What Autism Is Supposed to Look Like

Image credit: Photo by cproppe on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

We took the kids to a pool party at the home of some friends of mine recently. The hosts, as well as several guests, moved a fair drive away from us several years ago, and several more guests were visiting from out of town. As a result, none of them had seen my children in quite a long time, but they are all old enough friends to be familiar with our family dynamics and with Austen's quirks.

They knew him when he was an infant and his colicky wails had me edgier than that time a car backfired in the movie theater parking lot right after Saving Private Ryan. (And let me tell you, if it had been up to me to storm the beaches at Normandy and such, Hitler would totally have won World War II.) They've been there, sometimes live and sometimes by phone or e-mail, through the autism diagnosis; through speech, occupational and behavioral therapies; through all our concerns about his limited diet; through trials and triumphs in school. They know he's a sweet kid, skilled with numbers, blessed with a fabulous memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of his particular interests. They were all aware that parties can sometimes be overwhelming for Austen, that meeting new people (and many of them were essentially new to him after all this time) can provoke anxiety, that he'll often refuse to eat outside our home and that we sometimes have to cut visits short if all of these factors combined prove too overwhelming for him. And they all accepted him (and us) as is.

We went to the party, as we always do, with a "let's see how it goes for all of us" attitude. And what we saw was: Austen and Janie having a great time in the pool. Austen and Janie playing video games with the other kids at the party while we chatted with adults. Austen happily eating his dinner in a new place. Both kids begging not to have to leave yet and asking when we could come back. Yes, the pool party went, well, swimmingly. (It would take a stronger willpower than mine to resist that pun.)

Everyone marveled at how much Austen enjoyed himself, and even thrived, on that particular day in a situation that he's had difficulty tolerating in the past. And when it was all over, for one brief moment, I thought, "Everyone is going to think I'm some kind of crazy Munchausen Autism by Proxy mama, making up lies about a completely typical child to get attention. Exhibit A: he's a happy kid who enjoyed a party. And that is not part of what people think autism is supposed to look like."

But then I thought back over the party: how the event centered around two of his favorite activities (swimming and video games), how everyone pleasantly addressed him by his chosen nickname, how no one offered him food or pressured him to eat with the rest of the people there, how he got a quiet room to eat his preferred food peacefully by himself, how the hostess quietly alerted me rather than chastising him when he undressed in the middle of the living room and started walking around the house naked, how when a birthday cake was produced everyone refrained from singing knowing that "Happy Birthday" drives Austen to howling tears (I think this should be part of the autism diagnosis personally, because Austen is far from the only autistic child I know who feels that level of antipathy for the song). This variety of little things took no real effort and detracted from no one else's enjoyment, but added greatly to Austen's.

And I thought, "Then again, maybe a happy kid enjoying a party isn't what people expect autism to look like, but it is exactly what autism is supposed to look like."