I have a few reasons I started this blog, the first one being so people can understand how autism effects us. Even then you would still only be learning one experience and they are all different, but I am very grateful to be able to share how autism effects our lives.Another reason is when I started looking for support that was positive and without comparison, it was harder to find then I thought it would be. I am still a part of support groups and read what people are going through all the time because I want to learn about there experience to.
When someone says, kids with autism don't understand danger, I don't agree with that. Our son is brave that is for sure but he is also very careful and rarely gets hurt because he seems to inspect danger ahead of time when it comes to simple things. I used to think he was not aware of big dangers such as cars in parking lots, but when I started to really think about how he processes the world I began to slow way down. I had to stop being in such a hurry all the time because I wasn't giving him time to take it all in the way he needed to. No, I don't always have time for this but when I do, it clearly makes a difference for him.
As an adult who can barely focus for more than a half hour at a time I am blown away by my sons focus. Lets say we are outside by a street and there are cars. He is playing and he knows there are cars but across the street a leaf is blowing in the wind. He starts to go towards it and it seems he has no understanding of the danger. Well, I don't think it's a lack of understanding I think it's the focus on the leaf. It's to powerful of an interest and he is focused on the leaf and the movement, the busy street just became a thing of the past.
Toddlers are that way in general but you throw a twist of autism in with that and you have to put your running shoes on. As a parent you have stopped your child from being hit by a car, but the autism is still focused on the leaf and now you might have a meltdown on your hands because you just put a brick wall in front of the focus and it hasn't processed.
If you read symptoms for autism you might find yourself picturing a zombie of a child that won't look at you, won't speak, never listens, shows no emotion, and when they are not beating there head off a wall they must be running in front of cars with a lost look on there face.This is not what autism is like for us, and that list of symptoms can create some negative images for people who aren't effected.I started to hate the symptoms of autism because no child falls into all of the symptoms. That's what is tricky about autism, it's not so clearly defined. I tend to think the only way autism will ever be completely understood is by getting to know 1 in every 88 children on a personal level. For now, keep your mind open and spend a day looking for the things that could completely distract you if you had no control over what your mind wanted to absorb. At the end of they day you might just realize how many really awesome things you don't process while your rushing through life. If you are caring for an autistic child...slow way down and put your running shoes on.
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