Dec 31st: hi this is Carrie. i have autism. i don’t like it because it makes me sad when i see people in the wrong place or i hear songs that made sad. school is fun because i do PE and playing games. i eat special foods that are healthy and GF (gluten free) because they’re healthy and gluten makes me feel hurt in my tummy and my head. i like computer and ipads, especially ebooks and apps like Scribblenauts and Cut The Rope. the end! bye bye!
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(I have to apologize, I completely forgot that I was posting stuff on this page for when Carrie has something to say!)
Sept 23: The summer was busy for Carrie. It’s like she spent those brief months growing up, so much so that when she came back to school in the fall to start fourth grade, everyone was surprised. Of course, she was taller, easily by two inches, but as her special ed teacher pointed out, even in her face she has just looks older. She’s stopped HAVING to wear her hair in tight elastic bands every day, and now loves for me to flat-iron her hair and leave it down. She had to start wearing a bra over the summer (I’ll rant about the hormones in our meat on another post!), and is just…older.
But she began saying something after school started that confused me. She kept asking, “Do we be cute at school?” Of course, I immediately started praising her and telling her that she’s always cute, she’s always beautiful, etc. I wasn’t sure where this was going, so I didn’t want to commit to anything! I was afraid that this phrase actually came from some adult telling her, “Don’t you be cute,” meaning, don’t back talk.
But then she started asking, “Do we be cute before PE?” I had no idea what that meant.
Then I found out. Carrie has a crush on the new male PE teacher! He’s young, he’s athletic, and apparently all the soccer moms are in quite a collective swoon over the man! And Carrie is just as taken with him.
So begins entire conversations that I wasn’t ready to have with Carrie…
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May 26: “The funniest thing in the world is laughing. Because I’m supposed to. I laugh at myself, because I laugh all the time.
Summer is at the end of May. I do fun games. Can I play Jumbleberry Fields now? I want to like my pet. (Webkinz) I want to like it better as a hedgehog.“
The interesting thing is I actually had a typo above:
Simmer is at the end of May (“Mommy, you have to put the U there.”) Carrie cried and pointed at the word until I went back and erased it!
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May 25: Carrie is still not very verbal. She’s part of the conundrum that is autism. She can talk, she can sing, she can make herself mostly understood. But she can’t just sit and tell me about her day or talk about her favorite book or flavor of ice cream. I have to force the questions out of her. Even today after years of making her talk to me, if she could get by with getting food and drink by uttering a one-word sentence, she would.
But from time to time, she’ll tell me something so profound that I scribble it on the back of a receipt and shove it in my purse to read later. No, Carrie isn’t going to write a book any time soon and she isn’t going to go on a national tour speaking about autism. Mostly because she doesn’t know she has autism. She’s in the fourth grade now and has only recently realized that she’s the only kid in the class with an aide. She even asked me why her helpers have to follow her around all day. It’s a shitty day when you have to tell your own child that there’s something wrong with her.
My daughter with autism is 16, fully verbal…..and still would choose not to talk to us for hours at a time. When I make a conscious effort to throw in random comments about her favorite subjects,
We had to deal with the “what’s wrong” when she was 3rd-4th grade, and she saw the diagnosis on a form on a psychologist’s desk. For her it is a relief to know that her brain is different, because she already knew that she is different– but she doesn’t like the idea that we are trying to “fix” her. That pisses her off.
I agree. I’m in the precarious position of Carrie not knowing that she has autism, not knowing what it is, and so on. She doesn’t even question it…FOR NOW! I’m worried about when she looks around and sees that everybody else has friends they sit with at lunch or that they have boys’ names written on their notebooks.
Carrie does hate to engage in a conversation that she didn’t start, but I think it’s still because she doesn’t have that social grasp just yet. With all the progress she’s made this year on initiating conversation, I think she’ll get there.
I was “lucky” and had another mom with a daughter with autism living a couple blocks away, amd over the years we have gotten to know quite a number of girls with high functioning autism/asperger’s (as well as a couple of boys!). Having a peer group helped a lot when the questions came. It also has helped during the drought years, when there aren’t as many friends at school.
We’re lucky in the opposite way, I suppose. Carrie is such a rare creature here that even her classmates (for now) vie to see who gets to sit next to her. It’s like everyone we know has heard of autism, but has never seen it up close, so people are still very delicate with us.
I attended a support group meeting in a city about an hour from here…once. It was the fault of the group, not all support groups, but this one was so negative and the parents almost seemed to be in a contest to “out-autism” each other. “My kid can’t talk…” versus “Oh yeah? Well, my kid can’t even walk. Try living like that!” It was so demoralizing.
I’m glad you had that shoulder to even look at, let alone lean on!
Carrie- why are Webkinz cool?