Typically autistic individuals can understand their environment and reason, but cannot communicate. There are various ways some are gifted (visually, music and pattern recognition needed in mathematics and chess, and verbally).
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
"A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism": a mom from Iceland travels the US getting an education for her son
“A Mother’s Courage: Talking Back to Autism” (alternate
title “The Sunshine Boy”, or “Solskinsdrengurinn”, 2009), directed by Fronik Por
Froniksson, is a documentary in which an Icelandic mother (Margret Dagmar
Ericsdottr) travels with her autistic young son and America on a quest to
overcome his challenge. Kate Winslet
joins the narration.
The film takes her to many other families, in Wisconsin,
Colorado, California, and Texas. She
spends a lot of time interviewing Colorado zoologist Temple Grandin, who
overcame her disability and who explains it in terms of the brain not having
all the necessary wiring between its different components.
Typically autistic individuals can understand their environment and reason, but cannot communicate. There are various ways some are gifted (visually, music and pattern recognition needed in mathematics and chess, and verbally).
Typically autistic individuals can understand their environment and reason, but cannot communicate. There are various ways some are gifted (visually, music and pattern recognition needed in mathematics and chess, and verbally).
The film covers the “regression” form of autism, where a
child suddenly loses his communications skills at around the third birthday. David Crowe relates how his son Taylor, right
after his third birthday, one day said at breakfast, “Daddy, my mouth can’t say
the words.” Yet, Taylor gradually
overcame the disability and became employed as a graphic designer.
Much of the film takes place at a school in Austin, Texas
named Halo. Soma Mukhopadhyay explains
how her son Tito learned to communicate and has written several books on
physics.
Toward the end, the film relates the process of
communicating to writing music, and in fact the music score plays what sounds
like a chaconne composed by one of the students, adapted for chorus.
Another expert in the film is Simon Baron-Cohen (np Sascha). The film maintains that 1 in 150 children have some form of autism spectrum disorder, and with four times as many boys as girls. Children of engineers or computer scientists seem a little more likely to show it.
The official site (HBO, Frontier Media and First Run) is
here.
The film does cover Asperger’s syndrome, but it’s apparent
that there is a really continuous spectrum.
Successful education of people who seem to be severely affected is
improving.
There are books about success stories, reviewed on my Books
blog, such as “The Spark”, about Jake Barnett (July 4, 2013) who now is
amazingly articulate as a teenager and physics student, and “Game of my Life”,
about basketball player K-Mac (March 8, 2008), who appeared on Larry King Live.
CNN also produced a documentary film about an autistic
female college student “Autism Is a World” in 2004.
When people who “outgrow” autism spectrum become successful,
they sometimes seem aloof or insular, which can be offsetting to others during
challenging or hard times and become a source of tension. Often they may understand what is going on but
not show or communicate it.
When I was a substitute teacher, I did have a couple of
surprise assignments with severely disabled teens. One was almost completely inert but in time
started calling me “Santa Claus”. In one
class, teens with autism were mixed with Downs Syndrome, which is totally
different. Children with Downs Syndrome,
according to the film, can sometimes learn by imitation and can be mainstreamed
(a couple have actually acted parts in independent movies successfully, such as
“Girl Friend” (July 16, 2012). Kids with
autism typically do not imitate and cannot easily mainstream unless they
suddenly progress (as in “The Spark”).
In still another class, I was asked if I could “help in the locker room
and the deep end of the swimming pool”, which I could not, because I am not a
swimmer. That assignment went bust.
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