Over the Fence

G’day. I’m Col.

Quick reminder of what I am. I’m not real. I’m a computer-generated character. I’m not a counsellor or a psychologist either. What I’ve got is a story, and a few things the people who study this stuff worked out.

Back in the seventies, a professor in America called David Rosenhan wrote up an experiment. Eight people with nothing wrong with them went to psychiatric hospitals and said they heard a voice. One word. Thud. They all got admitted. Once they were inside, they stopped pretending and acted normal. Didn’t matter. The staff kept seeing a patient. One of them sat taking notes, and somebody wrote down “engages in writing behaviour”. Writing. As a symptom.

Now, here’s the part most people leave out.

(pause)

Years later, a journalist called Susannah Cahalan went through the professor’s own papers, and a lot of it didn’t add up. His hospital records said he’d told them a lot more than one word. One volunteer who had a good time in hospital got left out of the write-up. And most of the others, she could never find.

So I’m not going to tell you that study proves anything. It might be half a yarn.

But the worry in it is real, and there’s better evidence for it.

In the sheds, we had a young bloke come on, first season. Somebody said on day one he was slow. Just a word, over smoko. For the rest of that season, every time he stopped to fix a comb, the boss saw slow. Every time he rolled a fleece a bit careful, slow. Took a new boss the next year to notice he was the tidiest shearer on the board. The kid hadn’t changed. The word had.

People who study this call it stigma: a label, plus lowered expectations, plus people with power acting on it. There’s another one called diagnostic overshadowing. That’s when a kid already has a label, say autism or ADHD, and something new goes wrong. Tummy aches. Not sleeping. Scared of school. And everyone says, that’s just the autism. And nobody checks.

Now, I’m not telling you to steer clear of a diagnosis. For plenty of families it’s the best thing that ever happened. It explains years of battling. It stops everyone blaming the kid, or blaming you. And it opens doors to help that stay shut without it. Lots of autistic grown-ups will tell you it was where they finally made sense to themselves.

The trouble is, a lot of those doors only open if you describe your kid at their worst. Over and over, to people who decide whether you get help. Do that enough and it’s hard not to start seeing the worst yourself.

So here’s the idea. A label’s a key, not a pair of glasses.

(pause)

Use it to open the door. Then put it back in your pocket. Don’t look at your kid through it.

Three things this week.

When something new goes wrong, ask: would I check this out if there was no label? Then check it.

When you fill in a form, write down the worst week if you have to. Then write down one thing they’re good at, just for you.

And when somebody says “kids like him”, ask them what they mean.

The ideas are Bruce Link and Jo Phelan on stigma, and Steven Reiss on overshadowing. Look them up. The story’s mine, and I’m made up.

That’s me.

G’day. Col again.

Same as last time. I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a counsellor. I just tell the good ideas the way I’d tell them over the fence.

Last time I said a label’s a key, not a pair of glasses. This time I want to talk about the paddock.

We had a dog on the place called Bluey. Best worker I ever had. Except in the top paddock. Every time we sent him up there he’d baulk at the gate, sit down, and look at you like you’d asked him to swim the Fitzroy. My brother-in-law said he was stubborn. Said he needed a boot up the backside.

Took us a whole season to work it out. That top gate swung in the wind. It had cracked him on the hip when he was a pup. He wasn’t being stubborn. He was scared of the gate.

We fixed the latch. He never baulked again.

(pause)

Back in 1936, a psychologist called Kurt Lewin wrote down a little sum. Behaviour is a function of the person and the environment. The person and the place. Both.

Most of us only look at the person. The dog’s stubborn. The kid’s lazy. The kid’s defiant. We hardly ever look at the gate.

Now here’s the second idea, and it’s from an American psychologist called Ross Greene. He says kids do well if they can.

Not kids do well if they want to. If they can.

Sounds like a small difference. It’s not. If you think kids do well when they want to, then a kid who’s not doing well must not want to. So you push harder. Rewards, punishments, more rules. And if the kid can’t, all that pushing just makes it worse.

