My DS, who is six, has recently been diagnosed with high-functioning autism, ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder. This has come as quite a relief actually and makes sense of a lot of his quirks and difficulties that I've had with him. I instantly felt like I must be a better parent than I thought if there is this reason I don't find him easy a lot of the time! He's so very lovely, endearing and funny but he's fully on and all the simple things seem to take twice the effort!
Anyway, I feel like I've sort of got my head around ADHD and SPD. I may even have some form of both of these myself and it just makes sense to me on some level. I know I need to find out more and this will be a learning curve, but where I'm really struggling is the ADS.
I've read about it a lot but I feel like there is so much contradictory information out there, and obviously every person with autism is an individual so there is no 'typical' but one thing I keep bumping up against is this idea of lack of empathy. For instance, a good friend of mine who works with SEN children said she read something once that said autistic children view people in the same way as they view objects.
This upsets me. Empathy is so key, isn't it? We describe psychopaths as being primarily people without empathy but autism is such a different condition. How can they have this in common? It's true that DS behaves and responds to things differently. But he can be so kind. He loves feeling that he is 'helping', he hugs and squeezes me all the time, he is generous. He doesn't always reply when I say I love him but then suddenly will announce "Mummy I love you more than ever". When I was stressing about my untidy bombsite of a flat the other day his response was "I don't care about the mess, I care about you." When I was quarrelling with his dad once(something we tried not to do in front of him - we're no longer together), calmly sat next to me and said that if I was having a bad day I could come and talk to him. He must have only been four at the time. He's also very loving with his friends and gives his one best friend at the moment a hug at the end of school. He even asked me if I had a picture of this friend as he wanted to put it up on his wall
So, while there is no doubt in my mind that he is 'different' in lots of ways (and I do agree with the diagnosis, I feel like I really need someone who is knowledgeable about this, maybe someone with ASD or who has a loved one with ASD to help me understand the empathy thing and what it really means. How can my child be so warm and kind on one hand, and yet apparently have a lack of empathy? I will say that he struggles socially because he often doesn't notice and/or isn't bothered about what the appropriate behaviour is but is that empathy as such? I don't understand.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I want to try to understand what ASD really is and how it feels, and how that's different from neurotypical people, especially in terms of relating to others and I guess loving and caring about others. Is my child destined to be cut off emotionally from everyone around him? That makes me sad for him although possibly he wouldn't know any different.