Week Seven 3/31/16

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful week!

As I was working with some students this week, there were a couple frustrating moments. On the first day, I was working with a student named Charlie. Charlie has a tendency to wander off mentally and space out. As the instructor, I needed to constantly bring him back; however, the problem was that Charlie didn’t know he was wandering off. He thinks that he is constantly working and with every reminder I make, the more he thinks I’m attacking him for something he didn’t do. This caused a grave amount of stress in him and he started to lash out at me and talk to me with a more aggressive tone. You could tell he wasn’t having a great time, and I started to feel irritated by his behavior. Nevertheless, I reminded him again and again and explained why I needed to remind him why I was doing so. His work was very slow-paced and inconsistent, but he said he was still technically working. We both got through the session, but it sure was a rough time.

The next day I worked with a student named Keri. Unlike the older students, Keri is much older and is in her early 40s. She lives independently and consciously knows she has Asperger’s. I needed her to hammer some metal wire; this required very minimal energy. Keri’s goals are focused around her whining. She constantly whines and whines and it’s ridiculous. Five minutes into the hammering, she started to complain and said she has arthritis in her wrist and lacked the muscle coordination do to this. Being the stubborn person that I am, I pushed her even though she felt out of her comfort zone because I knew she was completely capable of doing this task. She found that hammering with her left hand was much easier because she was, in fact, left-handed. After the small hurdle, the rest of the session went on fine.

On a personal note, growing up whenever I had to introduce my brother and state the fact that he was autistic, I would immediately get the response, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” They felt this immense amount of pity and would treat him with this absurd amount of care. This most likely came from their fear of Calvin’s insane meltdowns, but nevertheless, they treated him in a way that he was terminally ill and never made him to any hard labor. But what one thing I have learned off the bat from being an autistic brother’s sister is that they are human too. They can do as much as we can do. They’re just as unique as we are. They have the same amount of potential in life that we also possess. So when my mom tells us to bring in the groceries, I make sure Calvin does the same amount of work as I do. When Calvin starts to complain about how he doesn’t like the feel of water, I tell him he needs to wash his dishes. They all need a little bit of a push and they can accomplish anything.

Thanks for reading!

Grace