Make sense so far?
Well, not to Michael. For an autistic child who thrives on order, this is totally wrong. If the kid is number 16, he should be at the back of the line. So Michael said this. He got mad. Then he said, "And he is black so he needs to go to the end of the line!" WHOA! Wait a minute! Our family is practically the most culturally diverse family around. We expose the children to all religions, different cultures and there really isn't a prejudice bone in any of our body. So why in the world did he say that?
I guess a few days before, they were reading in the kids magazine about Rosa Parks and the whole bus incident and how blacks had to go to the back of the bus. Yes, Michael they did....but that was the year 1963 or something! Here is another case of a language issue and the typical autistic child not really comprehending a sense of time.
So the teachers had to explain to him that we do not treat black people like that, that the new kid isn't exactly black, he is Hispanic and they had to show him the alphabet to get him to realize that the boy's last name is close to the beginning of the alphabet. This was very hard for Michael to accept.
When I talked to him about it yesterday morning, he put his hands over his ears and didn't want to hear about it. I don't blame him, it is confusing. Michael's little ordered world is now spinning out of order. After I told Chris, he went as far to say, "Well, the teachers lied to him." I asked Chris, "How is that?" He said, "They really don't base things on their number, they do it alphabetically. So technically they do not line up by number, they line up alphabetically. Many autistic people do not tolerate lies at all, even if it doesn't seem like a lie to the "norm". Things are in black and while for them, there is no "give" so to speak.
Luckily, Michael adapts fairly quickly. He uses a lot of his strategies and coping mechanisms to move on. This could have been a real disaster, but instead Michael turned it around. He even made 2 clay owls in art class, and then when the new kid came and didn't have an owl to paint, Michael quickly gave up his extra owl to the new boy. He is a sweetie and I'm very proud of him. Yet this is just another example of how rigid one can be when you are "Somewhere Over the Spectrum."
Everyone is SO attuned to skin color in the US. It's just nuts. The kids pick up on it because the adults do. Michael isn't prejudiced about anything except people lying to him. :) I agree with Chris, in Mike's mind, the teacher lied... and it was only a lie of convenience, convenience for the teacher, not the students. If this was about the comfort of the students, wouldn't they have just put the kid at the end of the line instead of making this confusing run-around? I'm sure other kids were as confused as Mike, but just knew the social cues that said they weren't supposed to say anything.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, though!
ReplyDeleteThe rigid part of Michael's thinking isn't in changing of the rules. He understands that rules change and the world change. He might get frustrated over it but he gets over it very rapidly.
ReplyDeleteWhat seems to frustrate Michael the most is when people in power tell him one thing and do things differently.
As his class started everybody was assigned a number based on alphabetical order.
Then they were told to line up in alphabetical order. OOPS! They weren't. They were told to line up in numerical order. Which just happens to be the same as numerical order.
Nobody told Michael "It takes longer to teach new students how to line up in alphabetical order than in numerical order, so we are making it easy right now because your numbers match the alphabetical order."
From his point of view the numbers were assigned randomly. He likely didn't notice the alphabetical order.
So now they get a new student. In all likely hood the number given the new student is based on the line number in the teachers grade or attendance book. She just added him at the end of the list. BINGO! Number 16, that's you new kid!
Now the rules are changed. Nobody told Michael that the rules changed. (We are lining up in alphabetical order now, not numerical, even though they use to be the same). Nobody told Michael that the number was to make things easy at the beginning of the school year. So he follows the same rules he's been taught.
16 comes after 15, that means you get in line behind number 15.
But why?
The answer is simple. The teachers made it easy on the kids at the beginning of the year. But Michael doesn't know that.
So here's the simple answer: Because you are number 16, 16 comes after 15.
But that's wrong Michael. He goes here.
Hmmm, well if it isn't because of the number and that isn't reason enough why did you give him 16? He needs to be at the end of the line. You TOLD me that on the first day of school.
Hmmm, I have it! He needs to be at the back of the line because he is number 16 AND YOU told me blacks go to the back of the line! See teacher! I'm smart! I remembered what you taught me.
OOPS, not so much.
I want to clarify that I do not mean to imply at all that the teacher was lying. It was not a lie at all, and I think that is a very strong word to use. I am merely saying that to an autistic child it feels like a "lie" because they see the black and white of things. They do not have any other way to describe it. Michael's teacher is an excellent teacher. She is the perfect teacher for him. She goes out of her way to include him and is constantly thinking about his needs. An example of this is that we forgot to bring pajamas for pajama day, and she went out of her way to come down to my room to see if we could do anything to get him pajamas so that he would feel included in their special day. She let her student teacher actually go to my house to pick up jammies for Michael. She really is a fantastic teacher, and I do not want to imply at all that ANYONE was lying!
ReplyDelete