Morgan's teacher brought up to me an interesting scenario that had taken place in the classroom last week. A father of one of the students had brought in a volcano set to erupt (thrilled the kids) and as he was showing it off, a tiny black piece popped off and flew across the room. Naturally, the whole class, minus my kid, went looking for it.
I say naturally because Morgan was more fixated on studying the mechanisms which make the volcano work. Mrs. M said that Morgan looked around him and found a green component, same size and shape as the black component, and handed it to the Volcano Dad.
Volcano Dad exclaimed, "What a smart boy! This will work!" It did. It made the volcano go off without a hitch.
How did Morgan know? How did he notice that thing? Why did he notice? Does his AS make him note details in a room that no one else would ever think of noticing? I think so.
Mrs. M said that the class cheered for Morgan and that made him very happy- for a minute. Then he "peeped" (Thomas the Tank Engine style) and tried to talk Thomas, which is what he does whenever he's nervous, excited, or just plain doesn't know what to do. She says that she asked the school shrink what to do about this behavior, since it's really not harmful, but it is "odd." She, Mrs. M., loves it because Morgan can use his echolalia to tell her full stories with huge words in great detail. The school shrink gives a resounding "NO" to this, as do a lot of backassward leading psychologist and psychiatrists. It's as if they believe that children who seek comfort in the familiarity in their part of the spectrum of stims (the autistic hallucinations I've heard about and would honestly love to see - they sound beautiful, the comfort zones, the fixations on spinning/spinning objects, etc) will somehow damage them. I disagree- let them do it. It harms no one. It comforts them and frankly, if kids are teasing them, drag those children's parents in and have a meeting to ream out the parents for not teaching their kids to not make fun of a differently abled child.
And another thing, if one more person refers to my child as handicapped or special needs, I'll scream! When I think handicapped, I see the placards in my mind and think literally physically handicapped. My child is neither of those. A good portion of the kids on the spectrum who are being mainstreamed are in the same boat- so knock it off. Special needs is definitely a semantics issue for me, but I believe that every child has special needs- some more than others. Give me "differently abled" and we're good. In a day and age of people trying to be PC about race, gender, and sexuality, why can't we be more PC about DSM labels?
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