So apparently it was world autism day the other day. From what I saw on some CNN program today, I've had to change my mind about what I thought autism was. What I had in mind perhaps was the most severe form. Plenty of the kids looked normal, with the striking common factor being a lack of speech. And I thought [or saw or read somewhere] that autistic kids had trouble showing affection or generally interacting socially. Yeah. That's why I was convinced that the nephew's [eventual] diagnosis was not accurate. Sure, he was slow with almost everything. Crawling [can't remember him doing much of that], walking, talking. Still can't talk much. No sentences. At 6. But he's a big, cheerful guy. He laughs and kisses and hugs. A gentle giant. Well, apparently these days he's become a bit aggressive, pushing off girls from the swings at school. Only girls. Ha. If only he knew.
How then is autism differentiated from a speech development problem. Or highly functional autistic individuals distinguished from "normal" people. Perhaps my problem is with the label. I understood the power of a label when I first went to see a shrink. Took myself. I was crumbling. Almost stopped functioning. My experience then, and the material I read made me change the way I view people with mental disorders. I was one of them after all. But the label can be a monkey on one's back. Perhaps you may not feel it but others feel it on your behalf. It's why I refused to see the kid as anything other than normal. But I must accept his condition may be as real as mine [was].
