A reading group guide
This guide is for a few parents who want to read Virtual Autism: What Happens When the Screens Go Off together. It has four meetings, one for each part of the book. Each meeting names the chapters to read and gives you five questions and one small thing to try at home before you meet again.
Nothing here is new. Every question comes from the book’s own pages, and none of them has a right answer. The phrase in the book’s title is one that parents type into a search box. “Virtual Autism” is not a medical diagnosis. Chapter 7 of the book says where the phrase came from and why the people who object to it have a point.
How to run it
Anyone can host. Nobody needs training and nobody has to be the expert. The host reads the questions aloud and watches the clock.
Where. A living room, a room at the library or a video call.
How long. Forty-five minutes. Take five to hear how the thing to try at home went, thirty for the questions and ten to read the next thing to try aloud and pick a date. You will not get to all five questions. Start with the one people most want to talk about.
How often. Every week or every two weeks. Part Two is the longest part of the book, so give it two weeks if you can.
The book. Each member reads their own copy, in any format.
Nothing to join. There is no sign-up and nobody keeps a list. A group starts when one person asks two or three others.
Before you start
Three things to agree on at the first meeting. All three are the book’s.
Nobody is the enemy. Chapter 27 says it about everyone, and it starts in the room. Chapter 15 says that whatever is playing in a house is playing for a reason, and that the reason was a good one on the day it started. The book is also for the parent of a child who has an autism diagnosis, “because nothing here is a judgment on you or on her.”
A child’s details are hers. The author leaves his daughter’s out of his own book: “Those details are hers, not mine.” What a member says about a child stays in the room, and anyone may pass on any question.
A group is not a doctor. If something about a child’s talking, play or development worries a member, the book says the person to ask is the child’s doctor, today, and chapter 19 says how. The group is for talking the book over.
Meeting one: “Look at me”
Read. A Note Before You Begin, the Introduction and Part One (chapters 1 to 3).
The Introduction opens with a child pulling a parent’s chin toward her face. It means look at me. Where do you hear “look at me” in your own days: a word, a sound, a hand?
In chapter 1 the author says he spent months “collecting reasons”: every child is different, she is tired, it is a phase. Which of those have you heard yourself say, about anything at all?
“Nobody decides to do this. It is on, and then it is still on.” How did the screens in your house arrive?
In chapter 2, kind and useful people came to the house, and in all those months no one asked how many hours a day the television was on. Has anyone ever asked you? What would it be like to be asked?
On the night he typed his question, the author read as two people, “the reader of studies” and “the father,” and he says both of them were right. Which of the two were you while you read Part One?
To try at home before the next meeting. Once a day, when your child says “look at me” in any of her ways, look. Say something back about the thing she is showing you, then wait for her answer. Come ready to tell the group about one time.
Meeting two: A screen cannot take a turn
Read. Part Two (chapters 4 to 13). If time is short, read chapters 4, 7 and 8. The author says chapter 4 is the one to read if you read only one chapter of the science.
Chapter 4 says the turn is the unit, and that words which are not part of a turn “are, to a baby, mostly weather.” Think back over yesterday. Where were the turns?
Every study in chapter 6 says “associated with,” and so does the author. Was that hard to sit with as a reader? What did you want him to say instead?
Chapter 7 gives room to the people who object to the phrase on the cover, and the author agrees with them that it is a bad one. What did you make of their objection, and of his reason for keeping the phrase where a searching parent will find it?
The Introduction says a book that promised every child would catch up would be lying, and so would a book that said nothing could be done. Chapter 8 holds both halves at once. Which half is harder for you to hold?
Chapter 11 says the word “educational” on a product for a young child is checked by no one in advance. What had that word meant to you on a box?
To try at home before the next meeting. Chapter 4’s turns can be counted. Pick ten ordinary minutes with your child, at the table or on the floor, and count each time one of you makes a sound, a look or a reach and the other answers. Change nothing. Bring the number.
Meeting three: Replace before you remove
Read. Part Three (chapters 14 to 23). If time is short, read chapters 15 and 16, and chapter 22 if a grandparent helps care for your child.
Chapter 15 assumes that you are tired, and that whatever is playing in your house is playing for a reason that was a good one on the day it started. The author’s reason was dinner. What is yours?
“Replace before you remove.” The book puts a basket of real things where a screen used to be: wooden spoons and a pot, board books, blocks. What would go in your basket? (For children under three the book leaves out anything small enough to pass through a toilet-paper tube, and it keeps the basket where an adult is in the room.)
Chapter 15 suggests giving a grandparent a job instead of a rule: “Could you be the singing one?” Who else cares for your child, and what job would suit each of them?
Chapter 16 borrows the phrase “good enough.” A tired parent on a floor saying “you’re stacking” and waiting is good enough. What would good enough look like in your house this week?
The author’s television was gone in a day. His phone took weeks, “and I am not sure it is gone now.” Chapter 17 asks only that particular minutes be protected, such as the minutes on the floor, in the bath, at the table and in the stroller. Which minutes would you choose first?
To try at home before the next meeting. Chapter 15 offers one phone-free hour at the same time every day: the hour your child comes home, or the hour before bed. The author says that if he could keep only one of his phone habits, it would be that hour. Keep it until you meet again.
Meeting four: Three families, not thirty
Read. Part Four (chapters 24 to 27) and the Epilogue.
Chapter 27 says that for many families the hardest part is not the child but everyone else: the restaurant, the waiting room, the birthday party with a movie on. Where is it hardest for you?
“Start with three families, not thirty.” The book says three families can share babysitting, plan a birthday party and swap the baskets from chapter 15. What could this group do together that is harder alone?
“Nobody is the enemy.” The author writes that the parent with the tablet in the restaurant “is doing what I did, for the reason I did it.” How do you want to talk about all this with friends who choose differently?
Part Four calls an adult’s attention the most expensive thing in early education, and says nobody is selling that kind of time. Who gave you that kind of time when you were small?
In the Epilogue a child looks at a page, then looks up to see whether her father is looking at it too. He writes, “I have ‘she looked at me.’” When did a child last check that you were looking at the same thing?
To try at home, after the last meeting. This one is the Epilogue’s own. Tonight, turn off whatever is on in the background. “Not forever, not as a program. Tonight.” Then sit on the floor with your child and one thing, a book or a block, and look at it together. See where her eyes go.
More questions, and the book
If your group wants more questions, there are ten on the Book club page, and the book has a Reader’s Guide of its own after the Glossary.
Virtual Autism is on Amazon as a Kindle ebook, a paperback and a hardcover. Every link, in every country, is on the links page. Each member reads their own copy.
“Virtual Autism” is not a medical diagnosis. If that phrase brought you here, read what it means. General information for families. Not medical advice. You may copy this guide for your own group, as long as the copies are not sold.