Living With Autism

Yesterday, I began my adventure of babysitting for my Spanish II teacher's kids: Simeon and Micah, both of whom, are autistic. This all began last year when I was a student for Ms. Jauihainen. Spanish has always been a strong subject for me and I really enjoyed having such a great teacher. I feel we really hit it off well and she asked if I could babysit for her. I gave her my number and this fall she called and let me know that they were going to be moving in the winter and that they were getting funding from the state for the autism and that they could pay babysitters very well. Later, in the month of November, she approached me again and asked if I would still be interested and I told her yes. So, she had me come over and meet her children and play with them a bit to see what it was like. Then I had to fill out some paper work and such and she told me she'd call when she needed me. Yesterday morning she called and asked if I'd babysit so that her and her husband Peter could do some Christmas shopping. I had the day off from cheerleading so I told her I would and went to her house. Having only met the kids once and being at the house only once, everything was relatively new to me. When I arrived, the kids were putting marbles down a race track in the living room and Ms. J explained to me some things she wanted me to do with the boys including taking them outside, playing a board game, writing a letter to Santa, making hot chocolate, and feeding them supper. And with that, she was gone. I began by trying to play marbles with them. She told me that the goal was to get them to do many activities instead of just one, because they could easily do just one. So, after twenty minutes I asked if they wanted to go outside but I got a screaming No. I explained to the both of them that we could no longer play marbles because Mommy said, and they decided to ignore me. So, I pretended to not hear them and started putting on my snow stuff and eventually I got them to put theirs on too and come with. They wanted to take buckets of water out with them for some odd reason but they had no explanation. When I asked them about it, I got a mumbled answer and they walked outside. Next thing I knew they were throwing snow all over my car and they were finding it hilarious. I tried to tell them that that was unacceptable and they continued to do it. When we went back inside, they went right back to the marbles and if I tried to get them to do something else they freaked and screamed. They were being very unresponsive and so I finally gave up and went to make supper. They came in and had to rearrange themselves to be in their "own spots" as they called them and in the middle of supper they got up and turned on all of their Christmas lights. After a little more playing, Ms. J and Peter came home and after some small talk they asked overall how it went and I explained to them some of the concerns I had. Ms. J ended up printing me off some info. about autism that she suggest I read so that I'd understand it better and with that (and a check for $70) I left.

I didn't intend to read all of the information she gave me. After all, it's like fifteen pages full text but I started reading last night and haven't been able to put down. Autism is mainly genetic and symptoms begin in the first two years of life. Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction and communication. Most children have trouble developing social skills and that's why Simeon was being very unresponsive. Autistic infants show less attention to social stimuli, smile and look at others less often, and respond less to their own name. Autistic toddlers differ more strikingly from social norms; for example, they have less eye contact and turn taking, and are more likely to communicate by manipulating another person's hand. Three to five-year-old autistic children are less likely to exhibit social understanding, approach others spontaneously, imitate and respond to emotions, communicate nonverbally, and take turns with others. However, they do form attachments to their primary caregivers. A big symptom for autistic children is repetitive action, which explains why the boys played with the marbles continually, putting all of them down the track and then picking them up and doing them all over. Autistic children usually have to stick to a very precise and unchanging routine that's very specific, and if it were to ever get off track you'd get a temper tantrum, which explains why the boys had to get up and turn on all the Christmas lights precisely at 5:00. And finally, autistic children generally have trouble with emotions. Because they are deficit in communication, they often don't understand when people are happy, upset, sad, mad, angry, etc. because they don't pick up on facial cues. Like when I told the boys to stop throwing snow on my car they didn't understand that I was angry because they didn't understand that my face was portraying that I was angry and that the tone of my voice was telling them how I felt. Both Simeon and Micah work one on one with special education teachers at school and with speech therapists outside of school. They're both beautiful, growing, and healthy boys that are quite smart in fact. They both can fluently read, name all the types of plants in their garden, name all the nutrients and vitamins and what foods contain what, and what types of ingredients are generally unhealthy. They pick up on odd things that many of us don't and that's what makes them so unique. I'm going to continue babysitting for Ms. J and I can't wait to start helping the boys. Autism effects a select number of people, 1-2% of every 1,000 kids in the world, but four times as many males as females. While Simeon and Micah will never fully live on their own, they are good human beings. And they will live a great life, as any normal person.

For more information about Autism; visit:
http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer