ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION
After researching through the internet, books, magazines, videos and interviews, I’ve decided that I’m going to focus on helping kids with autism but at the same time also focus on my AOI, which is Community and Service. Even though the process of creation (Human Ingenuity) is also a factor of it, I’ve chose to focus more on how to help kids with autism (Community and Service). I will focus on kids with autism (to be specific, Aspergers), training and sensory dolls.
ABOUT KIDS WITH ASPERGERS
Kids with autism—in general, have problem communicating with other people. They also have weird and unique behaviors such as: avoiding eye contact, head banging and many more. They have trouble controlling their emotions and showing it in a proper way. According to Tony Attwood, giving them emotion chart will help a lot. So, when they’re angry (for example), they can point at the picture so that his/her surroundings can know what they really feel. Kids with Aspergers aren’t the best at controlling their emotions. Kids with autism have sensory problems—their ability to feel isn’t as good as people without autism.
Kids with autism or Aspergers in specific are just simply different than others. They need to have different kind of practices so that they can be more “normal”. But then again, what is normal? To kids with autism, they’re normal. To us, people without autism, we’re normal. So actually, the practices they go through isn’t to make them normal, but so that they can do more than others, do things they weren’t able to do before that.
Sensitivity is one of the indications that a kid has autism. They usually have sensitivity to light or a specific color. Like what’s written in Jodi Picoult’s book House Rules, the kid with Aspergers was sensitive to the color orange. And in Mark Haddon’s book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the kid was sensitive to the color yellow. Actually, not all of them have a special sensitivity, but those are the examples. They also have motor skills problem such as locomotion, ball skills, balance, manual dexterity, coordination and rhythm. It might sound like something that little kids lack of, but kids with autism are known when their growth is late than other kids.
Nowadays, there are toys that are called sensory toys. It is a type of toys that can help kids with special needs to calm themselves down and to focus more. It helps them to control their emotion as well. Those toys doesn’t only help them to control their emotion, it also help them to develop their senses. There are 2 different kinds of cases, one is hyperactivity, and the other one is hyposensitivity. Kids with autism that has hyperactivity’s senses actually works but it might not work really well. Meanwhile, hyposensitivity is the extreme of hyperactivity because their senses aren’t able to work at all. Since, hyposensitivity needs a lot of time to improve and way more extreme, I will focus on hyperactivity.
Referring back to the Areas of Interaction’s question: How do we live in relation with others? We live in relation with others by trying to blend in, to be the same with everyone, not to be weird. But for kids with autism, or Aspergers, they don’t know what’s different and what’s the same. So, what we can do to help them is by helping them. The simplest thing we can do is by not making fun of them. It is simple, but those simple things mean a lot to them.
ABOUT TRAINING KIDS WITH AUTISM
Autism kids are kids with special abilities. Nowadays they have different kinds of Yayasan and groups that help kids with autism to grow and get more attention. They have different kinds of tools as well to help them as well. As their surroundings, there are also different ways to help them.
Yayasan or organizations that help kids with autism also exists in Indonesia. Even though they’re only a small group of people, it is said that kids with autism grows. It helps them little by little. Even though it is not possible for kids with autism to be “cured” from autism, they can grow and continue living like other kids. Kids with autism took more time to develop than kids without autism. They’re considered late, that’s why they need different kinds of training so that they can catch up with the other kids. They need more attention.
Sensory toys are one of the best ways to help kids with autism grow. Even though it takes a long period of time, it affects the kid little by little. Sensory toys have different kinds of features in it such as sound, light, movement, vibration, texture and pressure. All of it can help kids with autism with a long process.
Referring back to the Areas of Interaction’s questions, we contribute to the community by helping them with what we have. For example, we have a talent in cooking; we can help them cook foods that could decrease their hyperactivity. We can also help others in many different ways, being a friend is one of them. We can talk to them and accompany them so that they don’t feel lonely. Those simple things actually does matter.
ABOUT CREATING DOLLS
I’ve found many different ways to make and examples of dolls. I have decided to make it with different kinds of fabrics so that the dolls can help the kids with autism to increase their censoring skills.
According to Athalia Soenaryo, a counselor, it is best to make dolls with different kind of textures so that kids with autism could practice their censoring skills. She also said that putting beans inside the doll could also make a simple textile have more textures in it. Sensory toys are toys that can help people train their senses. According to Kidscoper Toys, sensory toys are toys that usually offer feedbacks such as sound, light, movement, vibration, texture and pressure. For my product, I will focus on textures. It is also said that sensory toys can slowly decrease their hyperactivity.
After seeing different kind of dolls, I notice that they usually use attractive color textiles to get their attention. They also have unique and different kind of shapes, and most of it looks complex because they wanted to get more attention for their uniqueness. But, since the shape of my doll doesn’t really matter, I will keep it simple but also unique. I also won’t be using attractive colors because I’m afraid that would actually be too much for them and they would “explode”. So, after considering my target audience’s characteristics and needs, I will be using simple color textiles, but different colors. Because by seeing different kind of colors, it helps them to also practice their censoring skills—because they adapt to different kind of colors.
Another thing I noticed from seeing the samples of dolls is that they have different kinds of faces that can be funny and interesting. For my toy, I will also be focusing on the expressions, so I will be having many different kinds of simple expressions such as happy, sad, mad, etc and they can stick it in the doll to show what expression they’re feeling at that moment.
‘How can I contribute to the community?’ and ‘How can I help others?’ are the questions from the Areas of Interaction. I believe that there are many different ways we can contribute to the community. The best thing we can do is that use our talents to do something good to the community. For me, I believe that sewing is one of the things I like to do, and I would like to use it to help kids with autism. After trying to figure out how to use it best, I’m going to make a type of sensory toys. Same goes for how we can help others. It is up to us how we’re going to respond to the society. It is our choice to help them, it is also our choice to respond to what the community has offer. And I’ve chosen to respond positively, by helping them.
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