Body and Brain: Autism and Kinesiology

Dr. Martin Block explains the importance of inclusion in physical education and sports for children and adults with autism and other disabilities.  Dr. Block is Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Kinesiology for Individuals with Disabilities (KID) program.  

To receive special announcements of new episodes and more, subscribe to our newsletter: https://starautismsupport.com/newsletter-sign-0.

Transcript

00:00:01 Johnandrew Slominski 

Hi everyone—welcome to this episode of the Autism Annex podcast. I'm Johnandrew Slominski, and I'm glad you're with us. Earlier this year, we explored occupational therapy for children on the autism spectrum over the course of two episodes.  First I spoke with Kaleen, whose son Dominic has autism, about their family’s experience with OT, and I had a conversation with Kristen Wittmayer, Dominic's occupational therapist. 

00:00:33 Johnandrew Slominski 

On today's episode, we'll get back to that discussion of movement, and we'll talk about how physical education and sports can be both beneficial to and inclusive of children with autism and other disabilities. 

00:00:49 Johnandrew Slominski 

My guest is Dr. Martin Block, professor of kinesiology at the University of Virginia.  Dr. Block has spent more than 30 years teaching and researching the philosophy and practice of including students with disabilities in general physical education. 

00:01:07 Johnandrew Slominski 

Dr. Block, kinesiology is a new topic for us on the podcast and I'm excited to have you here. 

00:01:15 Martin Block 

Great. Yeah. I'm excited to do it. 

00:01:19 Johnandrew Slominski 

So, kinesiology 101 question here, if you don't mind. What do kinesiologists study, and what sorts of things do you think about? 

00:01:29 Martin Block 

So it's a kind of a sciency name for the study of human movement. So, our department has people who study exercise Physiology, so, you know, how you exercise and how that affects your heart and your lungs and working with people with diabetes and other conditions. We have sports medicine people here who study athletic injuries and how to rehab athletic injuries. Again, my area is physical education and physical activity specifically for children with disabilities. 

00:01:59 Martin Block 

Most kinesiology programs—ours doesn't anymore—they have general PE to train people to be regular PE teachers. Some have sports management as a discipline, sports history, sports, sociology, sports psychology. So, it's a broad umbrella term for anything to do with sports and physical activity and enhancing someone's ability to move and prevent diseases and recover from diseases. So that's kinesiology in a nutshell. 

00:02:28 Johnandrew Slominski 

And in a field of so many possible specialties, what's the story of how you came to choose disability and inclusion for children with disabilities? 

00:02:39 Martin Block 

Yeah, OK. I always wanted to be a PE teacher. I love sports. Growing up, I played sports and I went to college. I knew I wanted to be a PE teacher, but then I also thought maybe there's a little bit more I could do than just being a general PE teacher. And when I was going to school in the early or mid 1970s, I was in North Carolina and my town had a school for the deaf. And so I decided to volunteer there and work in the phys ed department and help coach and I absolutely loved it. And then I thought the next year, well, maybe I could expand and try something different. And there was a school for kids with intellectual disabilities and autism. So I volunteered there and I love that. And then there's a school for kids with physical disabilities. And I did that. 

00:03:21 Martin Block 

So it's kind of like just experimenting. I knew I wanted to, you know, work with children, but I didn't realize I would love working with children with disabilities until I got into those settings. So that's kind of how that started. And then I went to Ohio State to get specialized training in adaptive physical education, and then I got a job in Northern Virginia near Washington, DC at a special school and taught there for five years. I loved working with kids with disabilities. I still do so, and I coach Tennis Special Olympics in my community and I love playing tennis and sharing that with people.  And I also coach volleyball; both of my daughters played volleyball in high school and college. And so I, you know, became a good kind of a coach for kids while they were growing up. So I just love coaching, love teachings, but yeah. 

00:04:11 Johnandrew Slominski 

Marty, I'd like you to take us back to that period in the 1970s when you were starting your studies. How did physical education look for children with disabilities during that time, and how have things changed since? 

00:04:27 Martin Block 

Yeah, great question, and it's a huge difference. So when I was being trained, all the children were in special schools. And my first job was in a special school for children with disabilities and so we had physical education, which was provided in these special schools, but rarely were children with disabilities included into regular schools. 

