On Autism and Personal Growth

“Hello Leo, * hello Leo,” a circle of children and adults sings to an eight-year-old boy whose cherubic face sits upon an otherwise gangly body. “Hello Leo, so glad you’re here today!” the group finishes, just as the increasingly frustrated and reddening boy yells, “Stop it!” in his best Hulk impression. The teaching assistant to his left, optimistically termed a ‘buddy,’ gently rubs his back, gradually bringing him back to a calmer state.

Like the rest of the students in the male-dominated classroom, Leo has autism: Asperger’s Syndrome, specifically. This places him on the ‘high-functioning’ end of Autism Spectrum Disorder, and at times, he is no different from a neurotypical developing child. He loves Candy Land, enjoys tag, is especially bossy in that purely childlike way, and interacts with other people.

As a teaching assistant with the Autistic Children’s Activities Program in Portland, I taught, played with and guided children with autism, many similar to Leo, for two consecutive summers, five days a week, eight hours a day. Beginning the job after my freshman year of college, my only real interaction with developmentally disabled individuals had been brief, and my knowledge was largely theoretical. I was eager to learn quickly and draw connections to ideas I had previously explored in only an abstract manner.

The program proved difficult yet immensely enjoyable, both for the children and for me. From such mentally, physically, and emotionally trying lessons, I became skilled in reacting correctly and effectively redirecting negative behavior. As a result, I grew closer to the children, and autism gained a face – or several. I had incidentally but gladly become some form of spokesperson in my community and resident expert within my peer groups for this cause, which in the process also became my cause.

I dug into articles, studies and personal stories regarding autism, restructuring my experiences with Leo and his peers into an academic framework. In those summers, I felt incredibly challenged and fulfilled, and I learned to apply that drive and sense of purpose to other areas of my life. I saw that learning is a continual process, with new input constantly feeding older neural pathways as well as acquired information in an ever-adapting feedback loop. It is up to us to keep that loop alive and functioning on a higher level, and to stimulate it by improving and being improved by the lives of others.


*Name changed for privacy of family.

Learning

We talked about autism today in my Thinking and Problem-Solving course, in terms of how autistic individuals, varying depending on where on the spectrum they may be, go about reasoning and solving problems. I was especially eager to see how autism is perceived by German university students, and really perked up when another student mentioned that he had worked with autistic children in the past. It was difficult to suppress an overzealous "Me too! Me too!" We also discussed how the thought process of an autistic individual is in fact deviant (with taxation, ability to find correlations), and then again, how we can't really know for sure, except through experiments that in the end are still flawed, because you can't access a person's inner thoughts.

Good news: I spoke up in class, and understood the highly complex text, and could really follow the conversation! My presentation is not until January 19th, and that gives me so much hope. The professor is really kind and is good at provoking the students, as we need much prodding to begin the discussion, but everyone is very humorous, intelligent and detail-oriented once they open up. The language barrier is definitely tangible, but it is not as much as a hinderance for me as I had feared. Many psychological terms are very similar in English and German and the methods are practically identical.

In my Contemporary Literature course we are reading Der Vorleser, and I am ridiculously enthused about it. The relationship between the two main characters is especially interesting, scandalous and racy, and the way the story is told - with small clues throughout that are so gratifying to notice - is very intellectual and also thrilling.

I am learning plenty outside of class too and having a lot of fun. It is so strange that I felt very "grown-up" before coming here and only just now am learning to truly let go and enjoy myself and the people around me more than ever before. I want to capture my happiness today and keep it forever, but I think it was just me feeling like myself again, and I think that is a pattern that will continue.

It is strange to make these important self-discoveries simultaneously and on a different continent. There is so much questioning, rejoicing in learning, and sometimes painful trial and error.

Maybe this is just what being 20 is?

If you will humor a little self-indulgence, I think a major reason behind why I am suddenly ridiculously happy is that I am feeling very intelligent for the first time since... probably high school. I always felt somewhat intelligent at Lewis & Clark, but now I have this opportunity to exercise my intellect (sounds lovely, hmm?) in a foreign language, and I am just surprised by how quickly the brain can interpret these new words and make sense of everything.