Myths.

I thought I would use this opportunity to share a few common myths about autism. Whilst some of these are true for some people they are certainly not true for everyone with autism.  I guess the first one would be that children with autism don't make eye contact. Certainly for us that is not true, Isaac does make and indeed maintain eye contact. His eye contact is at times poor and almost always on his terms, but it is very definitely there. When he was a baby it was not there and if I'm honest I don't think it is something that came naturally to him, rather it was something he learnt. When Isaac was a baby one of the first things I noticed was that he never made eye contact, when I fed him and looked into his eyes he would actively look away. As time went on and he reached his toddler and preschool years I would always ask him to look at me, I would never force him or do what I have seen some people do and move his head so he had to look at me but I would always ask him to look at me, on the occasions he did look we would always tell him he had done well and give lots of praise.  Nowadays he will look and make eye contact but when he is overloaded, stressed, upset, unwell or if he feels he is being confronted then it goes. So whilst I believe that it may not be a natural thing it is definitely there.

Another myth is that children with autism aren't sociable and don't want friends. This I think is the one I find most hurtful. Isaac wants to be friends and he also wants to be very sociable he just has problems with understanding the social boundaries of friendships. He doesn't always appreciate that the person he is talking to is not necessarily interested in what he is talking about, nor does he understand that he cannot simply interrupt a conversation just because he feels that what he has to say is more important (whether it is relevant or not).  When Isaac was in mainstream school he used to come home and cry because he had no one to play with, or there was yet another party that he wasn't invited to. If Alice used to go for a play date at a friends he would cry as though his heart would break as he asked me why he didn't get to go on playdates.  At one meeting with his head teacher I told her what he had said and her explanation was that the other children were scared of him. How do you explain that to a 6 year old? Now he is at his new school he does have friends, they understand each other and although it is not easy to have play dates he did have a party for his birthday that his new friends came to. One parent told me that when her son brought the invite home she actually cried, her son had never been invited to a party before, how sad that others find it impossible to see the amazing qualities and genuine hearts that our children have.

Children with autism don't understand jokes or have a sense of humour. Well to a degree this is true for us, Isaac loves a good joke, he doesn't understand it but he still loves it. He is so funny when he is trying to tell a joke because he just doesn't get that there has to be a punchline or a funny answer but he laughs anyway and that makes me laugh. His favourite jokes for a while were knock knock jokes, he heard one and then proceeded to make up his own which of course weren't funny but he laughed all the same. One day a lovely friend gave him a knock knock joke book which he would read every morning then recite at various points throughout the day. As for his sense of humour, he has a wicked sense of humour and an incredibly infectious laugh, his favourite program for a while was you've been framed, he actually got that people falling over or walking into things was funny, to hear his laugh never fails to brighten up my day.

One of the things I am often asked when I explain to people that Isaac has autism is "What is his special talent?" Never entirely sure how I can answer that, he has an amazing ability to make me laugh even when he is being particularly challenging but that's not what they are looking for. Is he good with numbers/memorising things/does he have an eye for detail? Well, yes, all of these but nothing I would say was a special talent. His memory is incredible, he can go somewhere once and then return months later and he will notice that one little thing has changed, he does like numbers and often counts when he is stressed, but is he the next child prodigy that will take a maths A level and then go and do a university degree at an early age? No, definitely not.  His eye for detail is amazing and he will notice the smallest change in anything but I wouldn't say it was a talent.  What about obsessions?" people ask. I think it is safe to say that he is very obsessive about things but unlike some children with autism he doesn't have one particular obsession to the exclusion of everything else. When he was younger he loved Thomas the tank, he never 'played' with them as such but would watch as I built the tracks then line up all his engines (he knew the names of every single one)in order and Heaven help anyone who moved one out of the line. He then progressed to dinosaurs, he still likes dinosaurs but not to the point that he is obsessed.  His latest 'obsessions' for want of a better word are roller coasters and minecraft.  Recently we went to a pleasure beach and the rollercoaster there had a driver, Isaac was in Heaven as he talked the ears off the poor bloke who was driving it, wanting to know how it worked, how he drove it etc etc. He watches videos on youtube of rollercoasters and plans which theme parks we can go to. At the moment his ambition is to grow to 1m40 so that he is tall enough to go on the big rollercoasters at Alton Towers.  So yes he is obsessive but his main obsessions change on a fairly regular basis, he does have smaller obsessions depending on what is happening on any particular day, for example, he was recently going on a trip to build a bear factory so he took that opportunity to research on their webpage every single bear they made, how they were made, what they did when they were made etc etc, I wonder whether that is more to do with the fact that he likes order and he likes to know what is happening than an actual obsession.

What I would urge everybody to do when they meet a family who has a child with autism, look past the diagnosis and see the child. Yes Isaac does have autism and will obviously share traits with other children with the same condition, but he is an individual, a person in his own right with his own personality and his own little ways. See the person not the diagnosis. I will always remember what one person said to me when I noted that Isaac didn't share all of the same traits that other children with autism did. When you have seen one child with autism, you have seen one child with autism. So just like neurotypical children, children with autism are ALL different. Isaac is Isaac and for that I will always feel very blessed.