Autism Itself

I suppose I should have told you this a while back, but it’s taken me until now to say.  i guess it’s better late than never…You really DO need to know about autism itself.  And I hope it gives you some idea as to why people can say there are difficulties figuring it out.  However, I ALSO believe that it is VERY important to LISTEN to the parents/guardians/carers and not judge without doing so or even WHILE they are telling you.  They know and see the child every day, you (anyone else) cannot tell from a short time with them.

One of the biggest problems with autism is that it is a SPECTRUM.  Now I guess you want to know why I want to emphasise that particular word so much.  Well, the trouble with a spectrum is that it is massive.  So big that not everybody has the same issues.  

Let me give you a description that I thought fitted perfectly with the whole concept of the spectrum idea.  Think of a rainbow.  Right.  Have you got that in your head?  Well the rainbow IS the autism spectrum and the colours are different (OK let’s call them) reasons/causes/issues that make a person autistic or not.  And the child can have a dot in all the different colours ALL OVER that rainbow.

So, let us take Johnathan for an example here because we do know he is autistic.  Now when he is at home he is verbal and very chatty and can talk to you about all sorts of different things through the day (and all through the night if you’d let him).  BUT when he was at nursery, he was selective or elective (he chose to be) mute at nursery and ONLY spoke to his keyworker.  However, in the last year of nursery, he was reading books to different groups of children and absolutely loved it!  He still wouldn’t speak to them generally unless they wanted him to help them in something and it would be related to that thing.

Now, Johnathan wasn’t ACTUALLY mute.  He just chose not to talk except to his keyworker.  But because of it he did have mute on the register.  And this can be done by different children on the spectrum, too.  Does that mean they have ALL of his other symptoms/causes/issues/whatever you want to call them?  NO.  It  doesn’t.  It just means they have the same verbal issues he had.

Children or adults that have autism are ALL different.  All of them are unique.  All of them are their own individuals, just as any other child in the world is.  So if you see someone that has autism, that doesn’t mean anything.  The next person could have different verbal issues and still be autistic.  You have just met someone who has autism.  The dots can be anywhere in the different colours/issues/whatever.  Don’t be fooled.