Blog from the Middle Spectrum #2
This blog is going to be a bit different than the last. You all know me well now. So I think it’s time to take a step forward with this blogging relationship we have. I am speaking to the people out there who either knows someone who has a ‘handicap’, autism, or on the Middle Spectrum. So listen close, today I plan on teaching you something.
Below is a list of grievances from all the Middle Specters out there like me. These are things people do that I HATE when it comes to being diagnosed as autistic or having Asperger’s. I mean, if you really want to tick me off, do anything on the list below and you will have an angry crazy chick on your hands. So, let’s start the list:
*
1. Don’t call us “special”
This always drives me insane. Does no one get that calling someone ‘special’ in a certain way is a put down now? If you’re a teenager then you know about this put down. It goes like this:
Person 1- “I know, I’m special!”
Person 2- “Yeah, special ED!”
That is an insult. Whenever I’m called special I think of this. And calling someone special is like you’re trying to cover up for something wrong. Saying that someone is ‘special’ after saying they have a mental problem is like you’re trying to makeup for them having the problem in the first place. It just sounds wrong and rude. Don’t do it.
But if you feel like you absolutely have to compliment someone about his or her mental problem, then say something like “She’s just wonderfully different!” Or, “He’s a very uniquely awesome boy.” Be creative if you have to, just don’t use the S word!
2. Don’t lump all of us autistic people in the same category (this goes for ANY ‘disability’)
No, I am not like Raymond from Rain Man, and can do math well. In fact, I SUCK at math. Just because we’re autistic, doesn’t mean we have super powers or have an extremely high intelligence. Those people are called autistic savants, and even they too should be treated like an individual and with respect. Just because you’re a boy, that doesn’t mean you like baseball. Don’t think like that when it comes to people with different types of mental abilities. We all have different cases. Not one person is like the other; so don’t automatically assume that I have the ability to do something just because I’m autistic. That’s just dumb.
3. Don’t talk about us like we’re robots
How would you like it if someone said you were ‘high functioning’ or ‘low functioning’? That term ‘function’ is too broad of a word to use when it comes to talking about how a person lives or thinks. Autistic people maybe able to do well with one task, but maybe not so well with another. In my opinion you have to sit down and talk about, in detail, what your child can or cannot do when it comes to speaking with teachers or people they will be around. If not, how is this person going to be able to know where they need to start when it comes to the treatment of this child? But look, the point is, don’t say that we’re ‘functioning’ in a certain way. I am not a machine, and I do not work all the time at a certain level. I do my own thing to the best of my capabilities, whatever they are.
4. Never say never
You have no right to tell a person with mental abilities that they can’t achieve their dreams. If they have a special talent and the drive to perfect it, then by God, support them. When I was in fourth grade I could barely spell, at all. Period. Now I am writing poems, stories, lyrics, and this blog. You never know what can happen in a person’s life, so don’t limit them. Believe in them, because they look to you and believe in you.
5. Don’t group Middle Spectrum kids in Emotional and Logical thinking categories
I make decisions based on emotion… with logic behind them. If I want to fulfill myself and my dreams I have to make good choices to achieve that emotional gratification. I have to do things the right way and be a good person, so in return, goodness and kindness comes back to me. It took SIXTEEN YEARS for anyone I knew to understand this. Everyone always though I was a logical thinker, because of how I made my decisions and what I did. No one understood that emotion was involved. They thought I saw everything in black and white, not in color. No one got that I saw the color picture first, and then focused on the black and whiteness. Just weeks ago a close friend of mine said, “Erin, I don’t care what people say about you being a logical thinker. From what I’ve seen, I think you’re an emotional thinker.” I was so thankful when he said that. Because I was lumped into a ‘logical category’ some people around me didn’t understand that I could feel too. My friend finally got that. Yes, I make logical decisions, but the reasons (and sometimes reasoning) are based off of emotion. Do not tell a Middle Spectrum Kid how they think. Only they know, and you have no way of getting into their heads and figuring them out. They think in their own way, so stop trying to figure out a name for it, and start enjoying the person who they are.
