The Autistic child and communication

I remember the early days of confusion surrounding Conor and Eoin after the autistic child “diagnosis”. Both boys had been described as intelligent to Val and I, but at the same time unteachable and unreachable. What a nightmare, all I could think of was Dustin Hoffman in Rain man.

The idea that the boys would be completely trapped inside was a thought too much to bear. Around the same time the boys had taken an interest in Teletubbies, a hugely popular British children’s TV series. The show centered around 4 dolls with TV’s on their bellies. They lived in their space age house in the country surrounded by all kinds of characters from the vacuum cleaner to a crazy custard maker.

So one day around this time Val and I were in our local toy store with the boys. Conor had spotted the Tellytubby house with all the dolls and wanted it. For us , it was an expensive item and we made every effort to get out of the store without the toy. We got to the car and a tearful Conor pulled open the massive store catalog to the page where the Teletubbies house was and pointed too it mouthing every sound he could make!

Well after that we just went back into the store and bought the teletubbies. Something that Conor cherished and brought with him on all the travels that were to follow for our family. But most importantly Val and I had gained an enormous insight. We had to learn how to “listen” to our non verbal children and understand that they were indeed reaching out to us.

Not so unreachable after all I thought. The boys were in fact teaching us how they communicate and all we needed to do was listen!