Autism in Children with Johanna Pressley | SFT: Episode 9

Justin Daugherty: You're listening to Scripture for Today, a podcast of Hope Counseling and Discipleship center. I'm your host Justin Daugherty, and today I'll be interviewing Johanna Pressley on her new book Biblical Counseling and Autism in Children. Joanna earned her MA in Biblical Counseling from The Masters University in 2012 and has served as a staff counselor at Low Country Biblical Counseling Center since 2015. An ACBC certified counselor, she also teaches Bible and music to children with autism at Harvest Community School.

She and her husband are raising three children to walk in the fear and instruction of the Lord while faithfully serving their local church. Thanks for joining us on the podcast, Johanna!

Johanna Pressley: Thank you so much, Justin.

Justin Daugherty: Yeah, it's great to have you on. Before we dive into the book, which I'm so excited about, could you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and why you felt compelled to write this book?

Johanna Pressley: Of course! My husband and I are both musicians, so you might see some creativity coming out here. He's a composer and I'm a violin and violist. So we teach at a local Christian university in Charleston. About 10 years ago, we were forced to grapple with the implications of autism for our own children. And when we went into that, I began searching books and looking for counselors to find somebody to help me to figure out how can we raise our children biblically who have autistic traits. And I couldn't find anything. And it was very difficult. I felt alone and I struggled and even the resources I was able to find, which I was reading things that I thought were medical resources and I was finding that the tools and techniques I was reading about were making our life more difficult and not helping. So I went directly to scripture to find out what scripture had to say and how our family would be affected if I was applying scripture to these problems instead of the different opinions and things I was finding in the books I was reading.

Justin Daugherty: Yeah. So this is a book that's a part of a larger series called the Critical Issues in Biblical Counseling Series. I'm so excited that this is a part of that series. What is, what's the goal of that series?

Johanna Pressley: Absolutely, I'm so excited to be honored to be a part of this series. The goal of the series is to display the beauty and the sufficiency of scripture. And each of the books is taking one section of new emerging issues that are coming up, new things we need to face in biblical counseling. And we are displaying that scripture when accurately interpreted and creatively applied has answers for people's deepest struggles, even issues as serious as autism. So my book is focusing on this area of creatively applied. What does that mean to bring creative application of scripture and still stay within the truth of scripture? This is a difficult area. We can't get too creative and just make it not say what it is rightly saying, rightly interpreted.

So the book is primarily giving practical tools for counseling and parenting and teaching children with autism. But at the same time, it's giving an example of how could you face any unique situation in counseling and use this as an example of how you can creatively apply scripture.

Justin Daugherty: And that's one thing that I noticed when I was reading this book just right out of the gate, how, creative you were with scripture is staying faithful to scripture. that, that just kind of jumped off the page at me. So let's talk about some of the, content of the book. You offer a paradigm in this book that's really helpful for a parent to begin to understand the reasons behind a child's behavior, you know, why they might be behaving the way that they are, and you base it on 1 Thessalonians 5:14. And I'm just going to read that text so the listeners can know what it says. 1 Thessalonians 5:14 says "And we urge you brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all." Could you unpack how you use 1 Thessalonians 5:14 when helping children diagnosed with autism?

Johanna Pressley: Absolutely. This is such an important verse because it instructs parents to look at what we sometimes call behavior problems in different ways and to respond in different ways depending on, is this a physical weakness? Is this maybe a lack of knowledge or maybe the child knows what they should do but they have not been trained to be able to do it in the moment? Or is this willful sin? So each of these requires a different response. If our child has a physical weakness, we need to help our child or encourage our child. If the child's behavior is coming from lack of knowledge, maybe we haven't taught them how they are to respond in a particular way. Or maybe we need to do more training. Or when it is willful sin, we want to give consequences to our children. So at first, when you're learning to be a biblical counselor and you look at this verse, I know I did, I thought, okay, well, I'm either going to give consequences or I'm gonna give help. But one of the things I learned as a parent and as a counselor is that all of our bad behavior incorporates a little bit of each one of these four things.

And so as a parent and a counselor, you have to look at the behavior and the situation the behavior is in, in order to be able to find out how much of this behavior is arising from physical weakness versus willful sin and the other aspects as well. So an example would be if you're working with an autistic child who has never learned how to go into a grocery store on a long shopping trip and the child is loud and moving around and breaks things, most likely this is 75% physical weakness problem. In some situations as a parent, our child's behavior is primarily a physical weakness problem, but it still has sin behind it and it still has areas where we need to teach our child more or train our child, spend more time training our child. In those situations where a behavior problem is maybe 75 % a physical weakness, the parent can know that the right response is to encourage their child and help their child.