00:04:50 Martin Block 

And then in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a slow push for inclusion and so we started seeing more and more children being in general education, including general physical education and that's when I kind of shifted my focus in my research and interest. And how can we help PE teachers better serve children who were included in their classes because they just didn't have the background or training.  At the same time, I also realized that youth sports coaches were starting to see children with disabilities going to regular soccer, regular T-ball, things like that. And again, they didn't have the background so that was kind of the big landscape change was from special schools to really inclusive setting. And then I would say in the last 15 or 20 years we've kind of had a pullback a little bit where we have special schools for kids with autism that that's it's just such a unique population and having some unique needs that may be best served in a special setting. So I think that's the type of thing that I'm seeing. So a shift from special schools to like full on inclusion now back to, well, maybe these kids would be better served in a special setting for part of the day, but then included in other areas where it may work.  So yeah, that's kind of the shift. 

00:06:08 Johnandrew Slominski 

So during this shift that you're describing over 50 years or so, what have we learned about the specific challenges that children with autism can experience in sports and physical education? 

00:06:22 Martin Block 

So, they present some really unique challenges. I again, I was doing Special Olympics yesterday, working with a young man with autism and trying to help him with some tennis, but the unique challenges are kind of multifaceted. So, one is just motor and coordination problems. There's been more and more research that suggest maybe as many as 1/4 or 1/3 just have some movement problems. So you have the motor coordination issue—it's something we know about. We have this understanding and motivation and paying attention issue. 

00:06:54 Martin Block 

Then you throw in some of the social issues that that children with autism often present. So now I say I want to put my son in the T-ball league. Well, there's lots of other kids who are going to be interacting there, or a Little League soccer program, or a Little League basketball program. And the whole idea of interacting with kids and reading kind of these nonverbal things like pass the ball to me and how to move and get open.  Just huge challenges for kids with autism, and then there's some other research that that children with autism tend to enjoy screen times. We know that, you know, watching videos and things like that, playing video games, but that leads to a sedentary lifestyle. So, there's some new research that suggests a significant number, could be again 15, 20, 30 percent of children with autism are prone to sedentary behavior and obesity and some issues like that. So now you have someone who has some coordination issues. Might be a little bit overweight and not very fit because they're not very active, they have trouble paying attention, so let's put them into a physical education setting with 50 other kids. I mean, that's just like a nightmare for that poor little boy or girl, or let's put them on a Little League softball Little League baseball program. You know, again, just a really challenging situation that can be overcome, but those are some of the challenges I'm sure if you talk to some of the parents who are listening, they'll say oh yeah,  can see how that could be a challenge. 

00:08:18 Johnandrew Slominski 

Right. And I have to imagine that noise alone can be a really significant issue for some kids. 

00:08:25 Martin Block 

Oh, absolutely. The noise. All the people. Yeah, it's just. It's just a really, I mean, we have a lot of kids who come in with ear mufflers into the gym setting because it's just so, so noisy there. And just so that that's certainly some of the help. So yeah. So one-on-one seems to work. Smaller groups sometimes works. And, you know, we try to put put those kids in general. 

00:08:45 Martin Block 

But you know, with the idea being what's the best for the child. So I want the child to benefit from whatever setting they're in benefit, meaning learning motor skills. Enjoying being physically active, being successful, and if that could be in a general piece setting, that's great. But if that can't happen, then certainly a small group or one-on-one may be necessary. 

00:09:07 Johnandrew Slominski 

From your perspective, when you're looking at the state of physical education right now, what are some of the major barriers to meaningful inclusion, especially for students with autism or other developmental disabilities? 

