|
|
Postcards From My Mind: Perspectives of Asperger's
Syndrome
Academic Skills
People who have a difficulty with the Theory of Mind may display
the following characteristics:
-
May have poor reading, TV, or movie comprehension
skills for fictional events: I have 682 books
and only two of them are fiction (because I had to take
a literature course to graduate college!). To put it
bluntly, fiction confuses me. Before I learned the Theory
of Mind every time I was forced to read a fictional book
I was so confused about who the characters were. If I
read the sentence, “James
and Lisa went to the park…”, in my mind there
are only 3 people named James (people that I know) and only
2 people named Lisa and only one “the park”.
So first I was so confused about which James and Lisa
were in this book. As I read on it got worse – these
events never happened to my friends James and Lisa – this
book is lying… As the book goes on there is some
underlying message that I never get – and you want
me to read this for fun?
Now, take a documentary on the Golden Gate Bridge. There
is only one Golden Gate Bridge. The story is the same when
I read the encyclopedia, when I cross reference the information
with other books, the pictures are exactly as I remember
the bridge to look, I don’t need to know anything about
the bridge’s mental states in order to understand the
book, and there is not an “underlying message”
that I’m missing. This is fun.
-
May have difficulty with Mathematical word problems:
In 4th grade I was given standardized tests and, of no surprise,
my scores had an enormous gap. In Math I scored at the 11th
grade level whereas reading comprehension and spelling were
at kindergarten level. Math was a subject that I always enjoyed.
Contrary to every day life, Math made sense. I understood
numbers the way people understand each other. Numbers have
a personality to me. The patterns I instinctually get. I
never had to be taught trigonometry, I just knew it the way
people just know social skills. I also had the extraordinary
ability to manipulate numbers in my mind.
-
May be average or above in academics, but has considerable
trouble in the cafeteria, gym, playground, field trips, or
non-structured periods: Non-structured activities
that required social interaction were (and still are) the
most difficult for me. As a student I would be happily sitting
in my seat working on my assignment and all of a sudden my
ears felt as if someone was taking a rototiller and cutting
up my eardrums– the lunch bell rang. Next, I needed
to claw my way into the jungle of smells where my classmates
corralled around the coat hooks grabbing their lunch bags
yelling “I’m captain today, no you were captain
yesterday, it’s my turn…” Next as I descended
into the cafeteria of despair, I would do battle on the stairs
as the sour smell of linoleum lined my nostrils. “Oh
god, not again” I remember thinking each day as I fulfilled
my obligation as a student to endure the lunchroom.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, this over-stimulating
environment only led to the torture chamber (AKA: playground)
where each day I was reminded of just how much I didn’t
fit in. In lower elementary school I was happily mostly by
myself. Starting in 4th grade I realized how different I
was. All the kids would be playing games, which I was rarely
invited to play. When I did wind up playing, I would only
screw up the game and the teasing became worse.
As a student I figured out a great solution! Right before
recess each day if I got in trouble I would have to stay
inside for lunch! What a find! When kids engage in negative
behavior, it’s important to be sure the consequences
of their actions are not reinforcing! This lasted for a while
until the teachers caught on – then I was forced to
go outside again.
In 5th grade I was quite a physics and math buff and finally
found my niche! Baseball card collecting had become the rage.
From behind a baseline kids would throw baseball cards and
see how close they could get them to the wall. Who ever landed
closest to the wall got to keep all the cards. The rules
were fairly loose and you were permitted to tape two or more
cards together. I watched this game for a while with trepidation,
then spent the weekend engineering the perfect baseball card,
Catfish Hunter (my favorite Yankees player was naturally
on top). I weighted certain parts of the card and then glued
two cards together – of course taking into effect the
weight of the glue itself. On Monday when I flung Catfish
in the air the second he hit the wall the card immediately
dropped – I won time and again! I was the star of my
elementary school. I finally had some clout!
Today I can run a meeting of 14 people where I’m reporting
about a student’s program and attend to each one of
them without blinking, but turn the clock ahead 5 hours and
put those same people at a dinner table (an unstructured
social situation) and I’m completely uncomfortable
and not particularly skilled.
Previous | Next
|