But there are other situations where a child's behavior might be 75 % willful sin. And in those situations, the parent is gonna want to give a consequence, even if the child has some physical weakness as well. So it is important to be able to look at these different categories, physical weakness, lack of knowledge, lack of training, willful sin. This helps us think about our children in a more wide way. It's not one of these things, it's a mix of these and we want to try to have as much wisdom as we can to know how to respond biblically.

Justin Daugherty: I think that is so helpful and it's so encouraging because sometimes you can get into the rut of just treating every single child the same exact way, you know, and interpreting their problems all the same exact way, not realizing and not taking into context what like this verse does, what the child might be struggling with, what the child might be needing. And we can only interpret that properly whenever we actually have a biblical lens, understanding that children are unique. They all have their own unique heart themes and that manifests itself in different ways for different children.

I know that the issue of interpreting a child's behavior whose diagnosed with autism is a common issue that could be difficult to navigate, and how we interpret the behavior then dictates the counsel that we give, which is what you just showed us. On pages 52 through 58 in your book, you argue that the world interprets the child's behavior as either bad or sick, meaning that they're just being disobedient or they just have a diagnosis, so they can't help it. But neither of those paradigms give hope for lasting change like the scripture does. You argue that parents should interpret a child's situation through the lens of a beloved. Could you talk more about why you think that's important?

Johanna Pressley: When I am watching how people interact with autistic children, it tends to either swing to one side or the other. People tend to think of children that display autistic traits as they only have a disability. They are never able to do something. If they have a diagnosis,

That means they're completely broken. It would be not merciful to ask them to grow and change in any way. And this is thought of as being kind, but it ends up not being kind. And then we have the opposite, the opposite problem where people give no grace and they think this child is just bad. They're willfully sinning. And that also is, is not helpful.

So I have a grid in my book that shows how to interpret through biblical terminology and the nature of the relationship. So when a person is thinking a child with autism is just bad, they are believing the child is purposefully disobedient. He is disobedient. That's the terminology they're using to think about who that child is. They're believing that their relationship to the child is that the child does not love and respect the parent, for example. So when they observe a behavior, for example, demeaning sounding speech, if they believe the child is being purposefully disobedient and doesn't love and respect the parents, they're going to interpret that observation as the child being determined to do wrong and this is going to be expressed in a responsive action of anger, closing off to the child, punishing the child, and that's it. You are bad. No grace, no training, just bad.

When we're talking about just broken, this is when people believe the child's identity terminology is he is disabled and incapable. And they're believing their relationship to the child is he would be loving, but he's unable. He's just unable. And in these situations, possibly with children who display violent behaviors, people will observe a behavior, interpret it through this terminology and relationship description, and they'll believe that this child is dangerous, maybe dangerous to the other children, and he must be isolated. Since he can't be expected to learn, we just have to remove him from other people or medicate him in a way that he doesn't move.

So these are both not biblical responses. When we look at Scripture and we think about 1 Thessalonians 5:14 and all these different intricacies in humans, we are able to use biblical terminology to think of who this child is. So biblically the identity of the child, especially if we're talking about the believing child, he is a sinner just like I am. Christ is in the process of changing us and building us up together into a holy temple. That is who this child is. And we are realizing our relationship to the child is that the child loves us and desires friendship with his siblings. When we take even the same behaviors and interpret it through this grid of biblical terminology, then we're able to interpret his behavior as potentially 75 % physical weakness, 5% lack of knowledge, 15 % lack of training, and 5% willful sin. And we can see how to respond to this. We do need to give him help and grace. We also need to be teaching him how to grow in relationship skills. We need to practice the relationship skills together, and we might need to give a light consequence to motivate.

So as we think about these passages and the nuance of being human, that we are people who have physical limitations. And especially when we're talking about physiological illnesses, of course, as biblical counselors, we're always going to encourage people to go to their family physicians, go seek medical care for their physiological illnesses. So when we see something that is an illness, maybe the child has epilepsy. We're going to need to encourage them to go and receive medical help for those illnesses.

Justin Daugherty: Again, just showing how the Scripture can really help us interpret why a child is behaving the way that they're behaving. Whenever you do this, the Scripture really comes to life. It shows like, wait, there actually is resources and solutions that are in the Scripture that will, if we actually communicate these solutions to the child, it actually can bring hope into their own life, right? They're no longer seen as just bad or just broken. And they'll be able to recognize that hope that comes from the Scripture.

The QR code in the book provides additional resources that allow the reader to see videos of you working with nonverbal communication and visual tools described in the book. Can you describe how you use visual tools to help children with autism understand the truths of scripture?

Johanna Pressley: The statistic now is 1 in every 31 children in the US has an autism diagnosis, and many autistic people describe that they think in pictures. So when I am considering 1 Peter 3:15 that we should be always ready to give an answer for the hope that we have, I'm also thinking I want to be able to give this answer in an understandable way to this 1 in every 31 children.