6. Don’t force any of us to read a self-help book or go into a counseling group
When I say the above statement I’m speaking mostly to the people who know or have kids of the Middle Spectrum. All cases are different, as I have said before. Forcing us to go into a counseling group to try to ‘relate to one another’ doesn’t help. Everyone deals with things in different ways. If you’re child wants to go into the group, by all means, let them. But some kids like me, who don’t feel that it would benefit them, simply don’t want to be a part of all that hype. So don’t make us go! Also don’t force us to read about other autistic people if we don’t want to. If we show an interest, yes, get that biography we want. But sometimes we get burned out on the topic of autism. We have to LIVE with the diagnosis everyday, so trust me; we get sick of hearing or talking about it. Parents don’t throw your child a book or toss them into a group unwillingly. I know you mean well, but wait till they approach you.
7. To Parents of the Middle Spectrum: DON’T SAY WE’RE AUTISTIC RIGHT AWAY TO PEOPLE WHO FIRST MEET US
I understand it's sometimes necessary, I get that. But when it's not, don't tell complete strangers we're autistic! Most people cannot tell I’m autistic. I hide my ‘symptoms’ pretty well, and the people who I first meet usually find me a ‘delightfully fun’ person because of my quirks. I’m a fresh of breath air to elderly because I actually know who older singers and actors are, like Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant. They think I’m just a young girl who appreciates the oldies, not some crazy person who has an obsession with old things. And in truth, I am just a young girl who appreciates the older, finer things. That’s why I hate it when a friend or family member says that I’m autistic, after I’ve been talking to a stranger for only a few minutes. Why do you do that?! If we seem normal to a person, let us seem normal! It’s embarrassing for kids like me to have someone tell a stranger a most secret part of us. If we want to tell someone we’re autistic, we will do it in our own sweet time. I have friends that didn’t know for two years. I didn't tell them because I wanted them to know me for me, not the diagnosis I have. So please, unless your child wants you to, don’t tell a complete stranger we’re autistic! Once more it's embarrassing, and even though you mean well, kind of rude.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Blog from the Middle Spectrum #1
Blog from the Middle Spectrum #1
All right, so I'm going to confess something to you. You may think what I say is weird, but that's okay. Maybe it’ll compel you a little bit more to read this. Ready for this?
I’m autistic.
All right, so, to those who know me, none of you are shocked. Most of you knew something was wrong with me in the first place. I was too weird, odd, freakish, whatever label you want to put me under, to be normal. Congratulations, you figured out I was different. Very astute observation, dear Watson!
But now we get to the serious topic/topics here. Why am I now making this publicized? Why am basically putting a target on my back so I now may get even more criticism? Do I want the Rain Man jokes? No, absolutely not. First off, Raymond (the autistic savant Dustin Hoffman played) and I are on two totally different ends of the autism spectrum. The doctors can easily diagnose Raymond. However, they cannot easily diagnose me. I am a hybrid of Asperger’s, autism, and a raw drive to be normal. I left the people at Heart Springs (an autism research center) scratching their heads. They had no clue what I was, only that I was some type of autistic. So thus trying Rain Man jokes on me is like trying to make fun of a mouse for not being a hamster. It just doesn’t work and makes you look like an idiot.
But back to the point. Why am I doing this? The answer was actually the first thing you saw when you first started reading this blog. It’s because I am, what I call, the Middle Spectrum. I am the halfway point between being autistic and being a normal, completely functioning human being. They don’t talk about kids like me because there are only a handful of them in the world. There are so few kids out there, who can comprehend situations at my level, that we are ignored. My mom tired hard to find a role model for me, and she bought me a book on Temple Grandin. She is a woman who has autism, and she designs equipment for animals. First off, God bless her. She has done a lot to get where she is. She is a very successful woman and inspires many people. But I cannot identify with her. There are few times in her book where she’s mentioned social situations, but it is in a way so logical and scientific, that it almost seems cold. For people like me in the Middle Spectrum, that is our main problem: the social aspect. We can handle ourselves academically very well; in fact, we sometimes do better than most of the ‘normal’ kids. Yet we are so awkward when it comes to social settings, we come off as being a freak. And we know we do. That’s what makes it difficult. We know that we are different and we want to achieve normality. We long to be one of the normal kids.
