Duyile Commends GTCO Autism Conference, Suggests Introduction Of More Practical Things 

Lanre Duyile is the President and CEO of Behaviorprise Consulting Inc and Behaviorprise College of Business and Health Studies, Toronto Canada. He is one of the facilitators at the 16th Annual Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO), Autism two-day Conference at the MUSIN Centre in Onikan, Lagos. He spoke with some selected Journalists which include Gentechnews Editor, Tony Nwakaegho after his presentation.

I am Lanre Duyile, a Board-Certified Behaviour Analyst and an instructor teaching Behavior Analysis at the University in the US. He said that GTCO is trying its best to move from Autism Awareness to accepting Autism as a condition that is to be understood by everyone.

Duyile said that what he was trying to do at his presentation was to bring it to the ground level because you cannot talk about acceptance without understanding the behaviour of the people that have autism.

According to him, most behaviour can be misleading, stressing that generally speaking if you are talking to somebody and they are not looking at you and making eye contact you may assume generally speaking that the person is being disrespectful.

He noted that somebody who has autism with this kind of behaviour indicates that he is trying to avoid eye contact for whatever reason, adding “we need to understand those behaviours for acceptance to be a thing that we can begin to talk about.

He emphasized the fact that we should focus on the behaviours, and that was why he shared the tools that can be used to establish if there is a pattern in the behaviour.

“You watch somebody for two weeks, record the behaviour you are interested in, then you use the scattered plugs that I entered and shared with the people to see if there is a pattern so that the pattern can be established,” he said.

 Fielding question on what an illiterate parent can do under such situation, and Duyile explained that for an illiterate parent like a market seller, he will teach her to record the data using her phone or wristwatch and that if the behaviour happens, he or she will just note the time and make the mark somewhere.

He stated further that he can give her a bean and asked her that if the behaviour happens put a bean in a bag and at the end of the day, he will get the number of beans in the bag to know the number of days in that pattern.

He said that it depends on the parents if they cannot read or write on what they are able to do.

He maintained that he was trying to teach those who are able to transfer the information from that data into the chart, stressing that if the person is illiterate and unable to do that the person needs to consult with a local therapist to figure out what the person has to do.

Speaking on the availability of therapists, he disclosed that in Nigeria they don’t have enough therapists, even in the US and Canada where he lives, hence they are always training people.

So, he said that in Nigeria, they need to train people, but sometimes some may say that they don’t want to do this anymore and they want to do something else, hence ongoing training is important.

Duyile advised parents with autistic children to get little things that can be used to teach and communicate, adding that there are simple things that they can use to establish trends and behaviours.

Asked if there is any government intervention, he noted that right now he is not sure of any government intervention, but that the movement is on, citing the presence of the First Lady of Ogun State who was at this year’s event.

He also mentioned that the Chairman of Onigbogbo Local Government of Lagos State visited him at his office in Canada recently with a promise that they will start doing something about it.

He affirmed that GTCO is spending a lot of money on this programme to create awareness and that people are trying to do something, though it is taking a long time but he believes that there is a movement.

“We are moving from knowing about autism to accepting them in the classroom, at home, for adults in the workplace. We need to set up their homes to be a safe place where families are comfortable and their children are comfortable. In the classroom we need to set the classroom in such a way that somebody with autism is able to learn, So, teachers have a role to play to know that if he hires someone with autism how would he make the place inclusive enough for the person to thrive,” he added.

The therapist expert advised that it is not enough to say let’s do acceptance, we need to get players, parents, teachers, and the government to take some actions to make it an acceptable thing.

Duyile commended GTCO for the Autism Conference, which he described as getting better, adding that he believes that there is room for improvement for everything and still continues to find ways to make it more practical for people.

“You can see that this year we are trying to suggest practical things that people can do at home,” he said.