The "spectrum" of autism

One of the things that is most confusing to the general public and most frustrating to me about autism is that it's a "spectrum disorder." So on one end of the spectrum you have those individuals who cannot speak or communicate, have low IQs, and rock or otherwise "stim" incessently. These are kids that you could most likely pick out of a crowd as not "normal." On the other end you have those like Evan who look like every other kid (well, even more dashingly handsome in his case!), speak very well - often with a large vocabulary, and have normal to high intelligence. Then you have every combination inbetween.

There is no "typical" autistic person. There is no "typical" experience of parenting a child with an ASD. There is no "typical" course for how to best help your autistic child or grandchild or nephew or friend navigate the world. Obviously there are similar issues, but all to varying degrees. Most people have no idea what autism really is, particularly not Asperger's Syndrome, and if they do, they're basing it on something they heard about a friend's colleague's son one time. Or maybe they saw celebrities discussing it on Larry King last year or read an article in a magazine.

This lack of understanding isn't really anyone's fault - it's simply the reality of a complicated disorder that defies any effort to put it in a box.

Here's a little piece of life with Asperger's. Yesterday, as you know, was April Fool's Day. After Evan left for school Bennett and I discussed the idea for a couple of minutes and I immediately saw a new twinkle in his eye. And so, for the rest of the day, Bennett played April Fool's tricks on me constantly, tried a few with Matt and Evan, and even pulled one over on my dad.

After dinner, the four of us were talking about April Fool's Day and Evan said that kids kept doing tricks to him all day and eventually he got tired of it. Matt asked him ... "Well, did you keep falling for the tricks?" and he said yes. Obviously this wasn't a big deal, but it reminded us that although Evan is very smart, he can be incredibly naive and has trouble seeing into the intentions of others, even when something keeps happening over and over.

More later...