Kit Mead kpaginatedthoughts.blogspot.com —- Re: Autistic boy, 11, kills himself I phrase it that way. I don’t phrase it the way the article did. Blaming the autism and ADHD for suicide. This was a boy who befriended a locust in a tree. His mother said he felt like the adults at his school didn’t care and could not make connections in his class. Had a gift with animals. *** Isolated and miserable, I managed to find refuge in certain places. The art room, where the art teacher encouraged me to explore with sharpies and gel pens and acrylic paints. The debate room. My 10th grade English teacher’s classroom. The scene shop, where I would frenetically sweep and clean the entire area after school. Unlike Shane Laycock, I had supportive adults in my high school. I don’t know how, considering the story told by so many of us of being shunned…
Tag: isolation
J. Lorraine Martin cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com “Your son has pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified.” That’s a mouthful to say, let alone hear. It was explained as a type of autism. That was 16 years ago. I did not have the Internet at home. There was no Google for further research. Dustin Hoffman had provided my only experience of autism in the movie, Rainman. Looking back, the declaration–the actual diagnosing words from a stranger, a neurologist, is fuzzy. What did those letters, PDD-NOS, mean? Could a socially constructed diagnosis tell me who my son would become? When I got home from that appointment, teary-eyed and uncertain, I looked at my son with his large brown eyes, head of blondish-brown ringlets, and cherub face. We had already begun to find our rhythm together. In our first year together, I intuitively discovered that if I laid him on the floor, and placed my head…
Kelly V. Russell http://2006housewife.blogspot.com My child has autism … and I, as his mother, have never felt so isolated in my life. My son has severe speech delays. This is why he doesn’t talk to you. Why don’t you speak to him? My son perceives the world in a unique manner. This is why he plays with toys in an abnormal way. Why don’t you play with him? My son has difficulty understanding social cues. This is why he avoids eye contact. Why do you stare at him like he’s an animal in a zoo? …Or even worse, ignore him, as if he’s not a human being. Being his mother does not make me a saint, though sometimes I feel like a martyr. His condition does not mean that God entrusted me with a special blessing. Autism means he was born with a formidable glitch in his hardware … a…