When I was in fourth grade I realized I was different. I looked at my mother one day and asked her, “Mom, why am I different?” She gazed at me lovingly and said, “Oh honey, you’re not different, you’re just special.” I looked at her, tears stinging my eyes, and said, “But Mom, I don’t want to be special.” The scary thing was, I meant it. Understand this, in fourth grade I moved to Goddard and away from a small town called Sedgwick. In Sedgwick everyone knew everyone, so thus, you had to be nice to them. I was not picked on in Sedgwick because of this fact. But when I came to Goddard, the floodgates of hatred opened. None of the students had ever seen a hybrid child like me, so no one knew how to react. People fear what they don’t understand, and the kids didn’t understand me. So they reacted off their fear, and that fear turned into a secondary emotion called anger. At the time the conversation between my mom and I happened, I was being picked on by these students. I had no friends, no one to stand up for me, I had no one. I remembered telling my teacher that a fellow schoolmate had written a mean note to me, and after class I showed her the note. The teacher called the student in, but ten minutes later, the same girl walked up to me and said, “She didn’t do anything to me you know.” I can still hear her voice in my head. So, because teachers and counselors didn’t do anything, I stopped fighting and I began resenting myself. If being ‘special’ made me treated this way, I wanted no part of it.
I strove to be normal after that. Being normal meant getting out of a special ED room for certain classes, it meant getting out of social working and speech therapy, it meant getting away from my paraprofessional, para for short. (NOTE: a para/paraprofessional is a teacher who is basically a private tutor and helper to a child with special needs.) I knew I had to get away from all these things to be normal and have my own life. I was going to try my hardest, do what the teachers told me, and not give up. I had to be normal. I had to be.
In sixth grade I went to see “The Phantom of the Opera” in the Warren downtown… and I first heard the music. It wasn’t just music, it was THE music. I saw The Phantom in the show, saw Christine, saw Raoul, and fell in love. I understood the storyline and the characters. I got the music, knew the notes, when no one else in my age group could. It made sense to me, for some odd reason. It was then I started singing, and my mom told me, I was actually pretty good at it. I always sang songs and hummed to myself, before actually learning to speak to other people. The music had always been there, I realized later, I just hadn’t heard it. But now I had, and it saved me.
I was drawn to theater soon after, where music was combined with real life, and soon I began reading Shakespeare. I remember walking into my sixth grade classroom with “Romeo and Juliet” in my hands, and my teacher’s eyes nearly bugged out of her face. I began writing stories the same year, and soon it became apparent that I had a good novelist imagination. All the while I still tried to be normal, tried to act normal. But still, I wasn’t getting there.
I was never interested in ‘girly’ things as a child. I didn’t want to do my hair or makeup, and I detested it when I got older. I was not a pretty child, I did not think of myself as a pretty child. I wore makeup a few times, but no one ever said I was beautiful. So I thought, “Why bother?” Me and being beautiful did not go together. I was only beautiful when I wrote, sang, or was on stage. That is when I had true beauty. In seventh grade I remember a boy in my age group was standing next to me at my locker. I was singing, “You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, it’s true…” The boy smiled cheekily and said, “Thank you, I know I am.” I replied, “I was singing that to myself.” He burst out laughing and said, “No, you’re not beautiful, you’re ugly!” I didn’t reply to him after that. I was correct, I was not pretty. I had always known I wasn’t pretty. But if I had always known, why was I about to cry? Why did I hide my face in my locker to keep the burning of my cheeks from showing? Why did I care?
Later on, because of an incident in my seventh grade summer, I grew to hate men and the world. The only men I did not hate were in my musicals I watched or Josh Groban. I loved his voice, and still do to this day. I loved how he sang and gave emotion to every song. When he sang a sad song I used to think, “He’s singing my pain”. And I had read somewhere that he hadn’t fit in, in school himself because of his music and talent. Was he a bit autistic himself? Were we both part of the Middle Spectrum?
Then in my freshman year, my life changed. To make a long story short I found these people called theater people. They were the ones who dared to be different, and to accept the others who were different. I found my most wonderful friends here. Backstage we laughed and joked. On stage we sang freely. In the theater room, under the watchful eye of a man named Bryan Grosbach, we learned. He became my mentor, and sometimes, the one person in my life who always believed in me.
