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humorist-workshop
to Dragonflymagic
i read in your advice colum recently and found a question asked by a 24 year old girl who said she was babysitting her cousin who is 22 and has autism anyway what i am saying is shouldnt he be allowed to stay home unsupervised having autism does not mean he cant i have autism and i get to stay by myself and i handle everything very well so um how is it that some people who have autism can stay home unsupervised while some cannot becuase to me autism is just a part of who they are and they can get passed tantrums which is sometimes good to throw also i hope you get this one in your advice colum real soon thank you
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Hello sweetie, thanks for writing.
I hope you did not take anything personally.
I understand that there are many levels of autism and funtion-ability with that.
This girl did say that she is dealing with someone who has the mentality of a two year old and yet I know most autistic people to be extremely highly intelligent, in many cases more so than the rest of us who dont have it. So there is a chance the young man has complications and that it is not only autism but something else he suffers from. I of course could only guess. If as his cousin, she is assuming that he has the mentality of a two year old based only on the tantrums he has then that is not a good assessment. I got the impression that her relatives did nothing to teach her how to handle him when as his parents after 20 some years they ought to have a clue what regular consistent patterns he needs and what helps him to calm down.
Actually I dislike the word tantrum as to me as tantrum means that the one doing so is too mentally immature yet to be able to process and handle a situation such as any normal young child.
I prefer calling it an emotional meltdown/breakdown which is something any mature adult can go through whether autistic or not....everyone has their breaking points of what takes them over the edge. Its just that with autistic people their brains just "fry" as my husband puts it because of too much sensory input all at the same time. He should know, he is a low level autistic with great ability to function.
I am sure you are well able to take care of yourself dear. I personally do not assume that being autistic means you need supervision. My own husband figured out for himself what he could handle and what he cant and is good to let me know when something is becoming an overload. For example: he has long hair and one day i may be playing with it and all is fine and he loves it, on another day I go to do it and I've barely started when he exclaims sharply, "Honey, honey stop. I can't take it, it hurts." It is painful to him and I understand and dont feel rejected, it is how he is. I love to dance but it is for the same reason he cant and wont dance because he can't handle the sensations of movement and music at the same time, he says his brain starts to fry...his way of noticing the start of what could progress to a meltdown if he tries to push it or not stop the sensory input thats causing it. Sometimes I have to listen to my music with headset cus he can't handle the sound. But he does great for some reason with techno music and can pick out all the different beats where I hear only one. Well, thanks for writing, if you have any other question let me know.
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