John Brown: Bridging Autism Awareness and Transforming First Responder Training – A Father's Deeply Personal Advocacy Journey

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are not alone in this world. Hopefully you'll gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World.
Today's guest is John Brown. He's the First Responder program
manager for Autism Society of America. But above and beyond that,
he's also an autistic dad. So thanks for coming on too.
I'm excited to do it. I've listened to you know,
I've been listening to some episode, but yeah, I've really
enjoyed the podcast. I'm happy to do it and I'm excited. Yeah,
thanks for asking us to do it.
Oh, it's my pleasure. So if I understand it correctly,
before you started working for the Autism Society of America,
you're an autism dad.
Yeah, so I have I have three kids. I have
a ten year old and eight year old and a
four year old. My eight year old son, Wyatt. He's
on the spectrum. He's non speaking and has lots of challenges.
And then before that, I was a teacher as well.
I've worked as a jen ed teacher, also in special education,
and I was in the Air Force before that.
Lots of jobs here and there between.
Then, okay, so how old is your son now?
Eight years old?
Eight? So when was he first diagnosed?
That we got he was diagnosed early, so he was
diagnosed about two and a half. Actually it was probably
closer to two years old. We got real lucky his
mom and I we both His mom is a speech therapist,
I was working in special education. We started seeing signs
because Wyatt he actually had words at some point and
then lost those, lost his language when he was about
about a year and a half to two he was
speaking on par with that and stopped. And then we
got lucky with a developmental pediatrician who was kind of
starting his own practice and got a diagnosis role early.
Well that's good. So how's he doing now? Is he
progressing better? What do you see fro him in the
next three to five years.
Yeah, it's hard to know. He's smart. He picks up,
but he uses an AAC device uses an iPad to communicate. Sure,
he's still kind of learning that. We're working with speech
therapists and his teachers and things to kind of develop
his language. He definitely can express his wants and needs,
especially when it comes to food. He picks up on
that stuff real quickly, quicker than I do. It's there.
It's just trying to get him out a little bit
more so in like four to five years. I mean,
you know, I just want him to be able to
express beyond his just immediate needs. I want him to
start finding language and expression for himself so that we
can kind of pick up on, like what does he
like to do, and he might not even know that
yet either, So just kind of bringing out his personality
is what I hope over the next four to five years.
Does he sign it all, because I know some autistic
children will learn sign language to help the process.
Does he do that at all? Or is it just
the iPad?
Very little? So, I mean, I mean he when he
was younger, we sort of incorporated that. Like when he
was three, he used to sign a lot and again
basic ones in needs. It's funny being his dad, you
pick up on gestures and even the way he will
take my hand. I know by the pressure he's using
to hold my hand if he wants to leave, like
leave the house, or if he's taken me to watch
a video in his bed, or I can tell by
the way he interacts with me, like it's kind of
his own language.
Does he have any issues with sound? I know I've
heard that some don't like it real loud and they
can't be around it for long.
Right, Yeah, so he's interesting in the way that sound
doesn't really bother him as much it is bright lights.
Oh, okay, lighting.
Really really affects him quite a bit. So if we're
in the bar and being in Florida, you know, the
sun coming in can really change his mood. And then, yeah,
he's more focused on he loves. His sensory needs really
have to do with smell and sight more than sound.
I would say, what about texture.
I know some don't like textures of food or textures
of clothing.
Yeah.
The food thing is is definitely the textures of food.
I mean, he eats probably six things and he actually
he has started. That is one thing where he's kind
of showing some growth, as in trying new foods, good
and even if he doesn't like it, he'll you know,
spit it out or something. But he's definitely trying more
foods and things. But yeah, certain textures with foods, and
it's he does have a few stemming behaviors where he'll
kind of scratch on a wall here or a book,
or he really likes pressure, like pushing his hands downs
on things and things like that.
Okay, So how does he get along with the other
kids that he us live within the house?