At last, I gave up my quest for normality, and started a quest to being ME. If there is anyone you know who has autism or some type of handicap, pass this blog onto them. I am telling these kids now, I get it! I know what it’s like to watch the world, knowing that you are different, and that you can’t change it. I know what it’s like to be aware of your oddities and how it affects others. I know what it’s like to not be able to control it. It sucks, I get it. But find the joy. I’m telling you, try to find the joy. When I was young the doctors said I would never learn past the Elementary school level. I am now writing my own plays and reading books that college students can’t make heads or tails out of. I am in the National Honor Society and in mostly AP classes. Do not let anyone say what your limits are! Don’t let anyone tell you how to act or how to live your life. I know that if you’re still in school and with all these peers around judging you, it’s scary. But don’t be afraid. You will come out of it. Keep your true friends close, and what you love to do, closer. I have found I always have a friend in music and the arts. If you have found a friend in something constructive, hold fast to it. This ride of life only becomes crazier, and when you hit a few bumps, sometimes that’s the only thing you can turn to. But enjoy the view around you. It’s not the destination that matters… it’s the road you take.
“Two roads diverged and I
Took the one last traveled by
And that has made the difference”
~ The Road Less Traveled By
All right, so I'm going to confess something to you. You may think what I say is weird, but that's okay. Maybe it’ll compel you a little bit more to read this. Ready for this?
I’m autistic.
All right, so, to those who know me, none of you are shocked. Most of you knew something was wrong with me in the first place. I was too weird, odd, freakish, whatever label you want to put me under, to be normal. Congratulations, you figured out I was different. Very astute observation, dear Watson!
But now we get to the serious topic/topics here. Why am I now making this publicized? Why am basically putting a target on my back so I now may get even more criticism? Do I want the Rain Man jokes? No, absolutely not. First off, Raymond (the autistic savant Dustin Hoffman played) and I are on two totally different ends of the autism spectrum. The doctors can easily diagnose Raymond. However, they cannot easily diagnose me. I am a hybrid of Asperger’s, autism, and a raw drive to be normal. I left the people at Heart Springs (an autism research center) scratching their heads. They had no clue what I was, only that I was some type of autistic. So thus trying Rain Man jokes on me is like trying to make fun of a mouse for not being a hamster. It just doesn’t work and makes you look like an idiot.
But back to the point. Why am I doing this? The answer was actually the first thing you saw when you first started reading this blog. It’s because I am, what I call, the Middle Spectrum. I am the halfway point between being autistic and being a normal, completely functioning human being. They don’t talk about kids like me because there are only a handful of them in the world. There are so few kids out there, who can comprehend situations at my level, that we are ignored. My mom tired hard to find a role model for me, and she bought me a book on Temple Grandin. She is a woman who has autism, and she designs equipment for animals. First off, God bless her. She has done a lot to get where she is. She is a very successful woman and inspires many people. But I cannot identify with her. There are few times in her book where she’s mentioned social situations, but it is in a way so logical and scientific, that it almost seems cold. For people like me in the Middle Spectrum, that is our main problem: the social aspect. We can handle ourselves academically very well; in fact, we sometimes do better than most of the ‘normal’ kids. Yet we are so awkward when it comes to social settings, we come off as being a freak. And we know we do. That’s what makes it difficult. We know that we are different and we want to achieve normality. We long to be one of the normal kids.
When I was in fourth grade I realized I was different. I looked at my mother one day and asked her, “Mom, why am I different?” She gazed at me lovingly and said, “Oh honey, you’re not different, you’re just special.” I looked at her, tears stinging my eyes, and said, “But Mom, I don’t want to be special.” The scary thing was, I meant it. Understand this, in fourth grade I moved to Goddard and away from a small town called Sedgwick. In Sedgwick everyone knew everyone, so thus, you had to be nice to them. I was not picked on in Sedgwick because of this fact. But when I came to Goddard, the floodgates of hatred opened. None of the students had ever seen a hybrid child like me, so no one knew how to react. People fear what they don’t understand, and the kids didn’t understand me. So they reacted off their fear, and that fear turned into a secondary emotion called anger. At the time the conversation between my mom and I happened, I was being picked on by these students. I had no friends, no one to stand up for me, I had no one. I remembered telling my teacher that a fellow schoolmate had written a mean note to me, and after class I showed her the note. The teacher called the student in, but ten minutes later, the same girl walked up to me and said, “She didn’t do anything to me you know.” I can still hear her voice in my head. So, because teachers and counselors didn’t do anything, I stopped fighting and I began resenting myself. If being ‘special’ made me treated this way, I wanted no part of it.