00:09:21 Martin Block 

So, I think the biggest thing, and this is something that we've been observing and finding for years now. But I think the biggest thing is that the child with a disability is kind of left out. So, this is what you may see in a PE setting. You see a child with autism coming into regular PE, most likely accommodated or coming in there with a teacher assistant from his classroom or somebody, and to the PE teacher, it seems like the child's in there. It seems like the child might be moving, but in reality, behind the scenes that the PE teacher isn't really interacting with the child. The PE teacher isn't accommodating the child and coming up with some solutions. And I think a big part of it is the PE teacher sees that teacher assistant and says, oh, great, Johnny is being taken care of. I don't need to worry about him today. You know that the teacher assistant has him. But the teacher assistant may know Johnny really well, but doesn't know anything about PE or what you're doing today. Or how to accommodate the child. And so there's this kind of a disconnect, and one of my doctoral students just did some research on teacher assistants and PE teachers. And there's just such little communication between the two, and so just, I think that's one of the things behind the scenes that you just it's subtle but it's, you know for someone like me I observe and I see it. It's like slapping me in the face.  Someone else might say oh look he's in general, he's doing great. No one's talking to the child because he's with the teacher assistant, the other kids are busy moving, the PE teacher is busy directing everybody else, and so the child is with the teacher assistant with no experience directing this child's PE experience and that that's to me not successful, not working. 

00:11:03 Johnandrew Slominski 

Well, and what you're describing sounds to me like educators dealing with a lot of moving parts right to the best of their abilities, but that certain things like communication and maybe overlapping skill sets, or lack thereof, just leaves many students behind.  How do we do better? 

00:11:22 Martin Block 

Yeah. So, so, yeah, great question. So I think a couple of things. I think we need to do a better job of preparing the PE teachers. I think that's one thing is that this has been going on for years that these kids are included in general PE. So we kind of have lost the lost the excuse of well, I've never done this before. I had no idea I would have kids. You're going to have kids and they know. 

00:11:44 Martin Block 

Yeah, but during their preparation and undergrad, they have one course in adaptive PE as part of their training and that tends to be a survey course, like what is Down syndrome, what is a spinal cord injury, what is a visual impairment. But they don't really get into, all right, you have 30 children in your PE class. You have two children with autism. You have a teacher assistant. How are you going to help these kids with autism be successful? That's the piece that we're not giving the PE teachers. Or if we do, it kind of goes in one ear and out the other, and when they go to teach, they've forgotten all the things they've learned. So I think in service work with PE teachers, you know, maybe creating little online modules that they could pick up. You know, for example, I think your audience knows very well that visual supports are just terrific with children with autism. So I created a little module for PE teachers and how to create visual schedules, how to create little visual timers, how to create task organizers like the steps for throwing or kick. 

00:12:42 Martin Block 

And then be able to present that to the child when he comes to PE so he knows. OK, first, we're going to do this. Then we're going to do this. Then we're going to do this. So just those types of things. So I think if we can present those types of things to PE teachers that I think that would help them. And again, I'm very aware that our PE teachers are teaching back-to-back to back kids and they don't have a lot of time to create these things. But I'm absolutely sure that if they went down to the Special Ed teacher and said, can you please create me a schedule for PE? Here's some of the things we do. We do a warmup. We do running laps. We do some fitness activities. We do these types of—she'd be happy to create it, laminate it, give it to the PE teacher and say, here you go, and the PE teacher would be all set. So the other piece that that—and I that I'm getting ready to write about this right now—is the communication between the Special Ed teacher and the PE teacher. So let me help your audience see this or imagine this scenario here. So I'm the Special Ed teacher. I have a special class of 6 children. I have 3 or 4 teacher aids with me and I look at my watch and say, OK, it's time for Sarah to go down to PE. Mrs. Johnson, will you please take Sarah to PE? Alright. So Mrs. Johnson takes Sarah down to PE and the Special Ed teacher doesn't communicate at all with the PE teacher about, these are some of the needs Sarah has. These are some things that you can do to help her. Have a better experience. 

00:14:06 Martin Block 

And I don't really think that the special—and I'm trying not to blame the special Ed teacher. I don't think the Special Ed teacher special education teacher says to Mrs. Johnson, hey, let's take Sarah down to PE. Let's focus on these things. You know, let's really work on trying to get her to interact with peers. Let's try to really get her to be really active. They know she likes to sit on the bleachers. 

00:14:27 Martin Block 

Just really encouraging her to be active. That conversation I don't think happens either. So how can we get that PE teacher and the special Ed teacher most likely before school or after school to come? 

