Mccartney My Little Alien

A Way Through the Asperger Maze
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5439-0647-9
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

If you have a child in your care who has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder), or if you think he/she might be a candidate for such a diagnosis, this book is for you. It's written from a personal perspective so it's easy and interesting to read, and it's also very practical; using strategies tried and tested by the author with her son, who is the subject of this inspiring book.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mccartney, Jennifer

Leseproben

CHAPTER 1: MY LITTLE ALIEN

Joshua is the youngest of my four children of two girls and two boys. At the time of his birth, his sisters were aged ten and seven, and his brother was only 17 months old. Joshua was born naturally, and I breast fed him for 13 months. While I was pregnant with Joshua, my doctor was concerned that he was not growing quickly enough. When he was born at full term he was exactly the same birth weight as the birth weight of his eldest sister; a small 5lb 8oz. His other two siblings were a more average weight; both just over 8lbs.

Joshua was an easy baby which was a great relief after the demands of his elder brother who was also in nappies when I brought Joshua home from hospital. What a skinny little baby! He soon grew into a gorgeous little fellow and followed a fairly typical developmental process. At eight weeks he was smiling, first tooth at four months, sitting up at six months, crawling at eight months, first steps at 12 months, and first word at 13 months. He displayed a calm, definite personality from the start, but if he ever felt he had been treated unfairly he would transform into a tiger!

Joshua played for long periods without needing to be stimulated—which was a pleasant change from his brother. As a mother of four I didn’t take too much notice of Joshua’s aversion to making eye contact. There was a lot going on in our household, and Joshua was the ‘easiest’ child of all my offspring so I was happy to let him play with his toys. It was a welcome change to have a child who did not demand constant attention. The two little boys were inseparable and the elder one’s gently patient manner was an ideal balance for Joshua’s fiery nature. Joshua didn’t say much; he used pointing and leading by the hand to communicate.

Whenever Joshua got sick he got very sick (gastro put him into hospital once with dehydration). Because of this, it was a great relief that he had no reactions to any of his immunisations. Though he spoke his first word at a typical age (13 months), his progress after that was very slow (almost nonexistent), until at 2 years and 3 months of age, he suddenly started speaking in short sentences! He was a cheeky, witty, quick little boy; full of fun. He started answering questions quite clearly, and he was always quick with his wit. By 3 years of age he could count to ten (but never ‘on demand’), and he was fascinated by colour, and loved books.

It was at about that age that I noticed he tended to play ‘beside’ rather than ‘with’ other children. His speech—though much improved—was used more to entertain himself with the sound of words than to communicate with others. For some time he was fascinated with the word ‘actually’, and he put it into silly songs he made up.

Taking him shopping was a challenge; he would run off, pinch people, and take things from shelves. One day I turned around in a shop to find him climbing into the drinks refrigerator! At the museum, he set off the alarm by going under the rail to study the stuffed sharks in more detail. Unlike other children, Joshua did not anticipate forthcoming birthdays or Christmas or Easter with any joy; in fact, he did not seem interested at all. However, he did enjoy the celebrations when they actually happened, so I think his lack of anticipation was due to the fact that time seemed to be irrelevant to him.

Joshua soon revealed himself to be ‘different’. I was very puzzled because I had worked as a special education teacher so I thought I should be able to identify signs of any disability, but I had never heard of Asperger Syndrome.

Joshua was different in many ways. For example, if he hurt himself physically he didn’t seem to notice. Once while he was still a toddler, he bashed his head so hard when he fell into a cupboard that I was worried he might have knocked himself unconscious, but he just stood up, rubbed his head and kept on with what he had been doing. He refused to be comforted.

At the age of three he was dressing himself in clothes that colour co-ordinated, and he had a defiant attitude that was different to my other children at his age. His defiance seemed to come from a belief that no one, not even me as his parent, had any right to tell him what to do. He was not testing his boundaries as children of that age do; he was declaring his boundaries to me, and fighting to the death to have them respected.

