A great cause

4 Paws for Eddie is a fund raising campaign by a local family. Eddie has two very rare genetic conditions that cause numerous cognitive and physical problems. He has seizures and his family is rasing funds to get him a service dog trained to detect and intervene during seizures. These dogs are trained to notice changes before the seizure happens, and act to alert help and soothe the child. Eddies older sister, Elizabeth has type I Diabetes and also has need of this kind of service dog. Use the link to find out all about it and how you can help.

"A Stolen Life" by Jaycee Dugard

The early chapters of the book are dominated with the grammar, vocabulary, and repetition of a 5th grader. Children who are traumatically separated from their family will freeze developmentally as if all their energies go into survival. Lack of education and appropriate stimulation certainly contribute to developmental delays that Jaycee would have experienced in captivity. Until the birth of Jaycee's children she seems stuck, in a holding pattern, but surviving. Her good sense and quick wit in handling her captor’s capricious moods and bizarre delusions kept her alive.

It must have been difficult for her to decide how explicit she should be. She explains her decision to write to Diane Sawyer during an interview. She says she's "staring it down." Her honesty comes out of a deep understanding of her own innocence.

She describes the sexual abuse she endured in concise straight forward language. To leave out those facts would express shame which she has no reason to feel. It could allow the reader to fill in the blanks with less horrific imaginings, and diluted her story. This could even, coupled with her later quasi-family relationships, lead to a more sympathetic understanding of what happened. She describes just enough to let us know the scope of what she experienced, without describing more than necessary.

After the birth of her children she was allowed more freedom and began exhibiting some signs of Stockholm Syndrome. Her writing begins mature slightly, but is still riddled with repetition and errors that would keep an English teacher very busy making red marks. Compared to samples of email messages she wrote at this time these chapters are quite different. She corrects spelling and uses capitalization rules appropriately in the book, unlike the e-mail. The “errors” in these chapters are intentional. They help the reader experience her boredom and stalled development.

When she begins to describe her rescue and recovery her writing style rapidly emerges as mature, complex, and sophisticated. She could have written the whole memoir in this way, but chose not to for good reasons.

Jaycee reveals a love for storytelling and a rich imagination when she recounts the stories she made up to pass her time in isolation. I hope she finds the time to write fiction and can make a meaningful contribution to literature. She's given us a tremendous gift by sharing her memoir, but there is so much more to her than her horrific experiences.

Normal is Overrated

I've been looking at Yahoo Answers, and have found a few questions and answers that have disturbed me. More than once I've seen questions from people saying they have Asperger's and asking if it is a mental illness, or if there is a cure that show desperation and despair. Asperger's and ASDs are not mental illness; they are simply a different way of being.

Some people might have more severe symptoms that may trouble them or make it hard for them to reach their goals, but these sorts of problems are exacerbated by society's insistence on people being "normal" where acceptance and accommodation makes more sense. I'm all for developing social skills, and minimizing sensory issues but the goal shouldn't need to be "normal" it should be functionality. "Normal" is way overrated.

Two of my children are blessed with Asperger's. Several of our friends and acquaintances have it or another autism spectrum "disorder." My children and friends are wonderful just as they are.  "Curing" them would not improve them but would destroy an important part of who they are. They notice things that others do not and approach problems in ways that neurotypical people would miss. They are artists, sculptors, scientists, mathematicians and excel in these fields in part because of their unique aspergian or autie thinking.

My oldest son made a small contribution to robotics research while in 6th grade and is now exploring concepts in AI (Artificial Intelligence). My middle son has memorized every fact in every book about sharks that he’s been able to get near. He has extensive knowledge about many topics, primarily scientific. These abilities are born from both their Asperger's and their high intelligence.

Not all people with Asperger's are geniuses, though some people think so. It's more that they tend to delve very deeply into topics of interest going further in that topic than their IQ would predict. Is it that they are smarter than their test indicates, or simply they make better use of what they've got? We don't half understand intelligence in all its many forms, so it's moot.

My youngest who isn’t in the spectrum approaches life and his interests so differently. He juggles a social life, a wide variety of interests and seems to need a wider diversity of experiences to be happy. Interestingly, one of his best friends has Asperger's, which never registered with my son as something notable because in his world Asperger's is normal. This makes me smile.

My spectrum kids do need to work a bit to develop social skills and won't ever have typical social interactions. Other people have to work harder to handle facts the way they do. Who's to say which is better? Aren’t they both functional and interesting ways to be? I think it's better to have a variety of perspectives and abilities cooperating together to survive.