When I say ‘my son has autism,’ people say…..
August 29, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
It used to be, if I said “my son has autism,” people would say “What is that?”
I have been hearing something different of late: “My friend has a son like that”; “my cousin has a son with Asperger’s”; “I read a book whose main character had autism.”
It’s an interesting trend to note.
That’s interesting.
I don’t have an autistic child (I have no children of my own yet), but when I tell people I work with autistic children, I get all manner of responses.
(I don’t feel that all the time, and I’m only patient with the kids I’m working with – not with NTs who really ought to know better.)
(Why is that special? It’s a job, and I love it, and I love the kids, and I’m good at it… but it’s not any more special than my friend who’s a nurse on the cancer ward at the children’s hospital.)
Most interesting was when I went to my 10-year high school reunion. We sent in little blurbs about ourselves and they got put into a book. One of the girls I’d been friendly with in HS came up to me and said, “Janna, it’s so weird that you work with autistic children, because I have one!”
A response I did not get today, but that I have gotten occasionally, is
Then there are the responses I get when I say I teach Greek and Latin: “Who still studies those?” “Aren’t they dead?”.
My poor brother the Classicist had an awful time with all his friends in University, as they were mostly musicians. (As a former music major, I can empathize with him.) He went to the University of Ottawa, where they alternate a course’s language of instruction (English/French) by year, so you take a course in your preferred language when it’s offered in that language.
My poor brother was taking a fourth year Latin course when he was in third year, and having to translate pages upon pages every day… and his musician friends would ask him why he was studying so much or why he didn’t just do it later.
Of course, that kid’s work ethic is part of why he got an entrance scholarship (and kept it all four years) – the other part of that being that he’s smart as all get-out.
That is an interesting trend. I know it is only really in the last 12-24 months that I’ve become more aware of it myself – partly because of personal experience with friends but also as its been highlighted in the media more.
Do you think it’s because it’s being diagnosed more? Because it’s something that the media are being more intentional about highlighting? Or is it becoming more common? Asking as someone who has no idea really – but am interested in how awareness is raised in issues like this.
people usually ask me ‘have you read the Dog in the Night Time?’
which tells you a lot!
My sense (not based on any scientific data) is that there are more autistic kids—-that there’s more awareness because there is more autism; that it is not simply a matter of better diagnosis. (This is a potentially heated topic in autism circles.) And the autistic children I have been encountering are not those who have the “less severe” form of autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, but children who have many of the same challenges as my own “classically autistic son.”
Serge’s dad, sometimes I also hear, “that book with the title about something about a dog at night….”
A few years ago an administrator told us that autism was overtaking learning disabilities (LD) as the biggest group of disabled students in our district. He thought some of it was due to better diagnostics, but the growth was too big to be only that.
We heard the same from a school administrator in St. Paul over seven years ago—-she had been an educator for years and made it clear that she was clearly seeing an increase in kids like Charlie (”classically” autistic children).