00:14:37 Martin Block 

Indicate Sarah is going to be in your class. She's your responsibility. Here's some things you can do to help her be more successful, and I'm going to check in with you once a month and just kind of say, hey, how's Sarah doing? Are there issues you're having or things I can do to help you? Is that you know that's, that's stuff. So to me it's that communication or the lack of communications that's setting up these kids for failure, unfortunately. 

00:15:01 Johnandrew Slominski 

What you're saying in terms of visual supports, schedules, and task organizers, all of these things are part and parcel of evidence-based practices and we know they work.  And I'm sure that some educators are listening to this and thinking, hey, great, we'd love to have more communication. But you know, I'm swamped as it is. 

00:15:21 Martin Block 

You know, and again I know that special ed teacher is swamped. I know that PE teacher is busy but somehow we got to in terms of resources give them time to communicate and I'm not sure who would dictate that, be it the director of special ed or somebody, but I just that to me that's the the communication piece and the meeting piece and just you know. Imagine that the PE teacher coming to the special Ed teacher’s room for 15 minutes. You know once a month and just saying, hey, you know, I've been having, you know, fun with your kids. So there's some things I need to know, some things that can help me, you know, like Sarah just kind of wanders around and really doesn't interact. But what there's some things I can do, you know, so the PE teacher knows what's going on. And the special Ed teacher might not have any idea that that's happening, you know, so, yeah, the special teacher will have some great ideas. We can do this and this and that, so I just—I really think that communication piece to how we can get those people together that's the challenge, but man, that is going to be the goal that you need to get to get done. 

00:16:23 Johnandrew Slominski 

We know that resources, including time, can be scarce in schools, and that is a major hurdle. But when students with autism and other disabilities are included in PE, there's not just a clear benefit for them, which you've described, but also for their neurotypical peers and even educators. 

00:16:43 Martin Block 

So the student with autism, let's say, will have a chance to interact with peers. It could be, you know, with peer tutors. It could just be being part of a group, something like that, you know, just that just those interactions and opportunities for social interactions, I think are really positive, you know, getting the child to learn to follow some directions: stay with his group, stay with the class. We talked about the sensory overload being kind of learning how to deal with the sensory situations because when you go to a grocery store, when you go to Walmart, you know it's going to be noisy and busy in those places, you know, so. 

00:17:19 Martin Block 

Yeah, I think being in those given those opportunities that would be really you know great as well. You know just the physical benefits of being physically active, physical fitness, developing motor skills. And then we look at the kids without disabilities, what benefits they have. Well, they certainly have a chance to interact with children with disabilities who they may not have had a chance to do.  They may have a chance to be a peer tutor and really get to know a child a little bit more closely and dispel some of those stereotypes they they've had.  And then you look at the physical education teacher, you know, all of a sudden I'm learning how to accommodate a wider range of abilities. You know, I was teaching to the middle and all of a sudden with this child with a disability, I realized I have a lot of children who were kind of struggling and need extra attention or may need different ways of doing something or offering them different sized balls in lower baskets. 

00:18:06 Martin Block 

Because I have some other kids who are not doing very well. So I think they benefit from that, that environment as well. So there's just a ton of benefits for everybody. The child with autism, the child without who's in that class, and the PE teacher who really can learn a lot and have a great successful experience. 

00:18:25 Johnandrew Slominski 

And as you said earlier, too, PE and sports can have a huge impact not just on our physical lives, but also on the social-emotional side of things. 

00:18:37 Martin Block 

Yeah, yeah, that I didn't even talk about those social-emotional learning pieces, which are just so prevalent in a PE setting. How do I handle winning and losing in a nice way? How do I work as a member of a team? You know, how do I overcome conflict? You know, those types of things? Just those are things that really can happen in a PE in a youth sports setting. 

00:18:57 Martin Block 

That really lends itself, for those things we talk about social emotional learning in the school setting, but man in PE, there's conflicts. There's winning and losing. There's, I've got to be a member of a team. I've gotta organize things, you know, I've gotta problem solve. There's just some great places. So just like music, there's those ancillary things that that really PE has a great chance to present. 

