Our dog died. As my husband and I cried for our loss, our son studied our faces… he worked to imitate us and even took a kleenex to wipe his dry eyes.
J’s speech therapist and teacher are working with him on acting skills. He has to learn to function in a “typical” world so learning social cues, facial expressions, spoken expressive language will help him. He’s going to have to function in sensory difficult situations… he’s going to have to learn appropriate responses to words and emotional cues.
We’ve all heard people say that if you’ve met one child with autism– you’ve met ONE child with autism, and it’s true. Autism is so intertwined in social expression that it would be easy to think that the emotion or thought behind the outward expression is part of autism– but, it’s not. The responses may be colored by sensory issues or lack of language fluency– but the underlying sentiment, the interest or emotion is all theirs… individual.
There are several publicly outspoken adults on the autism spectrum who refer to the world as “yours”… They understand what is expected but it doesn’t come naturally– or without difficulty.
I know that J loves our dog and feels the loss. I know that he needs to learn socially expected emotional responses in order to fit into this “typical” world. I just wish he could be accepted and understood for who he is– the underlying emotional, thoughtful, spiritual part of him– without having to work so hard to appear “typical”… I wish Berlitz could teach me to understand him.