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Awareness Personal Story
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gwendolyn s - Evart, MI
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So I am the single mother of one child. Eryk he is 8 years old, and very special to me. Hes my whole family. He is loving, smart, friendly, compassionate, active, loyal, and Eryk has autism. I was getting between three and five calls a day from his school about how "bad" my child was by the time he was in first grade. It seemed to me that the school displayed no discipline to me because the things they were saying my child was doing was not even like him. Eryk was a bit tempermental, but so was I as I child. They kept pushing me and pushing me to take him to Community Mental Health and get Eryk put on Ritalin or something...Well I have a problem with that. I dont take pills unless they are needed and I pass psychotropic meds to my clients at the Adult Foster Care home I work in and I am here to tell you they dont work like tv says they do... The school didnt do it out right but at first acted like it was bad parenting on my part, that my child could not sit down and listen to them, I always thought if they got a teacher that would tell him to sit and listen and actually followed through with class room rules, he was pushing his desk around the class constantly rearranging it, and they didnt make him stop by the end of his stay in this school they had given him two more desks so he was moving three around instead of two. But for all the time the teacher claimed he was a terrible distraction for the rest of her class, he got perfect grades. Well I suggested that we begin testing Eryk for what ever the issue may be and we found that we could not get an accurate IQ test, and that, apon observation in his class, that Eryk has a very very good memory. We took Eryk to B.R.A.I.N.S. In Grand Rapids Michigan and had Eryk officially tested and seen by a man who works speciffically with autistic children all year round. Right away it was pointed out to me that Eryk is rare because he displays emotion, even resentment for my job because it keeps me away from home. They diagnosed Eryk "High Functioning" autism and said he had ADD and there is never going to be an accurate IQ done on Eryk because he simply can not focus it takes alot of thoughts to complete one thought for Eryk because his brain is like an onion. it just triggers more and more layers the more he thinks about a particular layer...I also found that Eryk is not the only one in my family who has this issue. I have found that alot of the things my family suffered with my father and his harshness and downright unemotional responses make alot more sence the more I learn about what autism really is, I find that I myself with all the melt downs I had as a child, and all the times I was mad at myself because I simply never seemed to get what everyone else did because it never seemed that way to me. The loud buzzing lights in school, the easy to space out and stare at what appeared to be nothing when in reality so many thoughts would happen at one time and I just simply had to stop and process. The School Eryk Started out in is the one I did and I had to start bussing Eryk to a nearby town for AI classes where Eryk has only gone backwards at because Eryk is not Lower functioning they dont know how to deal with him, because he is fluent in emotion they claim he is not autistic, because my son has meltdowns they put him in time away three to upwards of six times a day, he refuses to tie his shoes now where before he learned by three. He is not showing excelled learning anymore, and I truely think it is because he is being misunderstood by those who are supposed to be specialists. My small community mistakenly lumps Autism With mild retardation I feel, and they have set my son back. They never even recognized this in me as a child, and their answers for it all is drugs, I never took these things and I function well in society with out pills, I have not had a true melt down in so long I cant even remember when, but I know I still dont see the world the same, I get terrible headaches as does my son, and the lights still buzz too loud, but day by day the more I understand the more I grow and function well, and the more I help Eryk grow and function well, I just pray that small towns like my own can get some education before they bury the children with the issues my son has in special education for the mildly retarted (which just means slow if you look it up in dictionary) They are being wrongfully lumped in with people who are not as smart and need to go to school to learn how to take care of personal hygeine (which is litterally a class there how to wash with soap) I have seen Eryk blink and get the answer to a math problem just in blinking, his reading is awesome. I feel Eryk is smarter then most of his teachers. I pray everyday that someone will see that they dont know what they are doing and that I can find better education for my child then the ignorance that is being displayed. If I can hold a job and control my emotions, and I was not even recognized, just imagine what Eryk will do when the right people finally notice his needs, and the ignorance displayed in my small town community becomes obsolete. Eryk is a lesson for every one, he is not a stereotypical autistic child most people dont see it untill i point it out, and there are so many out there like us, undetected, not understood, and lots of fingers being pointed but I will tell you one day, with places like this and others more people will get to voice how ignorant our society really is, and one day we can quite having people ask us why we dont disipline harder...
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My Story Details
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Story Date:
March 31, 2012
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Story Country:
United States
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Story City:
Evart
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Story State:
MI
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Story Theme:
Autism
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