for basketball it was kind of interesting to Watch he had never played basketball until the day of tryouts he was then very grateful he didn’t make it because he said that’s a lot of work but yeah now this is an example Jacob wanted to be in Cub Scouts and he’s now actually I think a first-class Boy Scout But this is an image I took a while back it’s really blurry because you may have no so I’m not the steadiest of souls but I took it at the time because it really stood out to me that he thinks he’s in the group right here but if you’re Looking at it you clearly see he’s not but in his mind he is right there with the group we have been with these Boy Scouts for quite some time now we then merged into a larger group a little over two years ago and it has taken him two Years tour now he’s actually talking to everybody and he’s making jokes and now it was like oh my god he’s so funny I’m like yeah I know you just you have to give him time but I wanted to bring that because this is the social aspect we’re Almost done with the serious parts here or the educational parts I just wanted to throw in some numbers because a lot of people seem to think it’s not a whole lot of people have autism but in 2008 about 1 in 88 children were identified on the autism spectrum and that is only Counting the kids who are tested up to age 8 it does not include anybody over the age of 8 and my son was over 8 when he was diagnosed and it doesn’t adults but that’s a high number right there and then why it’s important to think about all of these things that’s Okay I was just noticing the title in here I was like I thought I put something different there I got totally distracted and I forgot to announce who I got the background from it’s jab jab jab on deviantart and I sent him a message and said I was going to announce That at the beginning and I forgot but hey I remembered I don’t I don’t want to steal it you know okay anyway high functioning autism and Asperger’s tend to continue having challenges in children more often than not they’re just said that their behavior isn’t matching everybody else or they’re not talking like everybody Else kindergarten I got called in because they wanted me to have Jacob talk lower I don’t know how else to word it to match the other kids and I said why don’t you teach the other kids some vocabulary and bring them up they didn’t they didn’t like that but they stuck to It because I’m not gonna tell my kid to dumb it down but he’s great at memorizing stuff so normally young children do great academically then they get a little bit older and the lack of social skills starts to get issues if they’re anything like my son and you hit Middle school and they just throw 8004 worksheets at you that make no sense on why you’re doing them your grades start to go like this because why are you doing it if you already know it so that’s been a big thing we’ve done and Then in adults a lot of times it can be difficult to live independently as adults it doesn’t mean they can’t but sometimes it takes a little more effort it’s not just like hey you’re 18 go you know there’s a little more of a transition needed now for the personal Stuff why I love minecraft believe it or not that’s actually both my kids you can only see the bottom half of my older son I did this just because obviously he still he always both of them love building they love order this is a picture of Jacob on the side with his Homemade goggles made from a baseball and bottle cap jug caps you know like off of power aids he thought it was really nifty and wanted to wear it everywhere and couldn’t understand why people looked at him weird I think it’s really creative kind of makes him a Target just a little bit here’s a boy scout time we’re camping out we have the group and then we have what Jacob’s doing during the group totally enjoying himself in his own little world not quite with the group our house our life loves Legos that’s his 12th birthday Downtown Disney he thought he was in heaven with that wall Oh Legos I know it’s great isn’t it we go back every chance we get the other image parents may understand its the importance of your computer when things get spilled on the keyboard you can’t just say sorry you can’t play the Computer you learn quickly how to wash that sucker off and you dry that thing so you can use it again this has happened more than once now how I ended up falling in love with Minecraft Jacob this is him getting I think what is that The EEG he had a tick for a long time or he just he couldn’t stop snapping his head like this so he went through the neurologists and stuff like that when he was having his harder times in having complete and total shutdowns where he can’t even answer you know what is your Name he can’t answer it for him it was a wine of I don’t know and he wasn’t being whiny or pester II it’s just his brain wasn’t gonna do it I was still learning about everything and I would do things like well do you want to sit over here I Don’t dude do you want me to pull you and I was making it worse because I kept asking him because I didn’t want to bully him or push him around but I was making it worse one of the things we found was minecraft would help calm him down so then later When we decided to try medicine for the first time because I was petrified to try medicine but Jacob has Asperger’s social anxiety general anxiety acute agoraphobia and sensory processing disorder when he came up and told me he was tired of being anxious and he wanted to try medicine I realized me saying no Wasn’t fair to him anymore so we tried it it did not go well I wish I had spotted the signs earlier because it got to where he was picking holes in his arm and I thought it was just not being able to leave a bug bite alone we were like Wrapping his arm at night and guys and then it ended up him having full-fledged hallucinations at school and it got really rather scary so how I would calm him down was minecraft talked about minecraft we had screenshots of Minecraft we talked about what are you doing with Minecraft how are you Building this what do you want to do with that I learned so much about Minecraft it was crazy but then I yanked him off the medicine we took him to the emergency room because I thought