Greene reckons when a kid isn’t doing well, something’s in the way. Either a skill that hasn’t caught up yet, like handling frustration or switching from one thing to another, or a problem nobody’s solved. Getting out the door by eight. Homework after a long day. The bus.

So the question changes. Not “why won’t he?” but “what’s getting in the way?”

And you don’t ask it in the middle of the blow-up. Nobody thinks straight with the gate banging. You ask when things are calm. You say what you’ve noticed. You ask what’s up, and you actually listen, which is the hard bit. Then you say what your worry is. Then the two of you work out something that works for both of you.

Does it work? There was a trial in America with a hundred and thirty-four kids diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder. Which is a label, and you know what I think of those. Half got Greene’s approach and half got the standard parent training, and about half the kids in each group came out the other end no longer fitting the diagnosis. Greene’s way did about as well as the standard one. That’s one trial, not the last word. But it’s not nothing.

So three things this week.

Pick one thing that keeps blowing up. Just one.

When it’s calm, ask what’s getting in the way. Then shut up and listen.

And before you ask the kid to change, see if there’s a gate you can fix first. The time. The noise. The order you do things in.

The ideas are Kurt Lewin’s and Ross Greene’s. Look them up. Bluey’s mine, and so am I. Made up, I mean.

That’s me.

G’day. Col again.

Same as always. I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a counsellor. Just a bloke telling the good ideas over the fence.

First talk, I said a label’s a key, not a pair of glasses. Last time, I said look at the gate before you blame the dog. This time it’s what comes after you’ve fixed the gate. How does a kid start believing they can?

When I taught at TAFE, I had a young fella called Reece. Nice kid. Every teacher he’d ever had told him he was doing great. Good job, Reece. Well done, Reece. And Reece didn’t believe a word of it. Why would he? He’d heard it for doing nothing.

So I stopped telling him. I gave him one ewe, an old quiet one, and a whole morning. No hurry. I stood back and kept my hands in my pockets, which nearly killed me.

(pause)

It wasn’t pretty. Took him the best part of an hour. But when he stood up, that fleece came off in one piece, and he’d done every blow of it himself. He didn’t need me to say a word. He knew.

Back in 1977, a psychologist called Albert Bandura wrote about this. He called it self-efficacy. It means believing you can do a particular thing. He said there are a few ways a person gets that belief, and the strongest by a long way is doing it yourself. Being told you can is about the weakest.

Then there’s praise. In 1998, two researchers, Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck, gave a room of ten- and eleven-year-olds some puzzles. Some kids got told they must be smart. Others got told they must have worked hard. Then the kids got to pick their next puzzle. Most of the smart kids picked an easy one. Nearly all the hard workers picked a hard one.

Tell a kid they’re smart and they’ll protect it. Tell them they worked hard and they’ll have another go.

Now, fair warning. A whole industry got built on that idea. Posters, programs, the lot. And when researchers added up the school programs, the difference to kids’ marks was small. So don’t buy the poster.

You don’t need a program. You need three things.

Make the step small enough that they can win it. One ewe. One page. One phone call.

Then get out of the way. Hands in your pockets. If you take over, it’s your win, not theirs.

And when they do it, say what they did, not what they are. Not “you’re so clever.” Try “you stuck with that after it went wrong twice.”

That’s this week. One small step, your hands in your pockets, and what they did, out loud.

The ideas are Albert Bandura’s, and Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck’s. Look them up. Reece is mine, and so am I. Made up, the both of us.

That’s me.

G’day. Col again.

You know the drill. I’m not real, I’m a computer-generated character, and I’m not a counsellor.

So far: a label’s a key, not a pair of glasses. Look at the gate before you blame the dog. Keep your hands in your pockets. This one’s about where the talking happens.

My grandkid went quiet for a whole term. Every afternoon at the kitchen table I’d ask, how was school? Fine. How was school? Fine. Fine, fine, fine.

