People will tell you that Aspergians feel no emotions. I categorically deny this. After reading Temple Grandin's books, I believe that we are much closer to the emotions felt by animals than by humans. I realize that in the last sentence I referred to "humans" in the third person. I did this intentionally. I've never felt human. I don't know what humans feel like, exactly, but I'm pretty sure I'm not like that. Which brings me to how I got here. A story.
A couple of weeks ago I was dropping my pumpkins* off at day camp. As I drove up to the facility and prepared to turn right into the parking lot, another car in the opposite lane took advantage of my slowing to rather violently turn left in front of me. At the time I thought it was rather aggressive. So, I ended up following Aggressive Driver's car to the drop-off point. The way this works is, you pull up and wait for the counselors to help your offspring and their stuff out. AD's car was already rocking back and forth when the counselor walked up to open the passenger-side door. She opened the door and these flailing feet popped out. She tried to reach in for the child, but he kept kicking. They stopped and pulled up a little further so my offspring could safely exit our vehicle. They hugged and kissed me bye as I watched three counselors physically pull this boy out of his car. The parent literally peeled away as soon as the door was closed. The little red-haired boy was standing, being held by two female counselors screaming, "Daddy! Don't leave me Daddy! Please don't leave! Daddy!" over and over again. Finally they dragged him inside. It took every ounce of strength in my body to not get out and run to the boy and hug him. Actually, I have to be honest, my first instinct was to chase down Dad's car and lay him out. I subsequently confirmed with the lady signing in that the boy was autistic and that this was a good day. I picked up my munchkins later that afternoon and One of Two and Two of Two said that he had been like that off and on all morning. That poor baby.
So, here I am to give you my Aspergian perspective. I can't tell you what it's like to have a classically autistic child ... although I'm pretty sure One of Two has an ASQ in the 30's. I can tell you what it's like to be functionally autistic. I see my role as the translator here. I understand exactly some things that might have been going through Screamer's mind.
First is that obviously there's something he doesn't like about this particular day camp and I would try to find out what it is. It's probably not obvious to a human. I can guess that being stuck with a hundred screaming protohumans all day is even more excruciating for him than it would be for me or One of Two, who hits a wall sometime in the afternoon and pleads to leave early on Friday. Why force this child to go to a place he clearly doesn't like?
Second, and this is really important, he may not realize that Dad is coming back. Every day he gets abandoned all over again. Imagine how unbearably awful that would be. And it's not that far-fetched, I can't verbalize it, but I clearly see how it could be. I think this might be the more accurate. I know there's a theory that you sometimes have to force your children to do something unpleasant or that they don't like, but this looked like a different level of pain altogether.
A mistake parents often make is thinking that an Aspergian or autistic child is just being unreasonable. I hate buttons, and my parents used to force me to try and wear clothes with buttons on them. I remember very vividly as a young girl having a large chunk of hair ripped out by a button (it seemed huge and was unbelievably painful). To them it was no big deal so they never thought about it. To me I couldn't understand why they kept trying to force me to deal with this thing of which I was so afraid. After we finally figured out my aversion they never tried again. As an adult I still don't like buttons, but I'm no longer afraid of them.
So, that's why I'm here. For this little one and all the others like us.
*puppies, kittens, munchkins, babies, I rarely call them "kids" ... I mean, really, they're clearly not goats
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
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