I soon realized that the inability to process partiality was at the root of the autistic child's fascination with spinning. Spinning, if you think about it, does something that few other activities could do... it could create a visual impression that allowed the parts to become "the whole". As the toy car was spun, the wheel studs disappeared and became part of the whole. Since the "small middle wheel with the raised surface" did not spin fast enough to produce this illusion of the part becoming the whole, Zachary refused to spin it and in fact, did all he could to prevent even me from trying to do so. That particular "small middle wheel" was still very much a source of frustration for him.
This was a critical key to the autistic child's love of spinning... spinning made the parts become part of the whole... made the parts no longer easily distinguishable from the whole. It was important to note that "a part" could be as small as a "spec" on an object - it needed only be "something" the child did not perceive as belonging there... as a "natural part" to the whole. The inability to understand the whole without first understanding the parts, was completely in line with what was observed in spinning. Until the child understood "the parts" - in anything in life - and how they "made up the whole", “parts” would continue to be a source of frustration for the autistic child and would continue to make him seek coping mechanisms, such as spinning, to help him deal with the frustration that resulted from those things, those "parts" in his world he could not make sense of.
The key to extinguishing these "odd behaviors" was in helping the autistic child understand how the parts made up the whole and in defining the “purpose” behind everything... and the best way to do that was through the use of labels, explanations, the concept of fractions, words of quantity, words to cope, etc. I found the best way to deal with all these issues mentioned above was simply to make use of labels. Labeling and explaining everything provided a "whole entity" for the partial... making each part a whole in and of itself. Labeling and other coping mechanisms were further addressed in other sections.
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