Wide and Wonderful

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http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-1-13/36879.html

Wide and Wonderful

Autistic Spectrum Disorder viewed through the eyes of a child's

father

By Damian Robin

Epoch Times UK Staff

You may be motionless, giving no interactive clues or cues.

You can be gurgling behind a persistent smile while flapping your

hands till your fingers blur.

You could have the frenzied energy of a pack of attacked

chimpanzees, rushing directionless, darting through hedges without a

care for people or pain.

You might have no talents.

You might have a PhD.

All these ways of being are tones on The Autistic Spectrum—the

colourful name for a wide series of descriptions of atypical

behaviour, a mode of taking in information without reading the human

aspects of life very well.

The term 'autism' was coined sixty years ago. At that time doctors

diagnosed only the most obvious. The children and, less so, adults

who stood out like painful thumbs. But the hand of wider society did

not go out to them or their families with much warmth.

In those days the absent father worked well behind the domestic

stage leaving mums as sole directors of the first four years of each

child's development. So it was mums who were pigeonholed for the

correct or misfortunate acting out of each couple's children.

Freudians were boss in the post-war social dysfunction. They had

pedigree and a leather-buttoned stuffiness that passed for more

potent truth than the other psychologies so, when Freudians baptised

the childcare of the mothers of autistic children in a whitewash

of 'cold upbringing' and 'withheld emotion' it began to stick. They

called them 'Refrigerator Mothers'.

Four Autistic Boys in One Family

So we are lucky today for those women who kept playing on through

the tantrums, bewilderment and social castigation. For now we have

mothers like Jacqui , who has seven children, four of them

autistic, and agreed to a documentary and a drama being made from

the details of her family life.

Magnificent 7 (the drama) and Autism and Me (documentary) attempted

to give a positive perspective on the celebration of being

different. The real family IS different. If having seven

children in this day and age doesn't do it then what about having

four boys who have dyslexia, dyspraxia, difficulties with

socialising; Asperger's Syndrome (difficulty in social relationships

and communication, limitations in imagination and creative play);

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), multiple food

allergies; autism, cerebral palsy and extreme sensitivity to

physical stimuli so wearing clothes is difficult?

But hey, the girls are okay.

They do not show the major traits of the Autistic Spectrum:

difficulties forming social relationships, problems with verbal and

non-verbal communications and the development of strong narrow

obsessional interests.

Self-made Rules for AS People

Nor do they insist on the safety barriers of predictability put up

by many Autistic Spectrum people. I have noticed in the AS people

around me that self-made rules become all-important in social

interaction.

For instance, I took my nine-year-old son, who is diagnosed with an

array of attributes including Pervasive Developmental Disorder, to a

Christmas Party organised by the Sheffield Autistic Society.

After the simple and very ordered sit-down party food there was a

dance session. I felt sorry for my son as all the others seemed to

be familiar with the music and know what to do. They lined up

without prompting and moved in self-tidying unison.

My son became discouraged and squatted on his haunches. He stayed

down for the duration.

Later I found that the children, some profoundly autistic, had not

been familiar with the routines nor had they practised for the

disco. They were copying one neuro-typical girl of about eleven

years old who was moving confidently to the music (the Cha-Cha

Slide, which has a number of set movements like line dancing). Neuro-

typical is the name used by AS people to prevent mainstream society

marginalising them.

My son did not know what might happen and felt unsafe. The neuro-

typical girl is the sister of an autistic member of the society and

had been to many of these events so the other children had come to

know that she was unlikely to deviate from what they were familiar

with and felt okay. For them things stayed unchallenging. Copable

within their reality. Normal.

'Normal' is not a word used often in autistic circles. Although the

girls/women in the family look 'normal'-enough they would

probably be called neuro-typical by their brothers.

In the documentary, the girls interact well with the atypical boys,

taking the lead from their mother perhaps in being practical,

forthright and not overindulgent, though making statements of love.

A notable difference in the girls is their appeals to their mother,

Jacqui, when things go wrong. They shout and demand that Joe, who

has 'done it again' and taken all the batteries, should return them.

They tell mum.

That is something autistic people don't do. They don't say what is

happening to them as they believe everybody knows.

Causes Still Puzzling

It's something Charlotte , a writer, says about her non-

autistic son in the documentary 'the Autism Puzzle'. Having had two

autistic sons she knew when her third son came crying to her and

wanted to show her the cause of his distress (a trapped biscuit)

that he was not autistic. It was something her other sons would

never do.

Now she can see differences between her autistic and non-autistic

sons in early family movies. Although there was a vivid regression

where one boy lost all his speech she does not see MMR inoculation

as being part of their picture.

MMR is the triple inoculation given to babies to defend against

Measles, Mumps and Rubella. In 1998 the Royal Free Hospital found a

number of children to have infected bowels after the jab. This was

just after the BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) crisis when

humans were found to be susceptible to a form of 'mad cow' disease'

even though the NHS had said such a link was not possible.

Confidence in the NHS was low so when many parents, who would soon

have a diagnosis of autism for their children, saw a deterioration

in their children's communication after an MMR injection they put 3

and 3 together. However, a third of all autistic children show

regression. The child can be progressing in line with peers or even

beyond expected development then lose it all. This confuses the

issue of whether MMR is directly involved.

Whatever the cause, the experience of A S disorders is bewildering,

and, the diagnosis is getting wider. Autistic Spectrum people can

hold down a job or hold up the local community trophy for best and

finest or function as one of the crowd, yet inside they are more

than plain.

If someone beside you is acting funny, little things, like crowding

your space, avoiding eye-contact with what I call 'smokey eyes', or

wanting to draw you in, again and again, in some narrow interest

which seems only interesting to them, or if they talk at you rather

than with you, or flare up in an unforeseen meltdown, that person

may be smouldering on the Autistic Spectrum, without needing a

diagnosis.

......

40% of all children with autism wait more than three years for a

clear diagnosis

An estimated 535,000 people have autism in the UK

Boys are four times more likely to develop autism than girls

21% of children with an ASD have been excluded from school at least

once

Adults with autism say that finding a suitable job would improve

their lives more than anything else

People with autism often want to make friends but due to their

disability find it difficult

Source: www.nas.org.uk