It’s October, and you just never know what Halloween month will bring…just as CHAT staff never know what each day will bring.
One of our SLPs, Charlotte, started working at a therapeutic day school where one 19-year-old Autistic student refused to work with her. As soon as he met her, it was clear that he wanted nothing to do with her.
Puzzled, Charlotte did some investigative work. It turns out, the student didn’t like her because of her name, which reminded him of Charlotte’s Web. The student avoided Charlotte because he associated her with a dead spider from a sad children’s book!
Undeterred, Charlotte approached the student to prove that she was nothing like the spider. She is a human with two legs, not eight, and was not named after the book but after a famous author—Charlotte Brontë.
After some back and forth, the student finally accepted Charlotte and they are now able to joke about Charlotte being a spider. This was not only an exercise in relationship building, but an opportunity for the student to work through communicating in a strange social situation!
We applaud Charlotte’s tenacity in winning over this student. After all, progress can’t happen unless the student is willing to interact with their therapist.
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