Dynamic Intelligence: a Key Skill Set for ASD Kids

Discover how your autistic child’s dynamic intelligence can be harnessed through Relationship Development Intervention.

Dynamic intelligence, or dynamic thinking, is a set of cognitive abilities with a huge impact on a person’s quality of life. Dynamic intelligence is fundamental to building and maintaining meaningful relationships. It is a skill set that autistic children struggle to develop for a number of reasons. Fortunately, there are ways to help all children develop better dynamic thinking.

Teens and young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more likely to have suicidal thoughts. Could this be partly because they did not have an opportunity to develop dynamic intelligence to build more meaningful relationships? Dynamic thinking is a part of childhood development that should not be neglected.

What’s dynamic thinking?

Dynamic intelligence isn’t just one skill, but a toolbox of mental resources for working in complex, dynamic environments. It includes self-knowledge, mental habits, mindsets, and other tools that enable dynamic thinking.

Dynamic thinking skills drive the ability to follow and contribute to conversations in a meaningful way that builds rapport and creates a sense of belonging. These relationships skills give children a sense of self-worth and confidence, leading to better mental and emotional health throughout their life.

Dynamic intelligence also allows a person to navigate complex ideas and make high stakes decisions, leading to higher-paying jobs.

Static thinking

Let’s contrast dynamic thinking with static thinking, which is the ability to process things that stay the same and can be memorized, such as:

• 2+2 = 4
• Red lights mean “stop”; green lights mean “go”.
• Ten is always larger than three

Static thinking approaches the world as black and white, with clear right and wrong answers. Children on the autism spectrum often excel in this area. Many therapy approaches focus on static thinking skills, such as:

• Categorizing
• Deductive learning (procedural enactment)
• Concept learning (penmanship, typing)
• Formula application (reading and decoding the surface meaning)
• Imitating
• Following a schedule or set of instructions (instrumental social skills)
• Memorizing (facts and procedures like morning routines)

Obviously, most of the world we live in is far from static. It’s constantly changing and we have to adapt and change with it. This requires a different view of the world, called the Dynamic Model:

“In the Dynamic Model, we approach uncertainty in a different light. Rather than a problem or symptom, uncertainty is seen as the primary impetus, fueling our desire to explore and experiment with multiple possible futures, even as we learn that our future is as yet unwritten and can never be fully known.”
– S. Gutstein, 2012

This is why dynamic thinking is a vital skill autisitic children need to confidently navigate this crazy world we live in, to build friendships, and to be happy—yet it is the one skill they struggle with most. Let’s look at the concept a little deeper.

Dynamic thinking includes the ability to evaluate subjectively, compare several things at once, navigate a gray area and find a “just good enough” answer, or apply past experiences to determine the best course of action. Relationship Development Intervention uses tools like declarative language and co-regulation to develop a range of dynamic skills including anticipating what will happen next, determining the cause of an event, self-reflection, and summarizing a story or idea.

Here are some situations in which dynamic intelligence would be needed:

• Facing multiple competing goals with insufficient resources to attain them all. You have been invited to two different birthday parties on the same day at the same time. Both people are good friends. How do you decide which to attend? Is there time to do both? What if one is an activity party (like ziplining) and it would be hard to jump in halfway through?
• Making a decision when important information is limited, or only available in a fuzzy, partial manner. For example, choosing which movie to watch based on trailers or descriptions
• Making a decision where there is no right or wrong answer, or more than one right answer. For example, deciding if you should ride your bike to work or drive. Trade-offs include exercise, parking fees, gas expenses, and needing to change when you arrive. How do you choose? Could you sometimes bike and sometimes drive?
• Making important decisions containing many variables, resulting in difficult-to-predict future consequences. Any investment fits this description, whether playing the stock market, buying a house, or choosing a school to invest in your education. How do you choose what career path to follow?
• Progressing toward goals when the environment is highly volatile and subject to sudden, emergent change. You want to build a sandcastle at the beach, but the tide is coming in. Where do you build it? If you build it where the sand is wetter, the sand castle will stick together, but will you finish before the tide comes in?

The guiding relationship

As children develop, they engage in thousands of daily tasks, conversations, playful encounters, and challenges with their parents and caretakers. On the surface, these activities are just about enjoyment or getting a chore done, but they actually have a much more important purpose that in the Relationship Development world we refer to as guiding.

Parents give children hundreds of opportunities for mental and emotional self-growth. This Guiding Relationship that parents and children naturally engage in has two primary roles: the guide and the apprentice. The guide is the more competent partner who helps the apprentice—the child—make sense of the world and build skills, thought processes, and knowledge. Dynamic Intelligence is the primary product of the Guiding Relationship.

Sadly, this relationship often breaks down between parents and their autistic children, most commonly when children are around 12-24 months of age.

How the parent-child relationship breaks down

At a young age, autistic children are more cautious than neurotypical children in how they engage with the world, tending not to explore too much outside their comfort zone. These children often feel over-stimulated, which causes them to withdraw.

Parents usually misinterpret their child’s lack of interaction with an object or activity as the opposite—a lack of awareness or stimulation—and try to draw their child’s attention. The more overwhelming their bids for attention get, such as repeating the child’s name, the more the child will try to withdraw. Often, autistic children will focus on something calming and manageable to drown out the chaos, such as playing with a toy. Parents will see this and think that the toy is a distraction, so they’ll try to take it away; but in this situation the toy is a coping mechanism.

These misinterpretations build frustrations that break down not only the communication but the parent-child relationship itself. The children lose their sense of security in the relationship, becoming hesitant to engage with the parent outside of their basic needs.

Helping autistic kids learn to face challenges

Mental challenge builds dynamic intelligence. As humans, we have a curiosity drive to instinctively seek out challenges and explore uncertainty. However, because autistic children experience overstimulation and challenges with their parent relationships, this curiosity drive is often underdeveloped or even suppressed.

In Relationship Development Intervention, the consultant teaches parents to set up experiences that are just beyond a child’s mental and emotional capabilities. As part of this process, caregivers balance mental challenges with careful support adapted to address the child’s vulnerabilities and deliver help only when needed. By giving just enough help to guide a child to solve the problem at hand, parents enable their children to build confidence, problem solving skills, and new neural pathways.

We use dynamic intelligence skills every day; they’re essential to a child feeling confident, connected, and fulfilled in life. Guiding children to develop dynamic thinking could make the difference in helping them grow up and get their dream job, own a home, build strong relationships, and even fall in love.