00:19:20 Johnandrew Slominski 

Marty, I want to ask you more about your research in kinesiology and disability. You direct the KID lab at the University of Virginia. What does KID, K-I-D, stand for? And what do you do in your lab? 

00:19:37 Martin Block 

Yeah. So, our lab, kinesiology for individuals with disabilities, so kid, we call it the kid lab. And so it's not like a physical lab like, my colleagues have in exercise, Physiology, Physiology lab or sports medicine lab or concussion lab. So my lab is out in the schools. I, you know, I'm, I'm out going and talking to parents, and I'm observing things, I'm going to youth sports settings and talking to coaches and talking to parents. So my lab is really way out in the world, doing lots of observations, a lot of my students do qualitative research, which is observations and interviewing. So interviewing teachers, interviewing para educators, interviewing children with disabilities interviewing adults with disabilities to kind of retrospectively think back to their PE experiences and what was it like. We also do some training of PE teachers. So we've done a couple of studies recently where we tried to do an in service to PE teachers to see if we can change their attitude and their confidence. So those are some other things we've done over the years to a lot of the in service training types of. Modules to see if it makes a difference, we've studied things ranging from attitudes you know. Can I change your attitudes so you have a better attitude? 

00:20:50 Martin Block 

I think we realized that, you know, attitude is great, but if you don't have the confidence and the knowledge to be able to implement some things, you know you can have the best attitude, I think—I think we should include kids. I just don't know how to do it. Well, that's not going to work. So we've been doing more with self-confidence, self efficacy which is confidence and knowledge and competency. How can I make you more competent? How can I give you the tools and the skills to be more? 

00:21:15 Martin Block 

So those are kind of the things I'm looking at. We've looked at over the years, but again, I think our the biggest take away is that the theme has always been about including children with disabilities in general, physical education and sport and studying that phenomenon and looking at some of the key stakeholders that PE teachers, the teachers, assistants, the children, the parents and find out what can we do to make this work better. 

00:21:40 Johnandrew Slominski 

Yeah. Yeah. Tell me more about some of these takeaways. What are some of the things that parents and caregivers tell you in your research? 

00:21:48 Martin Block 

Yeah. So I'm not sure how much research there's been on parents. I think that's something that's probably underserved specifically in the physical activity and youth sports, you know, realm there. So we did a study about five years ago where we interviewed parents who had young adult sons with autism. And we wanted to find out what are some of the barriers they have to get in their son or daughter physical active and what are some of the facilitators, things that that help them. And I say sons and daughters, the group we had were all all male. 

00:22:21 Martin Block 

And they're all in their 20s, all living at home and kind of a mix of fairly severe, you know, group, all special school type kids, things like special classes. Anyway, some of the take home messages I find fascinating were not surprising, you know, behaviors and sensory issues have prevented my son or from me taking my son to the YMCA to work out. It's just too noisy for him, or to the local fitness center or to join a sports team. We tried some youth sports, but it was just the social situation. Just it didn't really work for him. We've had more success with things like yoga or just walking the dog in the neighborhood or things like that. 

00:23:00 Martin Block 

So, so those are some of the kinds of the things in terms of barriers, you know they talk about.  Behaviors challenges, they're worried their child's going to have an outburst. They're worried that their child's not been able to handle the sensory situation. They've tried these things and they found it to be very difficult; the social situations, I think that they find those to be challenging. 

00:23:21 Martin Block 

The routines, you know, I think that's been a challenge as well as overcoming the kind of the I need to do A then B then C and to add something new like hey, we're going to join the Y and we're going to start going to the why we're going to do this that I think those are some things they also point out is challenging. 

00:23:38 Martin Block 

On the other hand, when they talk about facilitators, they talk about finding a college student or somebody who could accompany their son or daughter someplace. They found that to be very helpful. Again, they found individual sports going for walks and hikes have been, you know, better suited for their child with autism than joining the soccer program classes. 

00:24:00 Martin Block 

And work, you know, quiet classes like yoga, Pilates, things that have quieter sounds in the background and more individualized movements. They find those things to be successful. Interestingly, I mentioned the idea of routines, and I remember one of the moms saying that her son, they tried to get him or they did get him to walk on a treadmill in the basement, or ride a stationary bike, and it started out with one minute and then two minutes, and now they're up to like 45 minutes and they, you know, they have this, you know, picture schedule.  It says, OK, we're going to have breakfast, and after breakfast,  you're going to go down to the basement and work out. 

