I might have heard about this 2008 Thai action movie, but missed the, you know, HOOK.
The trailer’s on YouTube. The whole movie’s streaming on Netflix.
I know what I’m watching tonight.
Sometimes autism looks like jazz hands in the middle of ten girls who either don’t know their lines or when to come in with them, and even though you know the script backwards and forwards you can’t whisper the lines because you’re wearing a body mic and you don’t want the audience to hear, and a couple of scenes from now you’re going to start panicking and crying because suddenly the teacher has moved a scene out in front of the curtains, which is not how you did it in rehearsal, but you still make your entrance on cue and say your lines confidently through tears because you are a FUCKING PROFESSIONAL, and after the show when you open your Hershey bar and find out that it’s broken and accidentally drop a piece of chocolate and the wrapper on the sidewalk and start screaming and thrashing and punching Daddy over and over and OVER again, and a few minutes later on the drive home, after he’s carried you to the car and you’re feeling much calmer, you ask why you did that, WHY did you hit Daddy like that, and your parents have no answer for you, although inside they’re both wondering if it’s time to start talking to you about autism.
Sometimes, this is what autism looks like.
When someone tells you their child is autistic, don’t tell them that you’re sorry.
Ask “What’s s/he like?”
Let the parent say “brilliant” or “funny” or “kind of a challenge these days.”
Ask “Does s/he have a special interest?”
Let the parent say “trains” or “baseball” or “elevators.”
There is a reason it’s called a spectrum (and not a continuum from “better” to “worse”).
Every spectrum kid is different. Like any other kid is different.
Like any other kid, some days.
Leo (featured in the iPad: Year One video, as well as an SF Weekly cover story) won his original iPad in a school raffle.
Now that he has an iPad 2, his family has decided to raffle off his old iPad. Several developers have also contributed free copies of apps that kids on the spectrum find fun and/or useful.
The winner of the iPad will also receive the following free apps, courtesy of their developers:
- Dr. Seuss’s ABC by Oceanhouse Media
- Bob Books by Learning Touch
- TouchTrainer by Orderd.com
- Turn Taker by Orderd.com
- Quibble Kids by Chess Pie Media
- Swapsies by Spinlight Studio
- TallyTots by Spinlight Studios
- Speech With Milo: Verbs by Doonan Speech Therapy *NEW*
- Speech With Milo: Prepositions by Doonan Speech Therapy
- Speech With Milo: Sequencing by Doonan Speech Therapy
- All About Me by I Get It! LLC
- Color Mix for Kids by EightFold Education *NEW*
- Be Confident by Electric Eggplant *NEW*
- Zanny: Born to Run by Extra Special Kids LLC *NEW*
- GraceApp by Steven Troughton-Smith *NEW*
- The Three Little Pigs Interactive Storybook by Nosy Crow Apps *NEW*
- iCommunicate by Grembe *NEW*
Proceeds from the raffle will go to the Autism Science Foundation, a pro-science, pro-vaccine organization that funds autism research.
At just $10 (or however much you’d like to contribute), it’s a great potential gift for kids on or off the spectrum.
Buy a ticket, won’t you?
Newsweek¹ and The Daily Beast sneak hyperlexia a little farther into the national conversation surrounding autism, with an excerpt from an upcoming memoir by Priscilla Gilman.
Gilman reacts defensively at first when her son is rejected from a high-end preschool, before she understands that precociousness and special needs are not mutually exclusive.
How could that woman, that school—one that prided itself on a joyful, progressive approach to learning—not see Benj for the amazing, original, bright little boy he was? According to my husband, Richard, at the screening 2½-year-old Benj had in fact taken the magnetic letters and spelled out “Benjamin,” “flapjack,” and “Friday.” He’d then arranged the numbers in sequence from one to 10, calling out each one in an excited voice while beaming up into the teacher’s face. So what if he didn’t say “hello” or respond to the teacher’s offer of crayons? Sharing his enthusiasm about the alphabet and numbers was his way of being friendly.
I acknowledge some people might find the “I grew so much personally from parenting a special needs child.” meta-narrative too self-indulgent to stomach. And admittedly the familiarity of her son’s challenges predisposes me to be interested—as our family has learned through blogging, it matters to find other families experiencing the same thing you are.
