Head over heels, again.

The uncle suggested that I compile these blog entries into a book. Ahaha.. flattery gets one everywhere. Nonetheless, the email jolted me out of hibernation. I guess I do have something to write about nowadays. Something meaningful, I mean. For the third time in my life, I am head over heels in love. No, no, not like that; the ginger is still in the picture. I am in love with the boys in the autism lab. And like so many people in love, I'm starting to bore others with stories of "just how cute they are!". But maybe "beautiful" is the better word to describe them. Beautiful faces, stunningly long lashes. I am tempted to start a study to measure the average length of the eye-lashes of autistic individuals. 18 data points right here.

The more time I spend with the boys, the more I lean away from the idea that autism is fundamentally a problem with social interactions. I think it is a linguistic problem. The inability to acquire language naturally like normal kids. And I don't think it is coincidental that so many are diagnosed around the time when kids begin to acquire language at a frighteningly rapid pace. I'm not saying that the problems starts at that point in time, I'm just saying that problems become obvious when people start realising their kids are not talking. The social aloofness and the inability to comprehend the intentions of others might be a by-product of an even more fundamental language problem.

But imagine this. Someone not being able to represent their thoughts properly with language. From birth. How will you order the world? How will you understand what is going on around you, especially when it comes to social interactions? Social interactions are completely dependent upon language. Without a structured, systematic way to represent happiness, anger, sadness, sky, moon, sun and so on, how will you be able to learn about the world?

There are other problems as well, but fundamentally, the inability to pick up language in the normal way might play a huge role in causing autism. And I can tell you this for certain. Once the kids are familiar with someone, and can vaguely understand what you're doing/saying, then they crave for contact. They are able to connect with people. They are not walls.
I, myself, loved taking afternoon strolls with one of the boys. That was our secret activity together. And he used to pretend that he needed to go to the toilet (which was quite far from the classroom) so that I would have to take him out and we usually took the long way round back to the classroom.