The cave is a private space where an individual can think, reflect, and transform learning from external knowledge to internal belief. 

Australia’s Campfires, Caves, and Watering Holes

The cave is a private space, where students can find that much needed alone time useful for reflection on their learning or just to recharge. (a necessary space for those students with Aspergers).

Campfires, Caves and Watering holes | Libraries, Youth and the Digital Age

As an autistic person, I can think of lots of reason why this child might have preferred to be sitting alone. His other option might have been sitting with bullies, which was my only other option at his age. Of course, the adults didn’t see the kids talking to me as bullies. They saw them as nice. Nice people peppering me with questions about why I did all the things I did differently than everyone else, from my food, my wardrobe and my vocabulary. Alone was certainly preferable to that, and if this child is being bullied, that should be addressed.

But there are other reasons for a person, any person but most specifically, an autistic person, to seek solitude. Perhaps the only choices of people to talk with have such vastly different interests there would be no topic of conversation. Perhaps the sound of others chewing food is distressing. Perhaps one just needs some time to recharge and think, without having to process language and social cues.

Karla Fisher has a great visual she uses for IEP advocacy called “Our breaks are not like NT breaks.” She points out that, for an autistic person, lunch and recess can be the most stressful times of the day.

On a regular basis at work, I hear about children who are alone at lunch and recess, from their worried parents. I always ask the child what they like to do at those times. Sometimes I hear stories of wanting to play but being excluded. Often I hear stories of not being able to find someone who wants to play or do similar things. And then I hear about the child who prefers to spend recess looking for rocks – alone. It always seems I am the first person to have ever asked the question.

The autistic community has a solution for this, for autistic events. They are Color Communication Badges. With green displayed, the message is to approach. With yellow, only known people are welcomed. With red displayed, the wearer is to be left alone except in direst emergency. This makes it easy at autistic events, to know if a person sitting alone would relish or loathe company.

Why don’t we have something like that at schools? Color badges or seat markers or perhaps a choice chart the child can use in class before recess.

I (,) Object – Nightengale of Samarkand

One of the more interesting ideas emerging from attention capital theory is the surprising role environment can play in supporting elite cognitive performance.

Professional writers seem to be at the cutting edge of this experimentation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the near future, we start to see more serious attention paid to constructing seriously deep spaces as our economy shifts towards increasingly demanding knowledge work.

Simon Winchester’s Writing Barn – Study Hacks – Cal Newport

Further reading,