00:24:33 Martin Block 

And he knows that's his routine and now he's, you know. But the funny thing she said was, yeah, it's gotten so strict, though, that, you know, if I only have time for him to work out for 30 minutes, he's like, nope, I got to be here for 45 minutes. And so, you know, it, it could backfire a little bit, too. So. So those are some of the things, I think from a parent perspective. 

00:24:54 Martin Block 

We're hearing about things that can be barriers, you know also can be facilitators, establishing a routine, you know, things like that. And I don't want to discount that team sports is not going to work for all children with autism. I think you have to know your son or daughter and see what works. I've seen lots of kids with autism doing soccer, tee-ball, you know, Little League baseball, things like that. You know? So, so it can work. Just you have to, you know, really know your son or daughter and what works best for them. And there there's some research. One of my students and I did a kind of review of literature and finding things from yoga, Pilates, swimming, cycling and in at a gym. 

00:25:34 Martin Block 

Doing CrossFit, you know, going to a gym and lifting heavy weights and doing kind of crazy things. 

00:25:40 Martin Block 

All these things you know, the E sports playing, you know, the kids with autism, like the visual types of things. So playing E sports where you're playing Wii tennis or those types of things where they're moving around. So there's lots of things you can do. I think the key for families is, OK, I really want my son or daughter to be physically active. 

00:25:59 Martin Block 

There's an array of things that I've got to try, and if this one doesn't work then I've got to try something else. If swimming doesn't work, then I need to try yoga. If yoga doesn't work, let's maybe just as the family go for a walk after dinner. If that doesn't work, let's try something else until you find something that really, you know, catches that child's interest. 

00:26:18 Martin Block 

And again, I know kids in our community who love to walk and run, and they do that with their mom and dad. Others go hiking on trails. Some take their dogs for walks, and some are playing sports, you know, doing Special Olympics basketball and tennis and different things. And they enjoy doing that. So. So just anything to get a child to be physically active is good. 

00:26:38 Johnandrew Slominski 

I know you've worked a lot with Special Olympics over the years. What are some of the things that the public might not know about Special Olympics from an insider's perspective? 

00:26:49 Martin Block 

Now I'm part of a group that is doing inclusion. Believe it or not, just like we talked about, but it's that's actually a big piece of Special Olympics. People picture Special Olympics as a bunch of children with intellectual disabilities, all competing against each other, but they have unified sports where you have an equal number of athletes with and without disabilities on the same basketball team, same volleyball team, same tennis team. So they play together. So there's this really inclusive piece to it. They have Special Olympics pushed into schools where they have inclusive PE. 

00:27:22 Martin Block 

And they call them the champion schools, where the whole school adopts the idea: we want to make sure everybody feels welcome. Everybody feels included. I'm going to make sure if someone's in the cafeteria sitting by themselves, I'm going to sit there with them. So these unified champion schools include this unified PE piece, the unified sports piece. 

00:27:43 Martin Block 

But then also just you know how can we get the whole school to be more accepting of children with disabilities? So I've had a little hand in in that as well. So and then like I said, I've been coaching. Even though I've gone to more of administrative role over the years being at a university, I still love, you know, interacting and coaching children with disabilities. So I do volleyball in the fall. I do tennis in the spring. I started back and I was doing some things at the international level and traveling. But I started locally. 

00:28:17 Martin Block 

And my older daughter said she needed to do community service and she played volleyball. And I said let's have you volunteer for Special Olympics. You'll love doing that and turned out there's no Special Olympics volleyball program in our community. And when I talked to the guys, well, you want to start it, you start it, we'll do it. 

00:28:34 Martin Block 

It's like, OK, so that's kind of how that happened. And then a couple of years later, he said our tennis guy quit, will you start tennis? So we had two people who were playing tennis. I just left yesterday. We had 25 people playing tennis. So it's just, it’s great. It's a lot of fun. It's a great being in a university town. I get university students to come and volunteer. We get some high school students, even as young as middle school. 