Great?
So that's I mean, that's kind of an adventure all
of its own, is watching his siblings kind of interact
and then asking questions and and sort of just being
open about what's going on because their their lives are
affected by it. Sure why it's Mom and I divorced
and we co parent and we're friends now, but we
divorced a few years ago, so we're one on one
with the kids or have been. You know, I have
to communicate to them, like they wake them up at
night or he wakes everyone up in the household at
night most most nights, and he has aggressive behaviors, and
he and they're curious and they're starting to ask questions.
So that's a big part of it. Is sort of
kind of walking them through why it's journey too, and
getting them comfortable and trying to me trying to explain
what autism is to a four year old or a
ten year old, it's I don't know, it's all.
Part of it.
Well, I mean, imagine yourself a four year old or
ten year old trying to figure out what autism is
when adults can't.
Right right, but they pick up on it, and it's
you know, I find that my oldest son, he's very
empathetic and he's very he wears his heart on his sleeve.
And a lot of the friends he's in the neighborhood
and at school, they'll come over. I'm like, you know,
your your friend, and I'm familiar with their parents and things.
But he'll have friends with autism and he's like, he
connects two kids like that, I think without even knowing
it sometimes.
So does he have any major meldowns or is that
an issue? Or is he fairly temperate that way? How
does he handle that? Oh?
Yeah, Wyatt, he has pretty extremes and it's late to day,
you know, things affect him. We're not even sure half
the time what it might be, you know, I have
noticed a trend like it's kind of seasonal, like whenever
Allen is out around here. I think that really affects
him pretty hardcore. I think part of its communication. But
he can definitely get aggressive towards himself. He has self
injurious behaviors like headbanging and such, and then with me
and his siblings too, Like you know, it's a it's
a day to day situation, but yeah, he can show
a lot of regression.
Yeah, okay, So now you've done the special needs thing
where you've taught, you've gone an autistic son. Is that
what led you into the Autism Society of America.
Yeah, it's a direct correlation. So before I joined the
Autism Society of America, I had stopped teaching and joined
a nonprofit here in Florida working with couple of varying disabilities,
helping with employment. And I had an incident was why
where he wandered and we had an interaction with police,
and it was just really interesting and I was just
kind of searching and just kind of open to what
was out there. And I came across Autism Society of America,
and I don't know, it was kind of kiss met.
Yeah, now you brought up police.
I had a person that I met and he had
an autistic son, and he was the most lovable, jolly,
walking down the street type person you'd want. He had
to wind up going down to the police department to
pick him up because he was walking around he was
so happy and he was probably like twenty years old
at the time.
They thought he was fine, they took him.
They didn't realize autistic, so they wound up taking him
to take take him down to the precinct and then
he had to go down and pick him up and
explain to the officers that hey, he's autistic and this
is his way. He's not aggressive, he's laid back and
happy and that's it. He doesn't do drugs, he doesn't
do any of that stuff. And so how did you
get into working with police to teach them what autism
is about and how people react differently.
Right, Yeah, So that was an initiative that that autism
and society of America sort of pointed out as a
as a need and it's a national need for sure.
Just bringing that awareness and acceptance through that avenue. And
you know we've that, you know that, and that's that's
what I do. I run our first responder training program,
and that's what we're doing. We're sort of building a
training program in different ways to to get the word
out because you know, law enforcement, it's that's a crazy
feel these days. I mean, they wear a lot of
hats and they're expected to know a lot of different things.
And so we kind of come out of it as
an angle of like and like we we recognize that
we can't expect law enforcement to be to diagnose autism,
but were we kind of come out of it like
there's a way to maybe second guess what's going on
and have those conversations about you know, when you see
someone and not just going to drug use or something.
But right, Yeah, when you took over, when you started
this program and you became part of it on working
with first responders and autism, what was your initial setup?
How did you set it up and get it working
so that you actually had conversations and input and prom
them about it.
