The start of a new term was looming with the rather daunting prospect of my GCSE options hanging over my head like a dark shroud.
Having Asperger Syndrome affects different people in different ways, but most of us with AS don't exactly jump with joy at the fact that we have to spend eight hours a day in noisy, crowded environments where social rules are far more dominant than school rules, never mind having to negotiate moving from classroom to classroom and remembering where I am meant to be and what books I need for each subject. This was not something I was looking forward to!
Last term, each teacher had written something about my organisational difficulties and the fact that I was always losing and forgetting things. One even went so far as to say that my difficulties with organisation were likely to be a "considerable handicap" when it comes to working towards my GCSE's ... well, instil me with confidence, thank you!
For those of you reading this that don't know who I am, I am Luke Jackson, a fifteen-year-old kid with Asperger Syndrome. It's usually described as a 'mild' form of autism, though in many situations it certainly doesn't feel mild. People with AS have difficulties with social interaction, communication and imagination, though personally I think it is debatable who has the difficulties. After all - I understand myself and usually others with AS well enough!
I am one of seven children. Three of my brothers have autistic spectrum difficulties (and one of my sisters is definitely borderline, though she will kill me for saying that!) Ben is autistic and has mild cerebral palsy too. Joe has ADHD and Mat has dyspraxia and dyslexia and many autistic ways. You may have 'met' us on My Family and Autism, the BBC documentary that was made about us recently.
That was another thing that was putting me off going back to school - the thought that most teachers and maybe some pupils will have seen me wander around my house with a video camera, prattling on about my family. Whilst I don't mind raising awareness and helping out whoever I can, I did wonder if people at school were likely to give me hassle over it - though one of the good things about having no imagination is the fact that I can't envisage millions of people watching the same thing as me. Autism definitely has some good points!
In fact, I think AS has lots of good points, but I have to admit that I am struggling to find even one good point about school. For an AS kid it's a place of torture, confusion and an onslaught to all that makes us unique. I shall have a go at portraying what school is like for us AS kids.
Are you sitting comfortably? Close your eyes and imagine going into a room awash with so many smells that you feel your head is likely to explode. Now imagine sitting amidst those smells and having someone scrape their nails down a blackboard, rustle crisp bags or make any other noise that you makes you cringe. Amidst such noises is the unsettling buzz of a mass of people all around you, speaking a foreign language and occasionally glancing over at you and expecting you to make some acknowledgment to their unfathomable utterances.
Are you with me so far? Now you have all the delights of such sensory experiences, imagine that overhead there is a broken fluorescent light flickering on and off and making your head ache. You are sat in an uncomfortable hard chair next to these foreigners who obviously dislike your presence ... the whole time your senses are being battered by such stimuli, and you are expected to try to understand many totally illogical topics whilst trying to assimilate the behaviour of the foreigners around you. Not easy is it?!
Well, now I am back at school, equipped with mini Dictaphone (my mum always makes a joke about that one - I will leave you to work it out as it is a bit rude!) so that I can tape what homework I have to do rather than write it down, and am actually doing quite well. Getting from A to B is still a nightmare and all the difficulties are still there, but now I'm in my GCSE years I feel slightly liberated that I have chosen to do at least some of these subjects for myself (though why they call them options when six out of nine of them are compulsory I really don't know)! Nevertheless, I still count off the hours until I can get back to the familiarity of the computer and drown out the noise of my autistic brothers with sounds of hard rock music.
If there are any teachers out there reading this, PLEASE try my experiment and then cut us some slack (I believe that is the expression, meaning "go easy on us")! Try to understand that however 'normal' (ha - who decides what that means?!) us AS lot appear, life just isn't so easy for us and parents of AS kids. Remember that although being different may be cool, in a sea of 'normality' it is also VERY tiring!