Then one Saturday we had to re-strain the wire along the back fence. Two of us on the strainer, both looking at the wire, not at each other. Halfway along the second strand, out it came. The kids at school. The whole term of it.

(pause)

I didn’t ask a single question. I just kept winding.

The Men’s Shed people have a saying for this. Blokes don’t talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder. It isn’t only blokes, and it isn’t everyone. But I reckon most of us know a kid it fits.

Why might it work? Face to face is a lot of pressure. Eyes on you, a question waiting. Beside you, there’s a job to look at, and you can stop talking without it being a thing. Plenty of autistic people say looking someone in the eye is hard work all on its own.

Now, the honest bit. When two researchers, Nathan Wilson and Reinie Cordier, went through what had been written about Men’s Sheds, they found the results promising, but the studies were small. Mostly surveys and interviews. So I can’t tell you it’s proven. I can tell you a lot of people have found the same thing.

There’s a bit more to go on for moving. A team led by a researcher called Recchia pulled together twenty-one trials with kids and teenagers, and getting them moving brought their low mood down, compared with not. Only a few of those trials checked back later, so nobody knows yet how long it lasts. But moving is good for the mood, and it gives your hands something to do while the words find their way.

So three things this week.

Find a job you can do side by side. Driving. The dishes. Walking the dog. Fixing something.

Don’t make it a meeting. Nobody opens up to “we need to talk.”

And when it comes, keep winding. Listen. Don’t jump on it with fixes or a pile of questions. That can wait.

The saying’s the Men’s Sheds’. The research is Wilson and Cordier’s, and Recchia’s team. Look them up. The grandkid and the fence are mine. So am I. Made up.

That’s me.

Col again. Not real, computer-generated, and not a lawyer or a planner. No jokes today.

When Thriving Kids was announced, a disability organisation asked families how they felt. Fifteen hundred people answered. Three in four said worried. Half said scared. Four in a hundred said positive.

Some people called that an overreaction. I don’t think it was.

For a lot of autistic people, knowing what comes next isn’t a preference. It’s how you stay steady in a world that throws a lot at you. Routine does a job. And plenty of the parents listening to this are autistic too.

So when the rules around your child’s support change, and nobody can tell you how yet, it lands hardest on the families who most need to know. The researchers who study this say the hardest uncertainty is the kind you can’t plan for. What helps isn’t cheering up. It’s turning the thing you can’t plan for into something you can.

So here it is. What we know, what we don’t, and what you can do.

(pause)

What we know. If your child is on the NDIS now, their eligibility doesn’t change before January 2028. You can still apply for the NDIS for a child under nine today. Children with high support needs stay on the NDIS.

What we don’t know. Queensland hasn’t signed the Thriving Kids agreement. It’s the only state that hasn’t. The Queensland Government says it wants the details first, and calls it a bad deal. The federal ministers say Queensland agreed in January and should follow through. Both of those are on the record. What it means is that the therapy part, speech, OT and psychology, which states are meant to start from January, has no Queensland date yet.

What you can do, this week.

One. If your child is on the NDIS, keep using the plan. Nothing has been switched off.

Two. Ring the Thriving Kids autism helpline. 1300 654 789. It’s national, it’s free, Queensland families can use it, and you don’t need a diagnosis.

Three. From the first of November, your GP can do a health check for three-year-olds.

Four. Ask your GP about a paediatrician. With their plan, Medicare helps pay for therapy sessions for autistic young people under twenty-five.

Five. At school, ask for adjustments. A Queensland state school doesn’t need a diagnosis to make them.

Six. Write it down. What you know, what you don’t, and when you’ll ask again. Put it on the fridge. Kids aren’t the only ones who do better when the unknown has a shape.

(pause)

If a decision goes against you, there’s free help to appeal, and Queensland advocates who’ll sit beside you. The numbers are on the page.

You’re not overreacting. You’re asking for a plan. That’s reasonable.

The sources are on the page. I’m made up. That’s me.