Managing Autism - A Personal View

We posted recently about literal language and the difficulties that people with autism face trying to negotiate language, and just yesterday, we posted about the struggles that people with autism face navigating their way around social cues.

Jack had a conversation with his Uncle Mike yesterday that we could see left his head spinning - and once we worked out the basis of the conversation, there was no wondering why!  The two of them were discussing Jack’s toy car.

“The car has Hub Flaps” Jack announced as he disected his ‘dismantable’ toy car.

“Hub Flaps or Mud Flaps?” asked Mike.

“Hub Flaps” said Jack with certainty.

“Oh of course!” said Mike, “I forgot that hubs have flaps and and that mud has caps - on the wheel.”

Jack looked at Mike a little unsure.  “Hub Flaps here and Mud Caps here” he said pointing to the different parts of the car.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Mike, “Hub Caps, no I mean Hub Flaps and the Caps Flaps keep the mud off.”

At this point Jack’s head went down with all focus on the car.

“Hub Flaps” he said carefully.  Then for a few moments he said nothing more.  Then he looked up at Mike and said, “I think I’ll just leave those bits off the car.”

Looking on from the outside, it was just too confusing.  Not only had Jack lost all sense of what was happening, but Mike was starting to question his own line of thinking!

We laughed at them both, commented that Mike was being silly, and moved on in conversation.

A total language breakdown, yes, but at least there was no meltdown over it!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 3:56 am and is filed under Asperger Syndrome, Personal Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.