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[jay-ell]

Here's what started it all a couple of threads over:

We have been struggling with the decision of whether or not to keep Little P's autistic status a secret from him.  Clearly, everyone in the family knows, but we're not sure if he will benefit from understanding that he's different, or if he'll feel held back by the label.  Further complicating our decision is the fact that our nephew, who is seven, is also autistic but has not ever heard that label applied to himself.  He knows that he talked late, went to speech and occupational therapy, and needs special help in the classroom, but he doesn't know his exact diagnosis.

I'm worried that if Little P gets to be a teenager and discovers the label on his own, he'll be angry at us for not having told him.  But I don't want autism to be an excuse for poor behavior or lack of academic effort.  Especially if he turns out to have typical siblings -- is it more damaging to compare yourself to others whose brains are structured in fundamentally different ways, or to expect less of yourself because you know you have a disability?

See, my inclination is to be matter-of-fact about it, like Cort's parents were about adoption.  I have the speech all ready.  (I've had to explain to some of my friends' kids.)  "You have trouble figuring out how other people feel because you have autism, which means your brain works differently from most people's.  It's also why you can memorize a song the first time you hear it, but other kids can't." 

But I would hate to undermine my brother's efforts to keep my nephew's diagnosis from him by being open with Little P.   I don't necessarily agree with their decision, but I also don't think that gives me the right to knowingly do things that would blow it for them. 

Of course, I wouldn't come out and tell P, "you and your cousin are in this same secret club," but by the time they're eight and twelve, P is going to notice that they have a lot of the same qualities.  I think he'll figure it out eventually.  But I don't want to have to explain to him that yes, his cousin is autistic, too, but don't tell him because Uncle Steve doesn't want him to know. 

Then again, I have a speech ready to explain why other kids believe in Santa Claus, even though [spoiler alert] he's not real, so maybe to a five or six year old this isn't such a big deal? 

[wombat]

But I don't want to have to explain to him that yes, his cousin is autistic, too, but don't tell him because Uncle Steve doesn't want him to know. 

Actually, why not? That'll teach him a huge amount about other human beings and how the world really works right there.

But you know, your primary responsibility is to make the right choice for your child, not to twist yourself into knots trying to help your brother keep a secret that he's never going to be able to keep in the long run. The priorities seem pretty clear to me.

[Golfhaus]

My physics professor in college (one of three professors who left a lasting impression on me) told my sister when it was her turn to come through that she "thought your brother had a little bit of autism in him." She said looking at me in that way answered a LOT of questions about my behavior. My wife tells me that it's probably true - she's a special education teacher, and hopes to spend more time with autistic children in the near future. The fact that she likes the autistic students she's worked with says a lot about why she married me. Mom tells a story that I was fascinated with the 30-strong school bus fleet of our county, to the point that if you were to cover the bus number with a board, I could identify which bus it was by things such as dents, different fonts on the side, and apparently a tear on one seat on the left hand side that identified Bus 29 from its brethren. Apparently that sort of behavior is a deal-breaker.

The school buses were just the beginning. I've had a life-long fascination with transportation in general. I can stare at subway maps for hours and be perfectly content. I've managed to use this to my advantage by working within the transportation industry, where I can actually use my weird little obsessions to my advantage, making me look like a hard-working employee when in reality I'm just learning about stuff that interests me.

[theinevitable]

shit, golfhaus, have you seen those weird new metro stops on South Boulevard? i mean... right in the median of the street? I got really confused when I realized that those had just suddenly popped up. i also realized that some of those tracks have always been there, and i have never seen a vehicle on them. Hmm.

[Golfhaus]

When I lived in my apartment on Park Rd, I drove under the light rail overpass on Woodlawn on my way to work. I REALLY hope they decide to go all the way with the rail system, not just because I like looking at subway maps, but because seriously, a light rail line that will help, maybe, 10% of the population move isn't going to work at all. If there was a Steel Creek station that stopped at the airport on the way, I'd take it and save the wear on my car.

When are you leaving for STL? I could probably get the wife to meet up at Quaker Steak or something.

[theinevitable]

there's... there's an overpass? the only line I have seen is the one on South.

Um, I leave saturday morning. oops. tomorrow I am going to hang out with my friend (the guy who wanted Simple Syrup, actually) who is just getting back in town. The rest of the day will be packing, because I have not packed at all and suddenly OH SHIT I AM LEAVING REALLY SOON.

[Lister]

In recent years I've come to the conclusion that I have some Problems.  Sometimes they feel like ADD and sometimes Autism and I'm pretty sure about the depression.  Anyway, my parents didn't keep any of this from me, they just didn't know either.  I wasn't ever tested or evaluated or anything.

In some ways it was kind of a good thing -- I learned how to deal with my problems without trying to apply what worked for other people, and it's let me grow naturally into my strengths.  I've learned enough about my frustration with a problem to know the threshold at which I need to stop and redefine the assumptions under which I'm working.  I know almost immediately if I'm going to have a problem with a task.  I've learned to trust my intuition with problems, because my subconscious is generally paying more attention than my conscious.

On the other hand, I'd kind of like to know what is actually "my deal," and maybe get some of the benefit of whatever studies have gone into other people with similar issues, and right now I'm at a point in my life where I'm too damn busy to do that.  So, you know.  Maybe knowing early is good, too.

Approaching the discussion from a completely different side, I'd rather be told something I don't completely understand than find out something later and feel deceived.

