Copy pasted from a article i read, narrated by a Mother.
Linda Sailor.
When my youngest son, Bobby, was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, I remember feeling as if all hope had been taken away from me. He threw violent tantrums, rocked, stimmed, banged his head, and had about a six-word vocabulary. His eye contact was poor and his mental age was about 20 months; physically he'd stalled out at 15 months as far as motor skills went.
I read up on the subject - as best as was available in 1989, and one of the books I came across was Temple's biography. She stated there (as she did in this talk) to take advantage of interests in teaching autistic kids. We'd enrolled Bobby in Early Childhood Special Education by then. He wasn't toilet-trained and tantrumed so often that I know his teacher felt as I did - no hope.
However, we persisted. By the age of three and a half Bobby developed a fascination for spinning objects. Remembering Temple's advice I figured what object spun more than the water in a toilet? I decided to take one week of Easter Vacation and teach him how to use the toilet. Within three days he was dry, by the end of the week he was dry at night and fully trained. We'd used spinning objects (the toilet water) and his fascination with bathrooms to motivate him. Even neuro-normal children generally don't train that quickly!
Just prior to that time his uncle had given him a toy consisting of pictures and a computerized chip that enabled it to state what each object was when touched. Sometimes a sound would accompany the object's name - a cat, for example, would "meow." He was totally fascinated with this toy, although we had no way of knowing if he was simply memorizing the correct answers or if he was actually learning something.
One day we found out. One of the objects was a "red car" and it honked when touched. As it happened I owned a red car. Bobby got out of the car when we got home, turned around, touched it, and said, "red car." Inspired, I reached inside and honked it.
It was as if switch had been turned on, never to be silenced. His next set of words were "what's this?" and it rang in my ears for months as he kept touching items, demanding to know what they were. By the age of five he spoke in two word sentences; by the age of eight he was staffed out of Special Education and began to show an interest in Math and the weather. At the age of 13 he taught himself Calculus; in middle and secondary schools was in all honors classes.
He's now 24, almost 25. He just passed his PhD qualification exam and will begin work on that next January. His major? Atmospheric Sciences, to go with the obsession of weather and math that he's always had. He's very vocal, affectionate and unless you pay close attention you can't tell he's different. However, he still stims on occasion, usually when playing video games and driving. That's right - driving. His fingers twitch and rub together on one hand, he drives with the other. He has friends, some of them gamers, some geeks like he is, some more "neuro-typical."
As for me, I've come to realize that Bobby comes by it honestly - I am a self-diagnosed woman with Asperger's Syndrome. I fit all the criteria, including social awkwardness, poor eye contact, and fixations, among other things. I am a visual thinker - as Temple pointed out, she thought that everyone thought in pictures!
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this shows just pure eagerness to help someone out of love. was amazed to how far the intelligence could go in helping someone out.
