She's Strong

It was hard for my parents to accept that she was different. I always knew she was though. She never wanted look me in the eyes, she was obsessed with the strangest things, and everything had to be done in a very certain way otherwise she would get upset. She loves bugs. She is always begging my parents for a new book on bugs, and I never knew that people could have meltdowns over dead bugs on the sidewalk until we took her to the park when she was three and cried so hard we had to leave. Until I got older I just thought everyone's siblings were like that until I realized it was just mine. Sometimes I feel invisible when my parents are around because they are always dealing with another meltdown. I like to stay quiet because my house is usually loud. I love her though. Some people ask me if I get annoyed or mad but I don't. Usually. If I do it goes away after a while because this is our life and I don’t think I would change it. She’s strong and I don’t think she knows she’s different yet but I’m sure someday someone will tell her and then I’ll have to be strong for her too.  


(From a sibling of a person with Aspergers)

"Curious Incident" from a Parent's Perspective

While thinking about the parent's perspective and take this novel, a large part of my thoughts were about how difficult it would be to have a child with autism or asperger's syndrome. I would expect that a parent would do or read anything they could to be able to understand or relate to their child. I wouldn't ever expect them to take anything word for word in a novel like this, because autism is a spectrum. No case is going to be exactly the same, but their are going to be similarities between cases. So books like this are going to be a comfort for the parents. They can find similarities they can relate to their child and see how Christopher reacts to experiences in his life. That is why this book is so cool, they are able to see it in a different perspective that they have probably been trying to understand for a very long time. I personally have no idea what it would even like to have a child, let alone a child that isn’t 100% healthy, so I really feel that I don’t have much authority on the subject, but as far as I can imagine having a child with this mental health problem would be heartbreaking. 


(From a parent of a child with ASD)

Swing, Batter, Batter

Today my teacher had us pick a topic. We will use this to make a poster board of it to show the rest of the class. She said I could do baseball for my topic. I couldn't do it for our last project and that made me so mad. I glad she's letting me pick it for this assignment. Baseball is really amazing. Did you know that the fastest recorded pitch was 108.1 miles per hour? It was pitched by Nolan Ryan in 1974, while they were doing some tests on how fast he could pitch. Some people say this doesn't count because it wasn't during a game but I don't think so. If he pitched it that fast then it counts. I can’t believe they could track it that long ago. My friend Riley said its weird for a girl to like baseball so much so I stopped talking to him for the day. It doesn't matter what I like, especially if I know more than him. My teacher says we are going to spend most of the week on this assignment. Hopefully I learn a lot more about baseball. I wonder if anyone has ever hit a pitch that fast. I'm not sure if I could.


(From a student with Aspergers)

Loud, Busy, and Unpredictable

One of the most challenging things about being a parent of someone with an autism spectrum disorder is having to constantly educate everyone else about the situation. If I take my child out into public, there's definitely going to be some awkward situations. Places are loud, busy, and unpredictable--three things my kid (and others with ASD) can't really stand. I'm constantly having to explain to others, "He's not misbehaving, he just reacts differnetly to things." People stare. They whisper. But I hear and see it all. I hear them say, "What's wrong with that kid?" or "If he were mine, I'd discipline him." Sometimes people suggest that I leave him at home. But why is the the one that has to change? Why is he the one that has to be different? 

I don't think anyone realizes how lonely his life can be. He doesn't go outside to play with other kids. He doesn't get invited to their birthday parties. Everywhere we go, everyone just looks at him like he's strange. Sometimes I don't know what to do. Sometimes I'm just as frustrated as everyone else with him. 

(From a parent with a child with Autism)

Big Foot

I have been reading up on Bigfoot and I think that I know how I could catch him. I believe that if I were to travel to a mountain range, I can set traps around my camp with ropes and triggers. I don't think that the ropes would really catch his body, but the point of them would be to make him make enough noise so I could get a picture or at least a few clumps of hair. That would be enough to convince people that Bigfoot was actually real.

I know that a lot of people don't think he is real, and I don't actively try to insist on it. However, because he hasn't been proven to not be real, than I don't see why we need to function under the assumption that he isn't real. We cannot dismiss things just because we don't think there is enough proof, just like we cannot accept things without enough proof. 

Facts are what makes the world keep turning. Without facts, we wouldn't have gravity or evolution or chocolate or the possibility of Bigfoot hanging around. Without facts, we would all just be people running around, doing people things, without anything else. Sometimes I wish people respected facts more, but the I realize that not everyone can, because that's what makes scientists and mathematicians and those people so special. We see what others can't. 

(From a student with ASD)

The Park Hill

Some sisters are close because of things like dresses and hot actors in favorite movies. Not us. Kelly's not like most girls. They worry about make up and popularity while she would much rather be in a corner sitting quietly by herself. Most times she won't talk to you. She'll just sit there and stare. I've told her she shouldn't, that it makes people uncomfortable, but she hasn't got much better at it. Mom and Dad say I need to be more patient with her, that it's hard for her to interact with strangers. It's always okay for her to act up, but when I do it I get in trouble. She started screaming in the store once when she was 9 and I was 11 and they ignored it until she stopped and we went home. When I did that the next week cause Mom was taking too long shopping for a dress, I got scolded and wasn't allowed to play with my friends for a week. She always gets special treatment while I'm working my butt off for what I get. 

But she's still my sister, you know? I love her to death. Sure she can be a handful like all the time, but if you have questions about the sky, she can answer them. That's what brings us close. I take her to the park and we lie down on the grass and I point to clouds and she tells me what type they are and if it means rain and what types of fronts are moving through with certain kinds of clouds and weather patterns. At night, she'll tell me what constellations you can see and the names of the stars she knows and the Greek stories for some of them ("But that's stupid because people can't turn into stars"). And sometimes we just lay there and think about the stars. Because lying there with her I can almost feel the impact she's made on my life and I wouldn't dream of changing it. ("What people call shooting stars and comets are most often meteors.")

(Sibling of a person with Aspergers)

Mondays

Mondays are my favorite days. I like Mondays because they begin the entire week. After Monday, the same things happen in school for the rest of the week, except Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday and Sunday, we don’t go to school because it is the weekend and instead we have free time to do things that we want to do besides school, like reading and playing outside. I only do one of those things: reading. I do not like playing outside because grass itches my legs and arms and I will probably get very dirty.

Today is a Monday, so I go to school until 3:30 and then I will go back to my home. My first teacher is a good one. I trust Mrs. Jones because she lets me sit in class quietly. Sometimes teachers ask me questions that I don’t know how to answer because I did not pay attention to the actual question they asked. I do pay attention to their words, though, but they say that is not the same thing. I keep count of the words each person says at one time, to make sure they end with an even number. I prefer an even amount of words because it completes a full idea better than an odd amount of words would. Here is what I mean: if a teacher says something and ends with an odd number, a student will have to continue where he left off and hopefully finish their thought on an even number. If no even number is ever reached, the conversation will last for a long time and maybe even the entire class period. I told Mrs. Jones this once, and she said that if I want to contribute to the conversation by adding in my own even amounts of words, then I just have to raise my hand and she will let me. Sometimes I raise my hand. Today I will probably not raise my hand because Mrs. Jones just assigned us a new reading to do and told us there will be a quiz on Friday. She said all this in sixteen words. 

(From a student with Aspergers)