Wednesday, April 20, 2011

The kid who smelled the answer to the puzzle piece

First time meeting client V. He was very shy. Didn’t want to make eye contact. But after his Dad probed him a few times to go on the swing, he did. He showed me what an acrobat he is. A literal monkey! The boy was all over the place. Very good body strength. He speaks very little but speaks a lot with his body language. (His parents are Russian and speak Russian at home). He has two siblings, a younger twin brother and older sister. We spent the rest of the session putting together puzzle pieces-except when he eloped and decided to play chase on his brothers skateboard-haha yeah very funny. But what was even more interesting was that he did this thing with the puzzle piece, in which he put it to his mouth/under his nose and then immediately placed it to the right spot (sometimes without even looking!). Could he have felt the shape of the piece? Or smelled where it belonged? I’m not sure what it was, but it seemed like some form of using a supernatural 6th sense. And so he finished two 300 count puzzles in 2 hours. Kids with disabilities may be deficient in social standards, but most definitely show genius qualities in other activities we "normal people" may not be as good at.  Is it discriminatory to call the autistic individuals "special"? And what discriminates an autistic individual from a non-autistic one? Aren't we all on the spectrum? There is never a black and white situation, so it really does no good to classify someone with a disease or disability. All of us are essentially on some level autistic, as all of us are on some level irrational, or at times unhealthy. We are ALL HUMAN, it just depends on the genes you have been given that are predisposed to certain diseases (cancer, diabetes, etc) as well as the environment in which we are placed (an individual susceptable to diabetes living in a healthy food environment vs. an individual with the same susceptability living in a junk food environment  will much more likely live longer and delay the onset). So we should all really ask ourselves, where am I deficient, and where do I excel? Try to fill in the gaps, and become the whole well-balanced individual that you can be. Capitalize on your skills, and strengthen your weak spots. Because when it's all said and done, you want to know that you lived to your fullest potential. 
Having that said, if client V's parents know whats best, they will help him fulfill the life of a master puzzle piecer or a circus acrobat

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