Out of focus
June 21, 2009 by Jill Cornfield
Filed under Health
Sometimes it seems like Alex’s most obvious characteristic — or maybe it’s autism’s most obvious characteristic — is lack of focus. When he was just three or so, a neighbor watched him careen around her apartment examining things and wandering around without stopping. “My, he’s BUSY!” she observed. At the time I thought it was positive: he’s doing things, I thought, thinking about things, looking at things.
Photo courtesy of JunCTionS (flickr.com)
But he’s 11 now, and when the rest of us are sitting around watching a movie or eating dinner, Alex is still busy. Still wandering. Standing up in front of the TV blocking our view. Restlessly picking up toys and putting them down and looking for other toys.
I searched photos that were tagged “restless” or “restlessness” but decided on “unfocused” as the adjective that often describes Alex’s engagment with the world. Other times, he is SO focused, so engaged we watch, proud and admiring his ability to look through a book or form Scrabble letters into words.
Reading that brought back memories of when my daughters were so unfocused that they would also pretty much race around a room, grabbing at stuff, dropping it on the floor.
I was into Olympia Sports the other day with Emma, 7, ASD, and she saw a Red Sox–of COURSE!–uniform top on the wall for sale. It had one of those big yellow signs on it that said, ‘$89′. So, Em walks over to the counter and says to the young man at the register, “Um, excuse me….but that price is too high. It says 89 dollars. That’s too much money.” The employee, who looked to be all of 18 years old, then started to explain to her that he didn’t set the prices!
It was cute, anyway!