Autism

Where I work, the centre aims to teach the children to be normal.

To be able to think like how normal people thinks.
To be able to do normal things e.g. wash yourself/feed yourself/eye contact.
To not do what other people think are not normal e.g. tapping your hand/humming nonsensically/saying irrelevant things.

It suddenly strikes me as ironic that we, THE NORMAL people are always striving to find our so-called Identity. To be different from the rest.

To have different clothes. To have different hairstyles. To have a different life from the rest. To think differently from the rest. In media/arts/advertisement, that'll be called thinking out of the box; creativity. That would be applauded! To have mannerisms/accent/slangs/lingo different from the rest. For the teenagers, that would equal Cool. Something that most yearn for.

How so is that the differentness of the autistic children is shunned? To be condemned as wrong? Why is their differentness deemed an abnormality?

To me, it seems quite unfair when we have yet to understand their logic, the way they think. And because we couldn't understand them, we haughtily say that it's wrong. That they should follow what we deem is Normal.

To revisit a past conversation:
Teacher A: It's difficult to teach them because they can't understand us.
Teacher B: No, it's because we canNot understand them

Then, what is IT that we deem Normal?

Sometimes, when I describe the mannerisms of autistic children to people who ask me, they'd most likely would tell me that they would have some of the characteristics as well. Funnily enough, they are not autistic.

Doesn't it seem that it's a very thin line separating normality and autism? And where do we even begin to draw the line?

and all the centre can do is to help them to be as normal as other people think. To stop them from being hurt by their peers, their teachers, their parents, the society. By people who don't understand that they are different.

It's painful to watch.

Kid A has blue black marks on her buttocks that resemble a pattern motif. There is 3 of them there and we deduced that someone hit her with an object. She has temper tantrums problem and sometimes is difficult to handle. Naturally, people under stress will react. Sadly, most of the time with violence. Different from other children, she can't speak. She can't tell us what happen. She can't ask for help.

Kid B is always bullied by friends in school. His friends will tease him, jeer at him, steal his things. Why? Just because he seems different and small kids are sometimes just mischievous and sometimes slightly mean. He doesn't have much friends in school, all his other friends are from the autistic centre.

Kid C doesn't talk except for the littlest of noises. A slight bit here and there. He can't play with a ball. We have to teach him how to throw/kick a ball. To think that he'll grow up with no concept/no enjoyment of football. Of any sports. He has a gluten-free diet. He'll have no taste of the other wonderful food in the world. He'll probably not grow up to travel, to enjoy life, so to speak. For him, it'll be trial after trial to overcome. The slightest upset to his routine would be earth-shattering to him.

Kid D is 9 years old. After school, he comes to the centre for computer classes. After afternoon sessions, his mother will bring him food from home. Then, there's more sessions at night before he is allowed to go back. At home, there'll be more homework to do. No time for playing. No time for entertainment. To be normal, be to accepted, he would have to work harder than other kids. What about his childhood? For his mother, for him to be a able-bodied, accepted adult in the future is more important than his childhood. Yes, that does seem like a fair-trade off for me.

Sadly so...