"[APE] makes me feel heavy. It’s a good feeling."

November 2, 2022 2:26 PM

Physical education is a part of public education in the US. APE (Adapted PE) is mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Here are some tips for being inclusive of students with autism in physical education and some more scientifically-backed suggestions (pdf).

There is also some science on best practices that is, unfortunately, often paywalled. When children with autism are asked to describe their experiences with APE, many were pleased with their teachers, didn't enjoy being hot and sweating, and were surprised and glad to be asked for their opinions.

There are some apps such as PuzzleWalk (apple/google) which can allow students with ASD to be self-directed learners in their communities (science). If you are a parent of a child with autism here are some things to check to make sure that APE is part of your child's IEP (individualized education program) and what questions you should be asking.

The Adapted Physical Activity YouTube channel has a playlist full of video suggestions for other activities.

posted by jessamyn (11 comments total)

I think I found that paywalled one. It wasn't on scihub, but it was on google scholar. Preparing Adapted Physical
Educators to Teach Students With Autism: Current Practices and Future Directions (pdf)
posted by aniola at 2:32 PM on November 2, 2022

A local climbing gym, Rock Spot, has an employee named Matt who has developed a whole adaptive climbing program. Article here.

He's fantastic. He runs overnights by Scout troops and other youth events, and is amazingly patient and welcoming.

I would love for his program to be available to every person.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:20 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

I was crap at PE because of bullies. In fifth grade I got my one and only semester A in PE, when we ran the mile. I was in the middle of the greatest and most sustained hell-period, abuse at home and at school, but I was also discovering my facility for music. The mile was broken down into four quarter miles and I developed a tune that regulated my running to pace in the quarter miles. Awkward, gangling, I did it bit by bit, and in the last practices I held back a bit and then broke ahead of the pack on official mile day. I came in fourth as the pack leaders hadn’t taken the awkward (now I know undiagnosed autism) person into account. I toppled over in the grass. The two things that make me fight for socialism are the planet’s survival and the fact that a society where we have enough might have time to teach us how to minimise trauma and support neurodivergent youth. May the next generations get a better chance. Thank you for the article.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 4:26 PM on November 2, 2022 [23 favorites]

A moment, please, to pause for everyone, sometimes only diagnosed much later in life, for whom gym class was social hell and physical torture.

There's a branch of the multiverse somewhere out there where I got to experience this as a kid, and I know that version of me has a healthier relationship with their body than I do.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 4:27 PM on November 2, 2022 [22 favorites]

For us, and a lot of other families we know with children or adults who identify as autistic, "NinjaSport" -- what you see on American Ninja Warrior on TV -- has been an incredibly welcoming and joyful community. A lot of them have programs specifically geared towards kids with diagnoses like autism and ADHD. Totally look to see if you have a local ninja gym and call or e-mail to find out if they'll work with you!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:00 PM on November 2, 2022 [9 favorites]

Another late-diagnosed Autie who has a messed-up relationship with exercise due to 12 years of PE trauma. May tomorrow’s kids not have to live through that.
posted by matildaben at 7:58 PM on November 2, 2022 [6 favorites]

I am glad that kids are now getting this opportunity. Thanks, jessamyn.
posted by NotLost at 6:39 AM on November 3, 2022

This is a double oof for me too; even if this kind of thing had existed when I was a kid, I doubt I'd have been identified as needing it. It was way more convenient for both my family system and my school system to place the blame on me for being fat, lazy, clumsy and uncoordinated.

I'd have liked to see the tips cover links between autism/ADHD-type neurodivergence and common comorbidities like dyspraxia and hypermobility which introduce specific movement-related challenges, as well as the overall social and sensory challenges of trying to participate in group movement activities. Anecdotally, I know two other AFAB autistic people besides myself who also have significant joint hypermobility, and I meet pretty much all the diagnostic criteria for dyspraxia except that my sense of direction is unusually good rather than unusually bad. Again, it was far easier for everyone in my life when I was a kid to label me clumsy, lazy, useless than to investigate whether there might have been a not-my-fault explanation.

My proprioception is terrible as an adult and was even worse as a child. Of course I came across as clumsy, because I can't figure out where my body is in space and I blunder into things all the time. Knowing there's a name and a reason for it makes the hot pit of shame inside burn a lot less fiercely than thinking it's my own fault, that I'm bad and wrong in some specific, idiopathic way.

I also really struggle with what I call 'body literacy' for lack of a better term - I can't watch someone else move their body in a certain way and then easily & intuitively figure out how to make my own body move the same way, which made activitires like aerobics and dance hellishly difficult growing up.

Like other commenters, I got there in the end. Just not without a long period of disordered eating, chronic pain that might not have ever got that bad if I'd found strategies for moving that worked for me when I was a lot younger, and a ton of self-hatred. I joined a gym recently and I'm super excited to become even more of a transmasculine beefcake than I already am. I just wish any of the adults in my life had managed to communicate "you're different because of reasons and that's okay", rather than "you are a unique and frustrating freak of nature and we don't know what's wrong with you or why, just that it's bad". Maybe it wouldn't have taken me 25+ years to figure out the transmasculine part, or 30+ years to realise I actually do have both the desire and the potential to be a beefcake, and the ability to learn the skills to get my body there.
posted by terretu at 6:57 AM on November 3, 2022 [9 favorites]

I also really struggle with what I call 'body literacy' for lack of a better term - I can't watch someone else move their body in a certain way and then easily & intuitively figure out how to make my own body move the same way, which made activitires like aerobics and dance hellishly difficult growing up.

Same! I was wondering if anyone else was like that. My proprioception is actually fine, as far as I can tell - I have a good sense of where the various parts of my body are relative to other nearby things - but I don't know what shape I'm holding myself in, or what I would need to do in order to change that shape to a specified other shape. I never did manage to get through to any of my PE or Games teachers that it wasn't that I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing, it was that I didn't know how to get my body to do that. Watching someone else perform an action or a movement doesn't mean I can copy it.

I'm not hypermobile - opposite end of the spectrum, incredibly stiff and inflexible - but there's a good chance I'm autistic, which wasn't on anyone's radar for girls like me in the 1980s.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:40 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

"Body literacy" sounds like the "photographic reflexes" that the Marvel villain Taskmaster has (there's a version of that character in the Black Widow movie)--it's so far beyond what I can do that it may as well be a superpower. I like the Apple Fitness+ service and use it almost every day, but I can't do a thing with the Dance workouts; they do this thing with their arms and this other thing with their legs and then they do some completely different stuff and I can't even. Guilty feet, as they say, ain't got no rhythm. I think that one of the reasons why the only sport that I ever got into was cycling, and that because it's amenable to a lot of solo practice. It took me a while to get the knack of balancing on it--no training wheels--and I still remember my first successful run, my Kitty Hawk if you will; about ten yards, smack into the trunk of the only tree in our front yard. Still kind of shit at all other sports, but I really don't care. Love group rides, but also love riding solo. PuzzleWalk looks interesting.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:02 PM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

> I also really struggle with what I call 'body literacy' for lack of a better term - I can't watch someone else move their body in a certain way and then easily & intuitively figure out how to make my own body move the same way

I've heard this called dyspraxia by an expert, although 30 seconds on the Web shows me people using that term slightly differently.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:53 PM on November 3, 2022