When Sandra Baker was called to pick up her 9-year-old autistic son, Chris, from his Mercer County, Kentucky school, she was stunned by what she found: She says that Chris’s teacher had stuffed him in a bag and left him in the…
rtnt:
Finding Love With Autism
For The New York Times, Amy Harmon writes beautifully about the challenges of finding love when you have an autism spectrum disorder:
Only since the mid-1990s have a group of socially impaired young people with otherwise normal intelligence and language development been recognized as the neurological cousins of nonverbal autistic children. Because they have a hard time grasping what another is feeling — a trait sometimes described as “mindblindness” — many assumed that those with such autism spectrum disorders were incapable of, or indifferent to, intimate relationships. Parents and teachers have focused instead on helping them with school, friendship and, more recently, the workplace.
Yet as they reach adulthood, the overarching quest of many in this first generation to be identified with Asperger syndrome is the same as many of their nonautistic peers: to find someone to love who will love them back.
…
“It’s like the blue screen of death,” she said, describing her difficulty conveying her emotion with a widely used term for a Windows computer crash. “There are no words there.”
“You’re not a robot,” he insisted, intending to comfort her. “I know you can do this. You’re a human being.”
But not, she thought, the kind he wanted her to be.
by rtnt
