Autism is probably the most confusing of all the conditions that a child can grow up with. From the outside looking in, we guess what is going on with the children we love, and hope that our guesses are right. Many of us have spent lifetimes trying to understand autism from the outside looking in, applying the rules of our neurotypical, or so-called "normal," experiences to try to explain the visible behaviors of children with autism. But neurotypical rules don't apply to autism! People with autism, or "auties" as they familiarly call themselves, tell us that they don't see, hear, feel, taste, or experience what we see, hear, feel, taste, and experience. They literally live in a different world from us! If we neurotypicals on the outside want to understand what is going on inside the world of autism, we have to do everything we can to enter that world and try to see it from the inside. Only then can we help our children make sense of their world.
Children depend on the adults in their life to explain the world to them. We, the adults, hold up objects, name them, manipulate them to demonstrate how they work, teaching the language that describes that action. When we hold up an object, we fully expect that our children are seeing exactly what we see, and when we speak to them, we expect that they hear our voices and words exactly as we hear them. But this is not true in the world of autism! The world of autism is a very different world. In the world of autism...
Objects can look broken up, fractured in separated pieces like puzzle pieces.
Colors can throb, pulse, and glow with intensity.
Shapes can move in and out getting bigger then smaller, then bigger and smaller again.
Actions can move at varying speeds with chopped up motion as if seen in a strobe light that constantly changes speed and intensity.
Bright light can blot out all vision making the person with autism feel completely blind.
Light and shadow can take on actual form, and the paleness of what we neurotypicals call "form" can recede into a distant, indiscernable background.
Voices can echo, or cut in and out like a bad cellphone connection.
The music, or sing-songy intonation of our voices can be so exaggerated that speech sounds disappear, and children search for meanings in the musical patterns of voices, completely missing words.
Noises, movements, or smells in the environment that neurotypicals might never notice can be so harsh and overwhelming that they feel traumatic to the child with autism.
Hearing, vision, touch, smell, taste, and emotions can all function only one at a time, so if a child is listening to hear something, he or she may be unable to see, smell, taste, or feel anything. It can take a conscious effort to switch from using one sense to another, and for some children, making this switch is a huge job, requiring serious, concentrated effort that is exhausting after a very short time.
Emotions can swing wildly into high-adrenaline, high-alert, fight-or-flight mode many times per minute even when the child appears to be sitting calmly and silently in a corner! This kind of high-alert reaction is saved for only the most drastic of events in the brains of neurotypical children and adults. It's unfathomable to someone who has never experienced it. And yet our little "autie" children can go through a lifetime experiencing it constantly.
The child's own body can feel like a prison, or a trap, or a heavy foreign thing draped all over him or her, suffocating him or her, an enemy to claw free from.
Can we imagine such a world?
We have to imagine such a world. Our children need our understanding. If we don't learn to understand their world, our "help" can actually do more harm than good.