Hi Hanna,

You may or may not have heard the term 'monotropism'. Recently I assessed a 3 year old with significant difficulty with transitions and a colleague who I consider to be an expert in autism, suggested to me that her difficulties sounded like they could be related to monotropism so I did some reading up on this and I thought I'd share my research with you. The child's parents are happy for me to share.

Monotropism is a processing style, or way of thinking and the theory was developed by autistic people, initially by Dinah Murray and Wenn Lawson. Monotropic minds tend to focus strongly on a small number of interests at any given time, which leaves less capacity for other processes meaning they can miss things outside of their attention tunnel or quickly forget things they are no longer focusing on. Because monotropic people often experience things so intensely, they tend to find it hard to shift their attention from one thing to another. Monotropic people often have passionate interests.

The types of transitions that are commonly tricky for monotropic people are:

Change of body state e.g. going from sleep to awake, or a high sensory arousal state to a low arousal state e.g. playground to the car.
Change of sensory input, e.g. pyjamas to school uniform, busy to quiet environment.
Change of environment, e.g. home to school, shops to car.
Change of thinking style e.g. from one subject to another at school.
Change of social and communication demands e.g. from playing alone to joining a group activity.

All transitions take energy to engage and moving from one channel of thought to another takes even more energy. Using more energy without enough capacity can lead to anxiety, fatigue and sensory dysregulation (which can then lead to meltdowns and shutdowns).

Here are some ideas to support children who struggle:

Reduce time pressures and be flexible.
Prepare as much as possible before an event. Different strategies work for different children e.g. visuals, social stories, watching videos of the place/event, driving past in advance etc.
Try using a transitional object - for example your child may take a favourite fidget item or small soft toy from home into school each day.
Allow enough control for your child to feel autonomous so they feel safer and less anxious. Choices can help but usually not too many as this can be overwhelming.
Reduce demands and the number of transitions if possible.

One of the things I noticed when observing this lovely little girl at nursery is how fast paced the day was and how she needed a much slower pace with more processing time to take everything in. The children moved so quickly from outdoor play to carpet time, to PE, to phonics, to snack time, to story time to maths etc! I was only there for a morning and they did so much with so many transitions. As the saying goes, 'less is more' and often children benefit from having longer to spend on an activity and this of course then reduces the number of transitions. I appreciate that teachers are limited by the curriculum so there is no blame on teaching staff. I do feel critical however of the curriculum and the system that isn't designed for neurodiversity!

You may have also heard of the concept of 'flow', which is a state of deep engagement and focus that leads of a sense of joy, calm and accomplishment. The concept of flow relates to monotropism as monotropism can facilitate flow experiences. My son recently told me that he doesn't always enjoy English at school as when he has to write sentences that focus on grammar he can't get into a flow state (he's watched a video about flow on YouTube), whereas when he's allowed to do creative writing and just write whatever comes to him then he experiences flow. Again less is more and if children could have more time to focus on what interests them, they would reap the benefits of being able to enter a flow state more often and this could have such a positive impact on their wellbeing and their learning.

I hope that this was interesting for you to think about. I'm always happy to hear your thoughts on a topic if you would like to reply me.

Hanna