Eric Bailey's

For the past week and a bit I have been studying Autism and intensive therapy to help kids with Autism achieve in some of the basic skills that can be challenging to learn. Many of the things I've seen and been trained to do relate more to helping with academic knowledge. Things like learning to ask for things, learning how to say words, sentences or even to describe things. The off shoot of much of this is a form of social interaction. It is this that is causing me concern, the socialization. I am wondering what he does in the classroom, how he interacts with others, if there is the encouragment for his classmates to interact with him? I remember even in Thunder Bay at recess he would be invited by the other children to play with them, but he would take the opportunity to do other things. He still does not play with the other children. The only time I have seen him really interact with another person, play and make up stories with another person is when he and Liam are playing together.

I am a social person. I value being around other people, I value interacting with others, I go a little stir crazy when I do not get out. Many of my concerns and my saddness about my sons diagnosis relate to his lacking the ability and desire to socialize with others. I do not understand this side of him and I impose my own feelings on him. So again I find myself waffling back and forth on this teeter-totter of emotion about my son. Do I need to roll up my sleeves and work intensively with him (or get someone to do it) so that he can be a social being, so that he can have the tools to develop social relationships, or do I need to be relaxed about this because he sees relationships differently, and not make him conform to my world view?

Plagued by questions I cannot answer I shall do like a good boy and go back to my room, suppress and study for my big final exam.