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.

An Autistic Love Of Animals

I mentioned in a previous post that I've always loved animals, and that my dream job growing up was always to be an RSPCA inspector. This love of animals is something that I've seen a lot of autistics have in common when I've been scrolling Twitter. That observation, combined with the fact that we adopted a pair of pet rats (called Sprout and Parsnip - I'll put a picture or 2 down at the bottom for you) last week from the RSPCA, got me thinking... While we Brits are famously a nation of animal lovers, why is it that being autistic appears to present a near guarantee that we love animals?

I did a poll a few days ago on Twitter using the #AskingAutistics hashtag asking how autistic people feel about animals in comparison to humans. 32% of participants said that they like both humans and animals, with the other 68% indicating that they much prefer animals over people. That's near enough 2 in 3 people that don't like humans. Interestingly, nobody said they don't like animals. In my own personal experience I find that animals are non-judgmental, and as someone who was horrendously bullied at school and college the company of animals was a distraction and a huge escape for me. Animals don't judge you on whether you're overweight or autistic or anything like that. They'll only judge you on either how you are with them, or how they've been treated by humans in the past.

I grew up with loads of different animals as pets - dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, birds, crabs, lizards - you name it, I probably had it. The companionship side of things also played a huge factor, especially with my 2 dogs Henry and Mitzi that I had from when I was a toddler to me being about 16. With my difficulty in making friends I'm really glad that I grew up with at least 2 furry faces that were happy to see me every time I came home from school regardless of whether I was happy or sad.

One of the common difficulties seen in autism is in communication, especially when it comes to body language, reading between the lines, sarcasm and so on. With animals all these things are either easier to read or not applicable. If a dog comes bounding up to you wagging its tail it's quite clearly happy to see you and wants a fuss. A dog won't give you a sarcastic tail wag. Whereas if somebody talks to an autistic person we can't always tell if they mean what they're saying, what their reasons are for talking to you etc. This makes interaction with animals much simpler. Granted, we can't always tell what an animal wants or how it feels but they're a different species from us so there's going to be some form of language barrier regardless. Communicating with humans can often feel like communicating with a different species but with the difficulty ramped up.

Anxiety also plays a factor in communication, whether that's anxiety from the fact that you're speaking to somebody, from the situation, or from the environment that you find yourself in at the time. Lots of people (myself included) have social anxiety so I find that talking to people too much or for too long makes me nervous - particularly in one to one scenarios where all of the other person's attention is focused on me all of the time. Dealing with animals presents a much, much lower level of anxiety, unless of course you're phobic towards a certain type of animal. I don't always know what my cat or my rats want or how they feel, but because I don't have the anxiety with them that I would have with human interaction it's a hell of a lot easier to enjoy their company. And that goes for any other animals as well. The reduced anxiety also lets me pay more attention to what's actually going on with them and potentially notice any small details such as changes in behaviour or any physical symptoms that might need attention. It's also not uncommon for an autistic person to have a support animal to help ease their anxieties and keep them calm.

As well as those differences between dealing with people and dealing with animals I do view every life as valuable, although I find animals much more deserving of it than human beings as a whole. As a species we've got morals and ethics, and an awareness of the world around us as a bigger picture. With that awareness comes responsibility that we really need to live up to but often don't. Not only have we got a responsibility to the environment and to animals, but we've got a responsibility to each other that we neglect all too often. The way I look at it is that animals don't have that awareness or responsibility, so that gives them a degree of innocence and purity that we've not been living up to.

So there are my personal reasons for my love of animals rather than people. The comments from my Twitter poll didn't give much to go on in terms of reasons for people's preferences but there's definitely a clear love of animals within the autistic community, which in my estimation can only be a good thing. Let me know how you feel about animals, and I'll leave you with a photo of Spout and Parsnip.

[Image description: My 2 rats in their cage, sniffing through the bars to the outside. Parsnip is white with a grey head and is on the bottom. Sprout is white with a black head and is leaning on Parsnip's back with her front legs to reach the front of the cage. There is play equipment (rings, hammocks etc) in the background.]