Living with autism

[The_Jazz]

This appeared in the Chicago Tribune Magazine over the weekend. The author, David Royko, is the son of my all-time favorite columnist. While it was great to read another Royko's work, I need to point out that this is gut-wrenching stuff, especially if you're a parent.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/featur...mepagenews-utl

It's possible that a login is needed to view this story. If that's the case, let me know and I'll cut and paste it in.

Thankfully Max is showing no signs at all of autism, but this is one of the best pieces of inside journalism I've ever read. There's no happy ending here, but if you know anything about the disorder, I bet you expected that.

[abaya]

Jazz, wanted to say thanks for this article, I read it all... it's worth it. I have a cousin with Asperger's, very high functioning autism, and even that was a strain on most days (he lives in my mom's house). I can't imagine what our household would have become if he was any less functional than that... and yet, here's people who have survived it for 12 years.

I don't know how the parenting instinct can be so strong as to get you through that without giving up sooner... but I guess that's because I'm not a parent yet. I just hope that if we ever have to go through something like that, that we won't lose our minds in the process.

[Sweetpea]

This really gives perspective. thank you for sharing this Jazz.

[hambone]

wow, that was heart wrenching. I know two families that just found out their child is autistic. This is so hard and scary

[Blaspheme]

This kind of article really makes me cringe. Stories like this are usually published with "the best of intentions" and yet they convey a very extreme picture of Autism that doesn't accurately describe a large percentage of the children suffering from the disorder. In fact, the current terminology favored by professionals is not "Autism" but rather "Autism Spectrum Disorder" because the potential symptoms are so widely varied that they cover an entire spectrum of behaviors. People suffering from an Autism Spectrum Disorder aren't all physically dangerous poo-flinging problems that need institutional care, sadly these kind of articles tend to reinforce that picture.

You see, I have two children, boys of 6 and 8. Both of them have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Neither of them is violent, they don't break things or fling excrement. My eldest is a video game fanatic, he was beating the "Super Mario" games on the SNES at the age of 5. Currently he's hooked on playing Black & White 2 on the PC I just built them. He just finished the school year where he spends most of his day unassisted in a "normal" classroom and he achieved high marks in the AR reading program and mathematics. My younger boy is a Lego fanatic and regularly builds entire fleets of spacecraft so he can run around the house re-enacting his favorite battles from the Star Wars movies. In his own words, he prefers "Dark Side" and I can only hope he'll agree to let old Dad help rule the universe when he takes over.

The problem both of them share is in spoken language. Neither of my boys really started speaking until around age 4, and at that point their vocabulary and usage were closer to what you'd expect of a 2 year old. Both of them are quite intelligent, even rating somewhat above average on tests that ignore the linguistic components, but for some reason their brain just isn't wired to comprehend language in the same way as most people. With education and therapy my 8 year old speaks in a manner that is nearly indistinguishable from his classmates and friends. My 6 year old's progress is somewhat behind where his big brother's was at the same age but not so severely that there's not every reason to believe he'll achieve just as highly with time. One interesting hallmark of Autism Spectrum though, is that neither of them can understand sarcasm and they will interpret what is said to them as literal with no ability to understand the cues that let the rest of us interpret the meaning correctly.

Oh my, I am getting long winded. I'd just like to make people aware that news articles like this just don't tell the whole story. It's so much harder for those of us spending our lives with Autism Spectrum when the mention of it conjures such extreme images in the mind of the average person. It's a prejudice that's hard to overcome, and kids like mine have enough strikes against them without dealing with pre-conceived bias. Perhaps someday the popular articles will convey a more balanced image, but I'm not holding my breath on that issue because "train wrecks" tend to draw more viewers than more moderate stories.

[Mith]

A good friend of mine was diagnosed with Asperger's at the age of 13. Thank God, they were finally able to take him off the misprescribed medications and start helping. He's pretty much normal but has some trouble with keeping the volume of his voice at acceptable levels.

[Titan_Uranus]

A buddy of mine teaches at private school for autistic kids ,I was speaking to him the other day ,and he was saying that breaks him down the most, is the parents who most of time want nothing to do with their own children.