00:28:56 Martin Block 

So. So yeah, I'm. I'm a I'm a huge fan of Special Olympics, I think they've over the years have grown and they have a whole healthy athletes model working on more healthy living, you know, just not physical activity and sports. But you know, nutrition and eye care and all these types of things. So it's a terrific organization and they are very welcoming of children and adults with autism. They're very accommodating and I think that. Could be a good home. 

00:29:23 Martin Block 

We have golf, we have tennis, individual sports.  Bocce, which is kind of like lawn ball. It's a more individual sports. It's just not the traditional track and field and soccer and things like that. So really great opportunities. 

00:29:36 Johnandrew Slominski 

Marty, two final questions. I wonder if you could weigh in on. First, what recommendations would you give to parents and caregivers of children with disabilities in terms of helping them to be active? 

00:29:50 Johnandrew Slominski 

And second how can we learn more about programs for adaptive physical education like yours? 

00:29:56 Martin Block 

Yeah, I would say experiment. Try to see if your son or daughter likes you know, whatever. If it's kicking the ball, if it's throwing the ball, if it's going for a walk. I have a couple of granddaughters who love playing with bubbles. You know, that might be a fun thing to move around. Just anything that gets a child out and moving I think is a positive thing. 

00:30:16 Martin Block 

So to me it's just kind of experimenting and once you find even a small little sliver that the child seems to enjoy it even for a minute, then kind of expand on it, you know, so let's we did it for a minute today. Let's do it for 2 minutes next week, then 3 minutes. I'm just going to keep on adding to it and then build it into that schedule. You know that if the children have these routines, OK, we're going to get up and have breakfast and we're going to get dressed and we're going to go outside and we're going to do this activity that we all enjoy doing together. We'll do yoga on the grass or something and we'll put a video in and we'll, we'll, we'll watch something like that. We'll, we'll go take the dog for a walk, but build that in that, that's on this child's schedule. So they know that they're going to do that. And again, expanding the time. So that by the end of the summer, you know, if you add in a couple of minutes each day or each week, you know, by the end of the summer the child's doing 30 minutes of physical activity, you know, two or three times a week. What a great, great thing. But again, I would say start slow. Experiment, try different things, see what the child seems to like and if you find that he likes one thing or she likes one thing, then see if you can't build that into their routine and just kind of add it on. 

00:31:21 Martin Block 

Yeah, I think that that would work. Yeah. In terms of adaptive physical education, there's only about 30 programs in the US that train adaptive physical educators. So they certainly could to look up my program. 

00:31:35 Martin Block 

And again, we do call it kinesiology for individuals with disabilities, but, but yeah, I think it's a unique field. It depends on your state. Some states have trained, adapted physical educators who will go from, you know, multiple schools to help the general PE teacher help some children, other states, it's just all general PE teachers. If you're in a rural community, you might only have general PE teachers. If you're in a city, you're more likely to have adaptive PE teachers. So just you know, there's lots of different things. But again, I think if you Google adapted physical education, you'll really find some good information about what we do. And I would go to the IEP meeting and ask you know, hey, is there an adaptive PE program in our school that I should know about? Who knows they there might be. 

00:32:22 Johnandrew Slominski 

Or like you and your daughter did, go out and start one. 

00:32:25 Martin Block 

Start one. That's a great point, yeah. 

00:32:29 Johnandrew Slominski 

Marty, thanks so much for the conversation today. It's been a lot of fun, and I've learned a ton. 

00:32:35 Martin Block 

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. 

00:32:39 Johnandrew Slominski 

You've been listening to my conversation with Dr. Martin Block, Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Virginia. 

00:32:48 Johnandrew Slominski 

Dr. Block directs the Kinesiology for Individuals with Disabilities lab, or KID, at UVA, and you can learn more about his work by visiting the UVA website at virginia.edu. 

00:33:03 Johnandrew Slominski 

Thanks as always to you, our listeners. It's great to have you with us. 

00:33:07 Johnandrew Slominski 

I'm Johnandrew Slominski with the Autism Annex podcast. And until next time, take good care of yourself, and one another.