Sending him to his room “until you are nice” did not work, because if he believed he was in the right he would stay there until I caved in. No tantrums; just quiet determination that an injustice had been done and he would not budge until it had been undone. I had been a teacher, and I had three other children, but dealing with Joshua was like taking on an alien! I adored him, and I respected his strength of character, but I was shaken out of my confidence and I knew that the only way to meet this challenge was to try to enter his world.

I decided to treat him as if he was from another world; a world very different from ours—but certainly not in any inferior way. He seemed to come from a world where justice was paramount, where time was irrelevant, where strangers were not someone to fear, and where sound, words and colour were things to be played with.

When he was three we took him with us to an exhibition of vintage cars. He was walking beside me and then he suddenly took off. I ran after him, but I had to carry his four-year-old brother, so Joshua was speeding ahead on his nimble little legs. He was following an elderly couple, and as they climbed into their two door, vintage car, he crawled into the back seat without them noticing. I ran up screaming and waving like a lunatic, and managed to attract their attention before they drove off into the unknown with my little boy on board.

Later, when I asked him why he did that he calmly replied, “I wanted to have a ride in their nice car”. I explained to him that we could have lost him, and that gave him quite a shock, so that’s the model I followed from then on; explaining rather than admonishing, and I found him to be very reasonable.

At a swimming lesson one day he climbed onto a complete stranger’s back, expecting him to take him for a ride like he was doing with his own children. The man was surprised and confused by Joshua’s naïve, expectant attitude, and he was clearly relieved when I carried Joshua to the other side of the pool.

Again, I explained to Joshua why it was inappropriate (he loved that word) and sometimes even dangerous to interact with strangers. When visitors came to our door he would ask them if they wanted to see our toilet. When I asked him why he did that he replied, “Well, it is very important to know where the toilet is”.

However, his naïve manner with strangers was rather endearing at times. We were in a park one sunny afternoon and he ran over to an elderly woman, and sat beside her on the park bench and asked her if she would like to see how fast he could run because he could run very fast. She said she would, so off he went, running round and round then coming back to hear her report on his prowess. When I went to fetch him to take him home she thanked me for allowing her time with such a precious little boy.

By the age of four, Joshua was producing unusual, colourful, and intricate drawings; his fine motor skills were exceptional for his age. He drew people quite proportionally—he drew them with necks, eye-lashes, fingers and toes, and girls with ponytails. Later on he began to draw alien creatures, and at preschool he spent hours painting a scene of our home with such focus and attention to detail that the teacher suggested I have him tested for giftedness. She gave me a form which I filled in and returned to her.

This is what I wrote in response to the questions:

Level of recall:

Joshua often talks about happenings and things from our previous home as though it weres yesterday, when in fact it was two years ago. He learns the words and tunes to songs remarkably quickly; usually to songs heard on the television, not what we try to teach him! He often changes some of the words to make them amusing.

Curiosity for knowledge:

Joshua pretends not to be interested in learning facts, but he obviously listens when we explain things to his 6-year-old brother (who is intensely interested), because Joshua surprises us with the extent of his knowledge when he thinks we are not listening. He will not answer questions about factual knowledge except with ridiculous nonsensical language and expressions.

Empathy:

Joshua is unusual in this area; sometimes he is hard and cold, or even laughs at his siblings when he upsets them.

Vocabulary:

Joshua’s brother uses advanced vocabulary so Joshua often refuses to, even though he loves words.

Reading, writing, maths:

We never know how much Joshua knows as he refuses to ‘perform’. If we ask him to count to 10 he is likely to say 1, 6, 8, 12, and then we will hear him counting correctly while pretending to read himself a book. He shows no readiness to read yet.

Understanding as an infant:

Joshua has never liked to comply so we don’t know how young he was when he understood what we were saying. We now know that he understands a lot more than he lets on.

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