So I began to build visual tools for "how can I share the gospel?" How can I train using visual tools and drills? And for example, I might bring a ladder into the classroom or into the counseling room and talk about how we can't climb up to God by our good works. But, and I would say on this ladder, what rung are you, zero to 10? Are you perfect? Okay, well, if you're a three, then Jesus has to pay the penalty for your sin, and he has to credit you His righteousness. And we'll talk about the different ladders and how you're a 10, because you're at the top of the ladder because you have Jesus's credit. And so we're gonna actually use the ladder. We're gonna have to understand what credit is. We might get a store gift card and talk about, "put this money on it and now it's yours." That's credit. That's what we have to have from Jesus in order to have righteousness. So these drills, these practices are ways of helping these children understand these concepts that can be difficult. I aim to be very practical because families need practical tools and I love that they're able to watch these things because having a book that describes nonverbal communication can be difficult. So you want to see it.

Justin Daugherty: I think that's a clear distinctive of this book that sets it apart among other books. I'm sure there's many different tools out there that give you nonverbal communication skills and visual tools, but a very few are are rooted in the Gospel and try to bring the Gospel to bear on children and just have it come to life. So if you're a listener and you have the book, make sure you scan that QR code to see some of those videos.

Last question to end us off. There might be some family members who are listening to this, or teachers who work with children diagnosed with autism, and they may be discouraged right now. Maybe they're not seeing change, or they're not seeing the fruit of their labor. Could you end on a story of hope for our listeners?

Johanna Pressley: In the book I give the story of Luke who is a student who came to our school, and when he first came he would just lay on the floor and eat his hair and he wasn't able to interact at all, and now five years later he is participating in class and speaking and involved. I'll let you read that story in the book.

I want to give you two more. One is a boy in my church, and when I've known him for eight years when he was little he was wild. And then when he got a little older, he was very angry and just struggled a great deal. And a year ago, the Lord brought him salvation. And it has been incredible to see in our church. He's now our most reliable volunteer in the church, and the people we've known him for his whole life. It is shocking how the Lord has changed his life and made him alive through God's word through His Spirit. And this was through biblical counseling. The Lord used biblical counseling tools to help him understand the gospel. And this year he'll be starting college, and he is studying to work in medicine with children.

That is one type of story. But another type of story that brings hope that's very exciting for me is the story of Jamie. And Jamie is a nonverbal five-year-old who struggled a great deal, more of a level three autism type of situation for her. And as I worked with her, she had so many difficulties. The only very dramatic behavioral change that I was able to see is that she began to keep her shoes on and follow her mom's directions. One of the things that is so exciting to me about this type of story is that this family came in, and there was so much stress in their marriage that they were experiencing. And they, as a family, were able to find hope in Christ for their future and a sense that life is under control, and how to draw up strength from the Lord for their daily difficulties and to feel a sense of God's approval, the Father's approval for them as they were serving him. And no one ever saw the hard work they did every day. Also, they were able to connect into a church community where they were supported.

So even in this kind of situation, talking about hope, it's not always like these first kinds of situations where everything was developmentally hard and now it's all perfect. Sometimes the developmental changes are slow or they're small. But we see huge changes that the Lord is bringing. We see the Scripture is sufficient for all of our needs. So I want to share a quote from this particular family who had the nonverbal child.

"Before we came to the biblical counseling center, we went to every possible kind of therapy, six days a week for three years, trying to teach our nonverbal autistic daughter. We could not find the help we looked for. None of them taught biblically. The counseling we received from Johanna has been totally different. She helped us to see that even though our daughter is autistic, she is also able to serve God in her own ways. Johanna gives us a lot of practical advice. Little by little, step by step, she helps our family approach our challenges and understand how God would have us live. Everyone has limitations and imperfections. Only God is perfect, and we must get our strength from him. Through Johanna's teaching, God has helped us to view our autistic daughter as a gift from God. Now we see more clearly that serving her is a blessing to our family.

And when we talk about hope, we as biblical counselors feel that the greatest problem anyone can face, including people with autism, is that their sin separates them from God. And so our greatest solution is salvation. And we have an incredible hope in this life and the next when we have a relationship with the Lord. He loves us first, and out of joy over that, we are able to grow and change to whatever degree we are able to. And this is such a dramatic contrast to what we see in secular, more behavioral types of methods that basically communicate you have to grow and change if you're going to. be treated as if you have worth and if you're going to be welcome into our community. And we as Christians have such a wonderful opportunity to display the gospel in how we work with families affected by autism.

Justin Daugherty: Amen. Johanna, I'm so excited for this book to be released on September 19th, "Biblical Counseling and Autism in Children." Johanna, thank you for joining me on the podcast. It was a pleasure to have you on.

Johanna Pressley: I'm so glad, thank you.