Yeah, that's a big that's a big part of it.
I've worked for Austin Society a little a little over
a year, so I was I joined in February twenty
twenty three, and so we do that in a few
different ways. We have something called a safety task for us,
and this is about fifty to sixty people that are
in law enforcement or former law enforcement. They're law enforcement trainers.
It's parents, affiliate leaders that we have in the autism
society subject matter experts. And so even before I got here,
and then when I got here, we were sort of
running through the curriculum through this task force, and so
we got a lot of great feedback and we started
putting together a course and then we workshop that course
with different law enforcement agencies at conferences that involved law enforcement.
This continuous feedback from that community, from the autism community
to create something that I think that moving forward, we
have a really solid foundation to sort of expand. And
really we're doing it for you know, for our affiliate network,
right that's spread throughout the country. And then you know,
we're our affiliate networks don't don't meet where we want
to work with agencies to reach them as well, sort
of just have a you know, it's an autism informed
the escalation course that you know, we really want law
enforcements feedback on.
All.
Right, So, so do you travel across the country talking
to different precincts. How do you set that up so
you can expand on a greater part of the country,
which definitely is needed.
Sure, there's a there's a little bit of that. So I,
you know, I do have discussions a lot of virtual meetings,
you know, that's that's the that's the time that we
live in. But a lot of virtual meetings and in
speaking with chiefs around the country, you know, and considering
the different law enforcement agencies that we have that are
in rural settings, urban settings, you know, diverse settings like
and the different needs that they also have to address
as well. So I go to like, for instance, in June,
I'm going to a corresponders conference in Nebraska to sort
of hear from other people, but also uh sort of
workshop our program as well.
So we do. Yeah, we talk all across.
The country, and it's it's a little bit different everywhere,
and I think that's we're trying to, you know, create
sort of a you know, a gold standard with with
options for these different agencies that we can reach.
Yeah, Okay, have you have you met any resistance at all?
I mean, not to throw any shade at anybody, have
you met with any resistance to where people because they
don't understand autism, because sometimes if you don't understand it,
then it doesn't exist. Have you run into any situations
like that, or they've been pretty open minded?
Yeah, I'll be honest, Sony, like, it's mostly like people
are open minded. I have.
I don't.
I can't think of one instance that I've been in
person and the questions weren't out of you know, real
true like they want to learn, or or it's someone
that's saying, oh, hey, you know my uncle was diagnosed,
or like we have a friend and their dad, or
you know, whatever it may be. They're making a connection
to something they've heard or an experience they have in
their own family, and they're you know, I'm hearing a
lot of the right questions being asked. So for the
most part, it's been real. It's been a positive experience.
I would say, yeah, good.
I I can't remember here.
The other day I had someone I was talking with
and I told him I was doing autism podcast, wanted
to get more involved, and how they could they help,
And I say, oh, good, I hit the one in seven.
Yeah right, they said one and seven.
I said, yeah, one in seven people around the world
either know someone has somebody that's autistic in their family.
Yeah.
If you can hit that one in seven where they
might not have anybody in their family but they know someone,
then at least you're expanding their knowledge. Because the biggest
thing that I've seen in the last year, and I'm
the biggest part of it, is when I first started
this podcast, I knew absolutely nothing about autism. Yeah, so
I had to learn run along with everybody else's kind
of listening. And I think that's the biggest thing that
we have to do, is to get the understanding out
there so that they don't just throw it to the
wind that oh, well, this is what autism is, because
a lot of times they confuse it with down syndrome
or other things when it's it's not something that you
can visibly see lots of times.
Right, Yeah, it's described as invisible disability a lot of
the time, and that's exactly right, And that's a great
I mean, what you're doing is great because you are
nerd learning and your audience is learning with you. So
I think that's sort of great way to come come
about it. And when most people I talk to you
are just curious because if you've heard of autism and
have no background in it. There's a lot of stereotypes
to get thrown around about autism, but really it is
it is. So it's just it's a diverse, beautiful thing.
