It's Sunday night and my brain is fried.
Two brief items:
On the way in this morning I passed an SUV on the freeway that had a large decal in the rear window that said, "Autistic Child." Normally I would have thought that an odd thing to announce via a foot-square sign. But we have a family at church with an autistic child, and before he'd made such tremendous progress they had a very similar decal on their vehicle. They explained its purpose.
If they were ever in an accident that required first responders they wanted those personnel to know that one of the kids in the vehicle would not respond normally. He might be totally freaked out by the sensory overload of the situation, he might be unable to answer simple questions, or be inexplicably combative. If mom or dad were too injured from an accident to explain, the decal would tell those first responders why he was acting with what would otherwise be considered very inappropriate behavior.
This young guy at church has made incredible progress as a result of therapy and very patient, skilled parents. If you met him you probably wouldn't think he was autistic - just a real personality, and very, very smart. We all love the guy. Just a few years back he would freak out in a grocery store because of the sensory overload. Now he gets straight A's, plays the piano, and says whatever (!) is on his mind in any (!) situation.
Not every autistic child can make that kind of progress, no matter what therapy they get or how skilled and committed their parents. It's a complex condition that they're still learning about, and every autistic child is different. But they are all valuable and important. So if you see one of those decals on a car window you'll understand why it's there, and you'll know those parents have a special child whom they love very much. And they have to give thought and attention to things the rest of us take for granted.
Here is something I stumbled across today. Some of them missed by a mile, but others are spooky for their accuracy. You have to keep in mind what daily life was like over a century ago.
1900 Predictions for the year 2000
1 comment:
Hi. Thanks for sharing that about autistic kids. A lot of people don't know any of that (freaked out by the sensory overload, might be unable to answer simple questions, or be inexplicably combative). Sometimes I wish we could have tags on our whole family when we go out so people don't give us evil looks when our son has issues. :)
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