Observations

I went to school with Micah yesterday. I decided to observe him and give pointers to his para (1:1 aide). I also observed the classes and the special ed teachers involved seemed quite interested in my input. There were some issues with one class, one of his mainstream classes, but I really don't want to get into that here. I'd probably walk away as angry as I was at the end of the school day yesterday, and I would much rather focus on the positive.

I began the day with Micah wanting to go to school earlier. It was strange for a kid to want to go to school and be there before it begins, but he wanted it, I wanted to see why and so we went. He went and stood outside and said "hi" to people. Not random people, he was selective. He wanted to talk with people he knew. Once people came that he knew, he said "hi" then some formed a group, he stood back a bit for a while looking at them, then he went over and smiled at them. He seemed to have no idea how to add to the conversation, but he hung out with them.

Nobody looked at him weird. Nobody made him feel unwelcome or strange. He just stood in the group and listened and smiled and he was just happy.

I thought this was a strange phenomenon, as he had never had this kind of experience with others before. Even the youth group at church said "hi" and never really tried to make him feel unwelcome, but he just sat and colored. At his old school kids mostly said "hi" and walked by. Striking up conversations was usually facilitated. These people weren't just tolerating him for the sake of a grade or something that they could put on their resume. They just treated him like the peer that he is and just let him be a friend.

That smile on his face during the interactions that I found were not isolated incidents but the norm for down time spent with peers including lunch time and time in the hallways between classes made me realize that my son is a person with autism, but also quite the extrovert.

This seems odd to me, but I couldn't figure out why. I mean, autism doesn't really change personality, it changes how it is expressed. I just never figured him for an extrovert. He usually ignores people. I found the difference, though. He doesn't ignore people who don't consider him odd. People who talk with him like anyone else are the people he is drawn to. Can you blame him? Nobody wants to be treated like the odd one out.

Micah went through his routine for the day, stopping in the hallways to talk to certain people, knowing that his aide doesn't let him talk to more than 2 people en route to his next class for expediency purposes. He chatted his routine small talk, never really going farther than his rote conversation that is just "Hi! How are you?" One day I hope he will be able to go past that, but at the moment it is working for him. He sat with cheerleaders and football players at lunch, which make up the majority of his circle of friends. His aide told me that her son is on the football team so most of those kids know her, so she just made talking to Micah normal with them by just saying at the beginning of the year, "It's no big deal, he just wants to be friends." The kids just ran with it.

Now some people will talk to Micah and allow him to sit with them but really just look at him sideways and tolerate him. This really isn't the case. Micah picks up that kind of body language. It happened at his last school. These kids just treat him as the silent guy in the group and accept him. They know he doesn't like to be touched beyond a fist bump, so they give him his fist bumps and just include him. They also know that he doesn't like foul language so their conversations tend to be clean. It's the funniest thing when Micah tells a huge football player "Hey, use nice words!" and they apologize.

My boy cracks me up. He's such a good guy. No wonder people want to hang out with him.