And uh, it's a real it's a real community. Yeah,
and it's it's worth Yeah, it's worth exploring.
So many people that I've talked with that are autistic,
they often say that's my superpower.
Yeah.
And what people have to understand is that someone that's autistic,
when they get up from classroom at school, they don't
leave it at school. It comes home with them because
that's what they are. How do you go about teaching
the police officers for you know, the e mt fiomen,
How do you go about teaching them because lots of
times someone that's autistic, they can have so many things
that's going on. Just like that person I was telling
about that the police thought that he was high when
he was just happy. The reverse of that can be
if they're having a meltdown, they look psychotic and he's not,
you know, and then I have to learn the difference
between a tantrum and a meltdown. So how do you
go about teaching that so that they can recognize it
because in police situations, EMTs lots of times they have
seconds to respond, they have to make a decision based
upon what they see. So what's your process on teaching
them so that they can recognize and spot something so
that it doesn't escalate into something that you know, come
out and with a bad situation.
Yeah, that's a great that's a great question, and it's
a long answer.
So sure.
A lot of what we do is we're trying to
build if it's a program building, it's not just the
training itself, but it's you know, we interact with our
affiliates sometimes and the law enforcement agency through our affiliate,
and so that's a community. So we want to basically
join the answers in community and the law enforcement community together,
and so a lot of that training is trying to
get those two communities together so that we're talking about
things like, you know, informed disclosure, if someone wants to
disclose to a police department, so that they have autism
so that when there's a nine to one one call
or an incident occurs, there's some background info. It's just
not a law enforcement officer walking into a situation. And
then in the training itself, one of the things we
talk about is behaviors are not people. Behaviors are temporary,
So something like a mountdown it is temporary. So we
walk through a lot of different modes that someone can
be in and when they're anxious or when they're in crisis,
and what that can look like. So someone for instance,
that's very anxious or might be going into some sort
of crisis, could be utilizing some of a lot of
stemming behaviors like rocking and pacing and jumping and flapping,
or they're wanting to escape from a situation, or they're
very distracted or they're seeking a quiet environment. So we
just talk about those different modes that someone can be in,
what that can look like, and then how to basically
de escalate a situation before it comes a crisis, for
it becomes a crisis, or when they're in a crisis,
escalating that back down to calm someone down. So it's
sort of a you know, there's we talk about a
lot of de escalation, autism informed escalation techniques within the course.
So within the course we're recognizing some of those things,
but really it's like a holistic view that we're trying
to come at. We want to prevent these things from
happening by opening that dialogue between the community and law enforcement.
And then when we train law enforcement, we're doing that
in a way that giving them behaviors and stuff that
they can recognize directly. It's not a perfect system, but
you know, we're just working to make it a perfect system.
Sure, okay, So have you had a situation where you
went in, you trained some police officers and then a
week later, a month later, whatever the timeframe may be,
they called you up and they said, you know, this
training work because we had a success story.
So we're in the very early process of doing direct training.
A lot of the stuff we've been doing is through
conferences and overview and things. Now we have a lot
of affiliates that have trained across the and we have
gotten that feedback. One of the very first things in
the current training that we have is a father talking
about an incident that occurred that could have gone to
crisis if the officer had not been informed. So one
of the very first things that we show an interview
with a father and he's speaking about his son who
took a walk in a neighborhood because it was a
little is during a holiday it was an unfamiliar neighborhood, right,
and an officer came upon him and he noticed some
stemming behaviors. And the officer himself had spoken with the
father and said, you know, I had taken this class
last week, and if I had not been in that class,
I would have reacted to this situation completely differently. Okay,
So I have heard that feedback over and over. But
like I said, you know that the training itself is
just really one aspect of it. There's a lot of
change that has to occur, I think for safe interactions
to occur in the autism community.
