The Autistic Me

It has been a busy couple of weeks, with my classes finishing their final exams and my wife and I rushing to fix up our "old" house so the sale can close and we can focus on the "new" (really, actually new) house. Just as I was ready to gather some thoughts and blog, we had the events of Newtown, CT. The mention of Autism Spectrum Disorders and violence (you can search on Google, I won't bother with the links) have raised some difficult issues — and I didn't want to comment on some of the articles about mental health and violence because, while less upsetting than the horrific events, were still upsetting. We'll have more stories about the "severely" autistic with aggressive personality disorders. Maybe someone will dredge up the various "autism defense" stories, citing the several criminal cases in which autism was a defense for horrible acts. Now, I'm only in a slightly better place to comment than I was a few days ago....

The brain is amazing. It's both fragile and resilient. While researching written language and autism for my doctoral degree, I learned a small fraction of what scientists now understand regarding language cognition. The question I had, and one many others have, is why some autistics are good at written or symbolic language communication, but have either limited verbal abilities or are non-verbal? How can someone write and not speak? Why would someone prefer sign language or pictographs to speaking, especially if he or she can speak? The simplified answer: language is not one thing. Language that is seen is not the same as language that is spoken and heard. Symbolic language and auditory language differ. Braille involves yet another form of language cognition. Somehow, our brains manage to connect and decipher several different "languages" we experience. Most people can "read" postures, expressions, icons, symbols, colors, sounds, gestures, vocal tones, spo...

Yes, yet another book excerpt. These two sections deal with "situational" communication and active listening. These are short excerpts, with signifiant content already in the full book chapter. I want to thank my cousin Jeanne and several other experts for helping with these sections. Jeanne has a master's degree in speech pathology and education. It's great to have so many people helping me with this project. Situational Greetings and Partings A student told me that his “great date” never returned his call. He did everything right. I asked how the date ended. “I shook her hand and thanked Ms. Great for the opportunity to share an afternoon with her.” Even I knew the problem: situational greetings and partings. I asked the student, who complained that several great dates hadn’t progressed to a second or third, if he always shook hands and used formal surname addresses upon parting. “Yes. I want to be polite, don’t I?”  The logic is sound, but out of place. I wasn’t ...

On LinkedIn, in addition to scam therapies and nutcase "cures" for autism, parents keep asking for ways to "help" their children "become normal." Some of this is a desire for a better life for the child, but there is also a selfish desire to interact with the child in a comfortable way. People don't like atypical minds -- we're uncomfortable. "Repairing" or "recovering" a child seems cruel to me. Let minds evolve at their own paces. And embrace differences, don't try to "fix" people who experience the world and process data in a different way. There are days when I have no desire, no energy, to speak. The effort to organize and prepare speech is draining, a conscious effort to assemble thoughts in a way others will accept and respond to -- like having to translate from English to Chinese. I have to mentally, often slowly, convert idioms and metaphors I hear into the visual "language" of my mind. Then, I h...