Saturday, October 13, 2007

Fun with Autism

Friday was full of excitement. Andrew perseverates on the grills of cars because they look like smiles. He talks to them, yells at them and laughs at them (even if they are not in his sight). I can't imagine having a brain that keeps me stuck on one thing for so long. Its hard for him to learn, do work or talk to friends because he is only thinking about the smiling cars. In the lunchroom, he can see the parking lot filled with happy cars, from his seat so he even had a hard time eating because he was so busy laughing with the cars. After lunch, I took his best friend (does not have autism) and him outside to look at the cars. I asked his best friend to show us the right way to look at cars and to tell us what he was thinking about the cars. Then I asked Andrew if it made sense what his friend was saying, he said yes. For the rest of the afternoon, when he started to get silly about the cars, I would ask him if that was the way his friend would act. That kept him focused for the afternoon. What would you do?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it is interesting. Is that what one does when one is working with someone with Autism? My across-the-street neighbor has a teen with Autism. He is very nice but one has to be careful because he is easily spooked as, like your little boy in the story, he gets so focused he doesn't see you come up.