I used to know, but I can't remember now how
many police officers we've got throughout country. So you take that,
then you add in that one percent of the population
in the country is autistic. Even though one percent doesn't
sound like much, that's a great number of people, right,
So you take the officers and then the amount of
people that are autistic if they haven't been trained or
they don't understand, you know, it's getting that training out
to all of them, because that's something that is needed
right across the country and around the world.
Right, right, And we truly don't know the number a
percentage of people with autism, honestly, because I mean, let's
look at you know, it's one in thirty six. Now,
one in thirty six kids have autism, right, two years
ago was one in fifty four, is what this reported.
So more diagnosis, more knowledge, more acceptance, more awareness, right, Honestly,
everyone's on the spectrum quite a little bit.
So well, you know, I interviewed a manager of a
radio station in the upper part of England. He had
a couple three different autistic people that worked within that
radio station and they used to bicker back and forth
and one would say, well, you know, he should understand
he's autistic and I'm autistic, and he had to explain that, yeah,
just because you're autistic and he's autistic doesn't mean that
you're the same. And then he made a statement. He goes,
you know, he goes, he goes, I think we're all
on the spectrum, right, but we as individuals have some
of the same little tapping. I talked with an autistic
guy that does a lot of speaking and he says
that you ever tap your pencil, So you're right, I
think you made a valid point there that we probably
all have it built into us in some form.
Yeah, definitely. I mean throughout this whole interview, my leg's
been shaking. That's just something I always do, and that's
you know, that's a comforting, stemming thing that I do
for me. So yeah, I think to an extent, that's
exactly accurate.
Yeah, So where do you see this program in five years?
Yeah, that's a great question. So I would like to
see it, you know, right now, we're what we're doing
right now is we're piloting with six of our affiliates
around the country to sort of explore, you know, their
different law enforcement agencies in six different cities throughout the
country and kind of exploring like, how can we have
a we have a course developed, but how can we
modify that for each community and sort of come out
with a training program that can align to whatever community
is being served. And so five years from now, I
suspect I would like our program to sort of be
the front runner, not only just in training autism informed
the escalation. So yeah, five years from now, you know,
I see our program. You know, I explain that we're
starting with sort of six law enforcement agencies and affiliates.
I'd like to exploin that obviously to our whole affiliate network,
and that's what we're doing right now. We're building a
training program that we're piloting out now to offer to
you know, our seventy affiliates across the country, and then
beyond that where our program doesn't reach or our affiliate
network doesn't reach, working with agencies outside of that.
Yeah.
Okay, So now you're standing in front of a group
of people one hundred, five hundred thousand, doesn't matter what
number it is. What's the message you want to put
to them. Some know about autism, some are just learning
about it. Some are just finding out their kids deserve
grandkids autistic. So you're talking with a group of people
that's not really knowledgeable about autism.
What do you tell them?
I think that's a great question.
I think for me and just with the world we
live in today, like if we could just all take
a breath and be patient with each other. And really
it's it's about the golden rule, you know, just however
you want to be treated, treat someone else if you
you know, if you see me or you know, or
someone walking through the grocery store and their child or
you know, we talked about children with autism alone or
or just an adult having a hard time vocally, having
a hard time physically, having a hard time, whatever it
may be, it's okay to ask if that person you
know needs assistance, or to ask a question. Really, just
having having patients and having accepting people for who they are.
You know, like I said earlier, you know, behave are
not people, They're temporary. So really, yeah, it's the golden rule.
It's just treating everyone how you want to be treated.
Because people with autism, even if they can't emote the
same sort of emotions or empathy that we can, they
feel it, and sometimes more intensely right than someone who's neurosypical.
So it's all about patience and acceptance and being inclusive.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. I've loved it. It's
been a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on.
Yeah, of course, man, it went by quick.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's been great. Thanks again. Thanks for
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