on autism

People talk about autistic children.  They are stereotyped as people without emotions, people who don't speak, people who don't communicate in any way, people who have an interior life that is so complete that they don't need any outside communication.  They shrink from touch, they come undone easily, loud noises or change or an outside touch can turn them into shrieking, rocking, inconsolable puzzles that parents and counselors and caregivers alike are unable to fix.

For some, I'm sure, that's true.  But autism is a spectrum.  Not all children fit the mold.  Some do, some don't, some do at times and not at others.  My son is autistic.  He is high-functioning.  He has Asperger's Syndrome, or he did until the powers that be took it away from the diagnosis jungle and left us with the aforementioned "high-functioning" moniker.

If you were to meet my son, you probably would not realize at first that he's autistic.  He might seem a bit eccentric, a bit absorbed, a bit self-interested, but that would be it.  My son is missing the first give away for autism:  unsocial.  David is very social.  He says that he enjoys being by himself, but he also thoroughly enjoys people.  He has friends--more friends than I do!  He loves to talk on the phone.  He has had many girlfriends in his young life, and his current girlfriend and he have been going out for over a year.

Not that it hasn't been hard.  It has.  There have been struggles at home and at school.  We have a relationship that's different than any relationship that i've had with any of my other children.  Not better, not worse, but certainly different.  He has had to learn, and so have I.  And he has come a long way.

If you were to ask me what it's like living with an Asperger's kid, I'd have to tell you that I'm not sure.  I don't live with "an Asperger kid", I live with David.  From earliest childhood, I've come to realize that the things I loved most about him were things that marked him as autistic.  For example, he whistled or hummed constantly when he was in preschool.  As a musician, I was entranced!  When he was concentrating on learning something or understanding something, he would walk around and around in a circle.  Both of those, it turns out, are "self-stimulating" behavior and sure signs of autism.

David is incredibly talented.  My other kids are, too, but David has one skill that very few people --children or adults--are able to do.  From the time he was about 8, David could sing harmony with me.  My voice is so strong that I overpower most people and make them sing whatever I'm singing. Not him!  In fact, at this time in my life it's him that we look to if we want to make sure that we're singing something correctly.

David has an intense sense of right and wrong.  Things seem to be very black and white to him.  He cares a lot about truth, and he still becomes intensely angry if you mention that you think he might be lying.

Why am I writing this?  Well, I felt that I wanted to try to let you see that not all autistic people are dangerous.  In fact, very few are.  They are uniquely themselves, and each one is different.  For every autistic person who kills there are 1000 who do not--who would never dream of such a thing.  They are hard to get to know, maybe, but try.  You might find that once the effort has been made, the resulting friendship is well worth it.