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April 3 - April 8, 2020
People with ASD aren’t aliens, and we have many of the same thoughts and feelings as anyone else; the difference is in the intensity of those feelings and the degree to which they affect our functioning. Remember that only a professional can properly diagnose someone with ASD.
This means you need to figure out your own strengths and weaknesses and how you’re going to use them.
catchphrase-spouting
When I spoke in movie quotes, I didn’t necessarily know what I was saying; I just liked the way it sounded.
So when someone said to me, “Answer a question,” I thought that meant I could give literally any answer.
Finally, I finished the test, which took much longer than it needed to. I’d been thinking about the Lego the whole time and I couldn’t wait any longer.
When I was first diagnosed with ASD, I didn’t feel that different from other kids. But I did know one thing: my senses were heightened. Kind of like Daredevil, if he sucked.
A meltdown is an autistic person’s involuntary reaction to something they can’t control or understand. For example: “In class today, some guy kept rubbing two pieces of foam together. The sound made my skin crawl, and I lost it.” A tantrum, on the other hand, is a fit that comes from wanting something but not getting it: e.g., “What?! The karaoke bar doesn’t do reservations on Friday? Hulk Smash!”
Matthew was having the opposite problem: it turned out he was hyposensitive, meaning his senses were too dull.
It’s like his senses were so dull that a polar bear plunge was the only thing that could wake them up.
autistic can feel like: it’s an imbalance.
based on my experiences and from talking to other people on the spectrum, it’s quite the opposite: you feel every possible emotion and see every possible outcome of a social situation at once.
It wasn’t always clear to me when someone was actually making fun of me, and I often didn’t realize it until another person pointed it out.
Autistic people want relationships, but on their own terms. Some prefer one-on-one interaction. Others like to keep it to a Skype call.
They’re also capable of lying, usually to cover up something they don’t want to do but can’t find the words to explain why.
A fixation is, at its essence, just a love of something. Most people have hobbies or passions. But for people with autism, their fixation is the driving force behind everything they do.
anything we can research, systematize, and organize is comfortable for us.
Some kids just seemed to sense my difficulty in interpreting social cues and would take advantage of me. And the saddest thing was, I never had a clue.
was always a heartbreaking thing to learn secondhand that people—people who I thought liked me—were actually messing with my mind. And as time went on, it started to really put me at odds with others. I wasn’t sure who I could trust.
Self-advocacy is an autistic person’s best friend and an important concept for anyone with special challenges. In my experience, many students with ASD are inclined to work harder when you can collaborate with them and tailor a program to their skill set. Things like independent learning plans can be very helpful.
I believe people should be taught newer, more realistic social skills that go beyond “be nice and tell the truth.”
But how in the world do you teach all of the nuance?
It’s not even so much that you want to be liked; it’s that you want to be understood by other people. And if your efforts at being understood are futile, then what’s the point?
The Jim Henson Company, which has been rightly lauded for doing its research, worked with the Autism Self Advocacy Network to create Julia, the autistic character on Sesame Street. Part of the reason her portrayal was so revolutionary was that the writers didn’t go to researchers—they went directly to people with autism. Having people with ASD in the writers’ room is a huge deal, and it helps create something honest and lived-in.
As for the individuals themselves, they’ve learned to turn a perceived handicap into a strength. One might even call it a superpower.
Websites like Wrong Planet have provided a space where folks on the spectrum can congregate without the typical anxieties that come with real-life social interactions.
As someone with autism, I need closure.
Literal language means exactly what it says. Figurative language, on the other hand, paints word pictures and allows us to “see” a point. It uses similes, metaphors, and hyperbole to describe something, often by comparing it to something different. Figurative language is great for poetry, but not so easy for people on the spectrum.
I’ve said before, people with autism do have the capacity to feel—in fact, we often feel so much at once that we shut down as a coping mechanism.
Also, we don’t always assign the right meaning to our feelings.
The teacher told me I should “act natural,” but I was incapable of doing that. Up until then, every conversation I had had been scripted. Penned by Ma and Pa McCreary, and unconvincingly performed by yours truly.
A stim might indicate that someone has a problem, but the stim itself is not the problem. In fact, asking an autistic person not to stim can end up causing more problems than the stim itself.
In a world like this, all we have left is our ability to empathize.
My awkward experiences might not be universal, but I know that the feelings are.
Autism Canada – autismcanada.org Autism Ontario– www.autismontario.com/ Autism Society of America – www.autism-society.org/ Autistic Self Advocacy Network – www.autisticadvocacy.org Geneva Centre for Autism – www.autism.net/ National Autistic Society – www.autism.org.uk/ Specialisterne Canada – ca.specialisterne.com/
