The ASD Family: Feeling Our Differences

              I read somewhere that the first thing a parent with children on the autism spectrum realizes is that other families do not go through the same struggles with their children as we do.  We see other families in the supermarkets, the parks, and at school, and they do not seem to struggle the way we do. The relief of the diagnosis is that we now at last know why, we have a reason; it is not just bad parenting.

That realization goes double for the parent of the ASD child, who is on the spectrum herself. I naturally assume that other people go through the same things that I do. I never considered they were experiencing their lives differently. I just assumed the problem was me. I was a terrible mother—my children were undisciplined because of my parenting.

I could not keep up, and it was MY FAULT.

I was peripherally aware that others seemed to be doing better than me, that other children were calmer and more behaved.  Because I do not socialize with other parents, and my friends and family live 600 miles away I live fairly isolated. The isolation has sheltered me somewhat from really feeling the difference between my family and other’s.

My brother stayed at our house with my two year old niece over the Thanksgiving weekend. She is a beautiful, calm little princess that I love dearly. We spent the days playing and giggling, and on Friday we drove down to the beach and put our little ones on amusement park rides.

Over this past weekend I really felt our differences. My niece napped, she didn’t bang her head and flail around for hours. She sat and ate her meals, while my son (6 months younger) screamed, threw things, and tried to run away.

My eight year old had multiple meltdowns due to the overstimulation of the holidays and extra people in the house.  Aspie Teen become Hyper-Aspie Teen because he was excited about having family over for the holidays, and had difficulty being appropriate in adult conversations.

My niece was happy and smiling riding the amusement park rides, while my little one screamed, climbed out and ran away. Then of course, he wanted Mom, who was riding and began screaming and shaking the gates around the rides to get to me.

Although I had a great weekend, it was incredibly exhausting, and at times very lonely even amidst a group of people. For the first time, I felt very acutely our family’s differences. Feeling the differences made me aware of the people around us, their scolding looks, and the comments like, “we would nip that right in the bud,” when our children had an eye-raising reaction to the stimuli around them.

             No—they would not, they could not, not if they lived in our family.

            When was the first time you FELT the differences? Do outings with friends or holiday gatherings with family make you feel it more?

Your Other Left: Spatial problems in autism

 “You need to make a left at this corner. No—your other left” ~ Mr. Aspie Writer

It doesn’t happen every once in a while; it happens all the time.

Whenever I am asked for direction (I am great at giving directions because I remember street names) I stumble over which way to tell the person to turn. I will point to the left and say right, or point to the right and say left—without fail.

I literally have to pick up my hands, look at them, and remember which one I write with.  I write with my right hand.  When I get those inevitable odd stares, I just laugh and say, “38 years old and I still can’t tell my left from my right.”  Ha-ha. But it wasn’t funny, it was embarrassing.

When I am told, “it’s the first door on the right,” I automatically turn left when I get there.  It’s in the right drawer, the right cabinet… I open the left drawer and the left cabinet every time.  I always thought I just had some strange mental block or something. I mean with a 50/50 chance of accidentally turning the right way (left or right) I get it wrong 100% of the time!  What are the odds?

It never occurred to me that there might be a reason, other than my own stupidity, for my difficulty differentiating right from left.  It never occurred to me that autism could be the culprit; that I was having spatial perception problems.

When I was younger (early twenties) I taught ballroom dance at Arthur Murray Dance Studios. I needed to call out which foot my partner had to use, and in which direction he needed to move. If my partner was taking a step with his left foot, then I was doing the opposite with my right foot.  I never got tripped up.  My movements had to be a mirror image of his—always backwards, so I blamed that dance experience for my difficulty with right and left.

After all, since I taught that way for a few months, it must be the reason I still can’t tell right from left almost twenty years later.  Right?

I never did come up with a good excuse for why I had difficulty before I worked there.

Autistic children often have spatial problems; of which telling left from their right is only one of the aspects. I don’t know why this surprises me anymore, at this point nothing should.  It just seems like every day I am learning something new about myself; my autistic self.

Things that never made any sense, had no good explanation, made me feel silly, stupid, less-than or alone can now be explained. I have a new set of eyes with which to see myself.

Does anyone feel embarrassment over a seemingly simple task? Fumble over left vs. right? Are there any tricks you come up with to help you come to the correct answer more quickly so no-one notices? Unfortunately, my looking at and comparing my hands, often mimicking writing to remember is not exactly inconspicuous.