Pablo Thinks Differently

This week I wanted to talk about something that I could have included in my Autistic Parenting post the other week, but didn't think about it until afterwards. It's something that with being both autistic and a parent I feel strongly in support of. That being the kids' TV show Pablo on CBeebies (or RTÉ Jr in reland).

The show follows the adventures of an autistic 7 year-old named Pablo as he tries to tackle life's difficulties from an autistic perspective with the help of his animal friends in his imaginary art world. The show starts and ends with live-action footage and has a cartoon animated middle portion as Pablo enjoys drawing and it's the animal characters and art world that he draws that help him work through his problems. Each of his animal friends represents a different autistic trait as alluded to by the theme song:

Ren is a canary who represents stimming - mainly in the form of flapping as she's a bird.

Noasaurus (often shortened to Noa) is a dinosaur who represents the anxiety that often comes with autism.

Draff is a giraffe and represents the intense interests and hyper focus side of autism through his knowledge about lots of things and his catchphrase "In point of fact."

Tang is an orangutan who represents difficulty reading cues and social awkwardness. He's also quite clumsy which is common in autistics.

Mouse is a mouse (as the name implies) who represents hypersensitivity to sensory input.

Llama (again, as the name implies) is a llama who represents echolalia. She doesn't have any of her own lines but repeats bits of what the other characters say.

Pablo has an all-autistic cast, which is a first in TV history. The aim of the show is to humanise autism to its target audience (children from 0 to 6 years) and shows Pablo dealing with his problems in a way that children can understand so as to increase understanding and acceptance. For example, the episode "The Fiona" shows Pablo meeting his mum's friend Fiona and trying to process and piece together all the parts of her appearance to work out who she is. His hyper focus makes him see her curly ginger hair, her bright green top and its big red buttons etc. My favourite part of this episode is while everyone tries to work out "What's a Fiona?" Llama is seen bouncing around repeating "Fiona, Fiona, Fiona, Fiona..." The point that the show gets across is that Pablo tackles all of his problems himself and works out a solution in the end, showing that autistics are not only autonomous but also capable of making decisions and problem solving for ourselves. This is driven home even more by the fact that although Pablo is completely verbal in his art world, in the real world he is rarely verbal. In fact, in the whole of series 1 I think he's only been given 2 lines in the real world segments but I could be wrong about that.

All in all I think Pablo as a TV show is a fantastic concept that's much needed in today's world, and the execution of is brilliant from all involved. I would highly recommend checking it out, even if you don't have kids! If you're interested in autism at all it can give a good insight into an autistic child's mind. Series 2 started this past Monday, and it's also on Netflix so there's plenty of opportunity to have a look at it.

So that's my post about Pablo. Not the longest post I've written but it would have just been added onto the Autistic Parenting post had I thought of it at the time. As always, don't forget to click the "Follow" button in the side bar and the "Subscribe" button at the top, as well as following me on Twitter @DepictDave.