they had to do is to be able to have something to flush it out and they said No you’re supposed to taper off and I’m like no so we went home I just took him straight off of it which apparently can throw you for a loop and he would like just fall off a chair because his balance would be gone like that but we played Minecraft and that’s What helped keep him calm that’s when I started to absolutely love minecraft it’s also what brought me to doing the dpa because where I live I am just a couple of miles north of the Florida border I’m Lake Park Georgia really close and we have nothing for the Autistic community nothing and all I kept thinking was if I had had somebody to run interference at the emergency room somebody to explain to the nurse no you can’t just yank his arm do this do that you need to stop you need to explain it if I could have just somebody to answer The question so I could help keep him calm and I could try to keep my own panic as a mom down life would be easier so I started the doctorate for public administration to open a non-profit so I can do in education and support thing About autism in my area I want to bring minecraft into it and I’m gonna get to that in just one moment here’s Jakob last Christmas with his Boy Scout troop tell me if you can find him he’s the one wearing the gas mask so he was the top popcorn seller last year got An Amazon gift card and I teach biology classes and I get an email you know you’re Israeli civilian gas mask with hydration tube and whatever filter has been shipped I’m like before that he bought shuriken stars all on my account so I asked him to please not buy weapons For a little while I have no doubt we’re on you know some kind of watch list but his Boy Scout troop found when he could wear his gas mask he was more social he would stay in the group he would do the group photo believe it or not he’s Smiling under there you can’t see it but he’s smiling I tried to tell him he couldn’t wear the gas mask for this part cuz this was the court of honors they’re getting all their badges and the leader the guy with the white beard in the back He says long as you tuck in your shirt I’m fine okay so we have worked very hard to find somewhere where he can belong Minecon the first one that was right after all of the hallucinations and me falling in love with Minecraft because of what it could do for my kids So we came to the first 9 con we are not rich people we are probably some of the poorest people you will meet I am one of those people where I’m striving to hit poverty I am an adjunct professor can’t find a full-time job however I will move Every mountain to get him to here because that minecon was the first time he was ever to go anywhere who he could turn to anybody and talk and everyone was interested in what he said nobody glazed-over and that’s what he said I asked him it’s gonna be a crowd are you Gonna be okay and he goes yes it’s great because I turn and they listen and and that’s where I normally start to tear so I fell in with minecraft I cannot say enough good things about Minecraft so I was on a panel on the first Minecon I volunteered To do the one about social interaction and that’s how he got to meet all these lovely people and the the kid who looks that’s packed that’s my older son he’s just funny he’s a sweetheart now computer time we went to the beach yeah if you look closely you’ll see it’s Minecraft on those laptops the little kid in the front is my nephew Nicholas he has ADHD he’s extremely extremely hyper when I told my sister he should try minecraft she said you can give it to him but don’t let me play it for two minutes nothing keeps his attention She was wrong that is our cat Fang he gets tired of Jacob playing Minecraft that is one of my favorite pictures ever I don’t know which is funnier the cat or the look on Jacobs face now I want to show also Jacobs humor okay can you read that post it yeah a Reminder don’t die and then he built a little rock house now the gingerbread house I wanted to point out because it’s just another epitome of his personality and his humor when you look at the gingerbread house what you have to notice is it’s a gingerbread house the Little guy with the cane is house doctor house he wanted me to make sure to include that he’s very proud of his you know gingerbread house now he is known as abandoned QWERTY and apparently it did not save the last adjustments I made to this so I’m not insane this this is How he sees himself he drew himself with what is that paint on the computer and that’s him holding his certificate becoming ordained that is his Friday outfit his a button-down shirt and his Doctor Who bowtie his hair is normally rather messy but that was picture day And so he used half a thing of gel that I didn’t know we owned because you’re supposed to dress up for picture day so there we go now the final part is I told you the reason I’m trying to get my DP a it’s in order to open the nonprofit Where I want to use minecraft for this is minecraft also helped jacob socialize he will talk like crazy to people online he has so many online buddies and when you ask him about his friends in real life yeah I got friends where do their names I don’t know minecraft holy crap He’ll start late throwing all those names off just like that however I see somewhere that we can go further with Minecraft and this is what I want to do whenever I get mine on it’s opened is a lot of time the switching to a new school or place since Tends to be the most nerve-wracking and I am thinking that if we have a group and work with it and I would love this to go everywhere if you get blueprints of the school build it in Minecraft let the kid over the summer love his school in Minecraft learn the schedule every Time there’s a scheduling change play with it know where the nurse’s station is know where the bathroom is in Minecraft and then when they show up in person we have actually gone into their world and that’s with my thing here it’s because a child with autism is not Ignoring you they’re waiting for you to enter their world and that’s what minecraft I think has done is it’s made it where we can my hope for this obviously it’s the nonprofit but I also really am hoping to start a research thing