But it seems Gilman’s book is about the larger issue of calling yourself on your own parenting fantasies, and accepting the grief that comes when you realize that your children are who they are.
Most parents reach that point when their children reach adulthood. Special needs parents have the moment handed to them early on.
So I don’t know whether I’ll get to teach my kid to throw or hit a baseball, or to draw his own comics, or build cities with Legos, or to stay up way past bedtime playing Hearts and Gin Rummy. I don’t know when this 1st grader with a 5th-grade reading ability will let me read to him a book past the end of Chapter Two. I don’t know when he will eat enough kinds of foods that we could all go camping for a week, or on a trip outside the country. I don’t know when I’ll feel confident he’ll stop each time he runs into the street. So yes, a good part of raising this AWESOME kid is feeling frustrated, anxious, and sad.
But we do get to cuddle, and laugh, and act out grand adventures, and quote Looney Tunes lines² to each other, and sing “The Book Report” from You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown loudly ’til we get the rhythm wrong and have to start again.
Most days? I’ve got it pretty good.
Read more of the excerpt of Gilman’s memoir.
(via Andrew Sullivan).
¹You’ve heard of Newsweek. Now almost completely ad-free!
²“Slight pause whilst I adjust my accoutrements.”
At an autism support group, parents of autistic children are better at sharing their troubles than at listening themselves. (1:47)
With a thick coating of evocative music and shallow focus, but goddammit this made me cry. Also: a pretty lady’s smile? I AM NOT MADE OF STONE.
Made by Rethinking Autism, an organization that believes in using good-looking people, autistic adults, and good-looking autistic adults to try to convince you to pay attention.
Professor Firefly takes attendance at the weekly staff meeting.
(A short snippet from the table reading we did in September.)
I HAVE NOT TOLD YOU ABOUT FIREFLY AND FRIENDS.
I am helping to make a TEEVEE SHOW. My wife Christa is MAKING it and I am helping.
It will be for kids like mine who are bright but socially awkward. It will be for nerds, parents of nerds, and NERD FAMILIES.
It will be SUPER FUNNY and also co-developed with speech therapists who work with kids on the autism spectrum.
Because current videos for ASD kids speak slowly and gently to them as if they are developmentally delayed. When in reality they (or at least the high-functioning ones) are often just CLUELESS and WEIRD.
(The show will help them with the clueless part.)
I will write about this again, when Christa is ready to raise money for her pilot thru Kickstarter.
Here is a short snippet (35 seconds) from the first table reading, where Mark (in the role of Professor Firefly) is really Frank Morganing it up.
(Source: fireflyandfriends)
I remember a time several years ago before Ben had very much language when he was eating crackers. I cut him off after what I judged to be enough. He reached and struggled for the box, yowling, “Box! Box! Box!”
“No more crackers.” I said holding my limit-setting ground.
Frustration and its attendant trappings ensued, until he finally got the box and started reading the copy on the back.
He just wanted to read the box.
The video (YouTube link) is a minute-and-a-half long melodrama, a PSA from Japan about a boy on the spectrum, and the adults working to cope with and understand his difference.
It’s a smart bit of story compression, even if its emotional pitch is severely overclocked.
Our boy is far more engaged with the world outside himself than the child portrayed here; more playful, more verbal, more capable of charming others with his confidence, his expressiveness, and his comedic timing.
But still we who have raised him (as well as his team of committed school professionals¹) have days like this, where we feel stymied by an inscrutable and implacable need of his. Even now, when he is so much more capable of language to express himself, there are moments when I draw him close, his eyes welling up with tears as I tell him that I want to help him, we’re a team, we can figure it out together.
And then he punches me in the jaw.²
We’ve never taken him to a doctor for his autism. Never tried to cure him by removing dairy or wheat from his diet, or by injecting compounds into his body to flush the heavy metals from his bloodstream.³
The job instead, it seems to me, is to help him grow into a man who understands that while there is a time and a place for his agenda, that sometimes it is more important to simply sit and have a conversation with his spouse about dining room chair options, or to pretend that the executive director of his organization has the slightest clue what the @#$% she is talking about, or to draw a stupid tree when he is asked.
Without. punching. anyone.
¹Paid for by the people of Oakland and the state of California, so: THANKS FOR THAT.
²Fortunately, he isn’t any good at this.
³And angry reblog in 5… 4… 3…