I strove to be normal after that. Being normal meant getting out of a special ED room for certain classes, it meant getting out of social working and speech therapy, it meant getting away from my paraprofessional, para for short. (NOTE: a para/paraprofessional is a teacher who is basically a private tutor and helper to a child with special needs.) I knew I had to get away from all these things to be normal and have my own life. I was going to try my hardest, do what the teachers told me, and not give up. I had to be normal. I had to be.
In sixth grade I went to see “The Phantom of the Opera” in the Warren downtown… and I first heard the music. It wasn’t just music, it was THE music. I saw The Phantom in the show, saw Christine, saw Raoul, and fell in love. I understood the storyline and the characters. I got the music, knew the notes, when no one else in my age group could. It made sense to me, for some odd reason. It was then I started singing, and my mom told me, I was actually pretty good at it. I always sang songs and hummed to myself, before actually learning to speak to other people. The music had always been there, I realized later, I just hadn’t heard it. But now I had, and it saved me.
I was drawn to theater soon after, where music was combined with real life, and soon I began reading Shakespeare. I remember walking into my sixth grade classroom with “Romeo and Juliet” in my hands, and my teacher’s eyes nearly bugged out of her face. I began writing stories the same year, and soon it became apparent that I had a good novelist imagination. All the while I still tried to be normal, tried to act normal. But still, I wasn’t getting there.
I was never interested in ‘girly’ things as a child. I didn’t want to do my hair or makeup, and I detested it when I got older. I was not a pretty child, I did not think of myself as a pretty child. I wore makeup a few times, but no one ever said I was beautiful. So I thought, “Why bother?” Me and being beautiful did not go together. I was only beautiful when I wrote, sang, or was on stage. That is when I had true beauty. In seventh grade I remember a boy in my age group was standing next to me at my locker. I was singing, “You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, it’s true…” The boy smiled cheekily and said, “Thank you, I know I am.” I replied, “I was singing that to myself.” He burst out laughing and said, “No, you’re not beautiful, you’re ugly!” I didn’t reply to him after that. I was correct, I was not pretty. I had always known I wasn’t pretty. But if I had always known, why was I about to cry? Why did I hide my face in my locker to keep the burning of my cheeks from showing? Why did I care?
Later on, because of an incident in my seventh grade summer, I grew to hate men and the world. The only men I did not hate were in my musicals I watched or Josh Groban. I loved his voice, and still do to this day. I loved how he sang and gave emotion to every song. When he sang a sad song I used to think, “He’s singing my pain”. And I had read somewhere that he hadn’t fit in, in school himself because of his music and talent. Was he a bit autistic himself? Were we both part of the Middle Spectrum?
Then in my freshman year, my life changed. To make a long story short I found these people called theater people. They were the ones who dared to be different, and to accept the others who were different. I found my most wonderful friends here. Backstage we laughed and joked. On stage we sang freely. In the theater room, under the watchful eye of a man named Bryan Grosbach, we learned. He became my mentor, and sometimes, the one person in my life who always believed in me.
At last, I gave up my quest for normality, and started a quest to being ME. If there is anyone you know who has autism or some type of handicap, pass this blog onto them. I am telling these kids now, I get it! I know what it’s like to watch the world, knowing that you are different, and that you can’t change it. I know what it’s like to be aware of your oddities and how it affects others. I know what it’s like to not be able to control it. It sucks, I get it. But find the joy. I’m telling you, try to find the joy. When I was young the doctors said I would never learn past the Elementary school level. I am now writing my own plays and reading books that college students can’t make heads or tails out of. I am in the National Honor Society and in mostly AP classes. Do not let anyone say what your limits are! Don’t let anyone tell you how to act or how to live your life. I know that if you’re still in school and with all these peers around judging you, it’s scary. But don’t be afraid. You will come out of it. Keep your true friends close, and what you love to do, closer. I have found I always have a friend in music and the arts. If you have found a friend in something constructive, hold fast to it. This ride of life only becomes crazier, and when you hit a few bumps, sometimes that’s the only thing you can turn to. But enjoy the view around you. It’s not the destination that matters… it’s the road you take.
“Two roads diverged and I
Took the one last traveled by
And that has made the difference”
~ The Road Less Traveled By
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