to see how much it helps different People with autism because I know a lot of people say oh it’s just a game but it’s more than that and I think that’s it and I didn’t burst into tears talking about what you well you are exactly right then yes order everything is completely and totally predictable And completely and totally logical if you want a house you get your wood if you want a window you go get sand and you turn it into glass there’s no eat but they can still have the excitement in there order by throwing in the zombies the creeper I Love creepers but you can throw all those suckers in there so they can have the I don’t know for lack of a better phrase controlled chaos or that’s just my opinion anyway you know you reminded me of something that I forgot to mention um but first I’m going to answer that I’m going to do the part I forgot to mention is in my house we have a computer it’s in the living room and I can always see the screen that’s how they’ve been since day one you cannot be on a computer online If I can’t see the screen it’s a desktop not a laptop and my older son who’s now 18 he still has to do it on the coffee table so I always can say I mean I’m not gonna sit there and stare but I can always spot check and that keeps it There but I wanted to mention I just found out it opened I think just a couple of months ago acht craft has anyone heard of that aut craft and I think what I was told is it’s a private dedicated server for the autistic community and their loved ones I have Not been to it but I just heard about it so I wanted to make sure to mention it yes are you with that are you with yeah I just found out about it like a couple of days ago at the beginning we were very controlled and so he didn’t Have to the first couple of times it started happening it was like people destroying what he had built and it did not go well at all and so he taught himself to open his own server and that’s how he solved the problems he just made his own server and then put Himself in god mode and flew all over the place and I was really confused I see a hand that’s some of the stuff I would love to actually research I think it’s wonderful I think it’s wonderful yes and my son has to save me often because he’ll bring me in to stop And go I want to test this out come on in here and I’m horrible at Minecraft I mean horrible and I’m trying I haven’t even finished building a house and I get lost and I have yet to find water but he brought me into one and said here I’m Gonna give you this you feed it to the wolf and then I beat the wolf with it because I hit the wrong thing and then they’re all attacking me and he has to save me and so I think that made him feel better because he is so much better At it than me and so he just has to school me well he and I will do it in the same room and so we’ll be talking while we do it so it’s just but he doesn’t have to look I mean he’s here doing that and laughing at me because I’m getting mauled He’s 14 now I don’t know to be honest he was playing a pirated version first and I don’t know for how long it’s just I would look and he’s like look what I didn’t like it’s a bunch of blocks I was very confused I didn’t really appreciate it until both Of my kids did yard work for other people to save up money the summer of the first minecon in order to purchase minecraft both of them bought their own thing and then that’s when I started to go wait a minute this isn’t just some little game that was bose that was that 2010 okay so it’s 2011 so that was just a couple years ago so 12 maybe but he was playing it before then it’s I just didn’t know anything until then oh he’s learned that since then yeah he learned it since then his first thing Was I just need to stop this so he went I’ll just make my own because that’s what he does and did you remember your question okay I believe survival when he does creative he doesn’t really weird things like builds elaborate things for you to jump through and then you flip a switch and All that does is make something come up to put it back but in survival mode he goes all over the place I get completely lost I don’t understand half of what’s happening anymore yes I know he does that not always but a lot of times yes I have two things I want to do one is the building up of like the school’s online so then they can see that and we have a decent number of schools and so it would be I would need to talk to all the different school systems the other Part is I work at Valdosta State University area and I actually teach for a different College on their campus but I’m a student with Valdosta State University and I’m trying to get them involved to see if we can like put it on the library computers and meet there so The kids who aren’t comfortable talking face-to-face can all be in the same room playing the game and communicating kind of like what’s happening here but it would all be local and my hope is that that would then help them be more comfortable with those people when they’re not there See it’s a great name no your parents asking the question here that one all right I was about to ask if he was Jacob yeah minecraft was the biggest and the greatest and the one that still has my heart but he is a huge Garry’s Mod thing He’s been doing the fallout stuff and I can’t remember the other the name of another one he does all these goofy ones but it’s a lot of people he met through Minecraft they then go there and they plead these these together so it’s still social it’s a little more on the E and But they’re still funny the way he does himself yes yes he is a nut for Garry’s Mod and it really freaked me out the first time I saw I was like why is it look like there’s some body just hanging there he’s like I’m just placing it over Here okay I think we were done I’m being told this you Video Information
This video, titled ‘Autism and Minecraft MINECON 2013 Panel’, was uploaded by Minecraft on 2014-03-09 17:00:06. It has garnered 40855 views and 858 likes. The duration of the video is 00:36:24 or 2184 seconds.
As a mother, Lynda has seen first hand the impact of Minecraft on the lives of her children. Hear her story on relevant uses of Minecraft with her family and the ways she sees it can impact children with Autism.