[jay-ell]

Split for the sake of not mixing autism with transgender issues.  Talk about disconcerting. 

You could make a case that my brother grew up with autism and nobody knew it.  He was quiet, talked late, loved numbers and statistics from an early age.  When he was six or seven he derived the formula for the sum of a series in order to figure out what the maximum score he could get from a handheld game would be.  My dad asked him what he was writing (when you see a second-grader scribbling complex series of numbers on a napkin I guess it piques your curiosity) and he said, "well, you could add up all these numbers individually, but when I did this (mathemagical thing I don't understand) it came out to the same thing.  Now I'm trying it with other numbers to see if it always works." 

As an older kid, he would take matchbox cars and line them up in "race formation" around the kitchen table.  He'd push each one forward in turn, measure the distance, and write it in a notebook.   I guess he was ostensibly looking for patterns as to which car went furthest with the least applied force?  As a teenager, he'd sit with two, three, or four dice and roll them over and over, each time writing the result in a single neat column in his notebooks.  He said he was testing the law of probability. 

Notebooks were a big part of his young life.  He had stacks of them, all filled with some different kind of statistic on everyday objects.  He kept stats on all his video games, his favorite sports teams (all players), etc.  As he got older and the notebooks piled up, it got to where nobody really knew what was in them any more -- but not in a creepy way, just in the way that the previous incarnations of notebooks had been so boring nobody cared to look at the later ones. 

He was also a four-sport athlete and got a soccer scholarship to a private college, where he studied -- of all things -- statistics.  He is now the most beloved math teacher at the high school from which he graduated, coaches the girl's varsity soccer team, has a master's degree in counseling, and often meets with kids after school to discuss their personal problems, even if they've never taken his classes.  So to anyone else, he looks very normal and, if anything, exceptionally compassionate towards others.

It's hard to tell, from an adult standpoint, if he has autism.  But I bet if he'd been born twenty years later he'd have been diagnosed with it.  And I can't help but wonder what kind of impact that would have had on his later life.  Would he still be a teacher?  Would he have gone on to greater things?  Or would his incredible talent for statistics have been crushed under his efforts to "act normal?" 

Don't miss our next installment: Sensory Integration and YOU. 

[theinevitable]

my brother informed me the other day that the reason  ::)he is so good at Scrabble is that he can rearrange the tiles in his mind. He has a perfect photographic memory.

That kid. damn. I am going to find him my books on Cryptography.

[jay-ell]

I'm crazy-good with word games.  I can also re-arrange Scrabble tiles mentally.  And I can do the Sunday Jumble (including the answer to the riddle) without writing anything down. 

My brain is good with words like my brother's is good with numbers.  He is barely literate and I can barely add. 

It's sometimes annoying, though, because my son has all these letters -- foam ones, magnetic ones, etc -- and when they get scrambled on the floor, I can't walk by them without trying to un-jumble them.  Sometimes Pedro will come into the bathroom and I'm staring at the bathtub letters, mumbling, "there's no 'M.'" 

[theinevitable]

people.

BRAINS ARE SO COOL!
Back me up on this, people, especially V. YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE.

say it with me.
BRAINS ARE SO COOL!
I can geek out about crumple-brain and calculator-brain and scrabble-brain stuff for years at a time.

every one of us has this weird lump in us that can think all these thoughts and do all these strange things, sometimes without us even realizing. goddamn, I am so glad i am studying this shit, and I am so glad to live in a world where we already know a ton about this stuff, so that I can read about it and talk about it and nerd out about it.

[AlohaDawg]

so my really long post about telling kids stuff is now in a thread about gender issues?

Neat.

[AugustWest]

so my really long post about telling kids stuff is now in a thread about gender issues?

Neat.

Speaking of gender issues, I caught the end of an odd documentary on one of the international channels at the upper end of the Directv spectrum (WorldLink TV?).  It was about transsexuals in Iran.  Apparently the government and society in general is very supportive of gender change surgery.  Who'd a thought?

[Nabubrush]

Speaking of gender issues, I caught the end of an odd documentary on one of the international channels at the upper end of the Directv spectrum (WorldLink TV?).  It was about transsexuals in Iran.  Apparently the government and society in general is very supportive of gender change surgery.  Who'd a thought?

See, you can split the threads, but the innate perversity of the average TOUAMBie will shine through, every time. If you want to talk about autism, you should probably cover it in the Pretend Sports thread.

[Doc]

"You have trouble figuring out how other people feel because you have autism, which means your brain works differently from most people's.  It's also why you can memorize a song the first time you hear it, but other kids can't." 

That explanation sounds about perfect to me JL. I think if I heard as a kid that I was special because I my memory was better than everyone else's I would basically assume I had super powers. This may or may not be what you are going for. Besides, like someone said in the other thread kids digest this stuff slowly so you'll probably have to fill him in multiple times as he grows up and explain a little more each time, this seems easier to do in spurts rather than all at once when he's old enough for you to tell him everything.

At the end of the day I have no significant experience or interaction with people with mental conditions but it seems that acknowledging that P is different and that is OK will be better in the long term than pretending he's not. If nothing else, kids are very efficient at pointing out to someone that they are different and/or stinky, it has to be better for you to explain to P why he is different without making a huge deal out of it now. That way he has some understanding of what's going on and can use that to face the world, better than him being blindsided by some snot nosed bastard and you having to deal with the fallout.