Dan and Autism

I'm The Boss and What's My Name

On Friday, our house was understaffed, so I was called in to work. The only other person was a staff member that works with the guys when they go to work, so she wasn't a normal staff member in our house. So, by default, I suppose that made me the guy in charge for the day. It actually went pretty well. I made the guys a nice snack before they got home from work and had one of them start his laundry once he got home. We didn't do much since it was thunder storming out, so I tried to keep the guys active and entertained inside the house with games and chores. I asked one of them to unload the dishwasher for me, and not only did he do that, he loaded it with dirty dishes afterwards. I told him that he deserved a reward and asked what he wanted, and of all things in the world, he asked for a hug. I would have asked for candy. We ordered pizza since I'm not much of a cook. The guys usually go to bed around ten, but for some reason, they were all begging to go to bed around then. One even asked to go to the bathroom, and when he got up, he just went to bed. One went around turning off all the lights and closing all the doors in the house so he could go to bed. It was strange, but I'm not going to argue with them if they want to go to sleep.

Sunday we had four staff members and only four residents with us. Three of us staff took three of the guys to run errands and go to lunch at Panera Bread. At Panera, we met another autistic man who was extremely friendly. I had a little chat with him and noticed something interesting. A common trait in autism is that they can't take another person's thought process into consideration. For example, if an autistic person puts a jar of mayonaise in the pantry, he wouldn't be able to understand why someone else would look for it in the fridge. The autistic man knows it's in the pantry, and he doesn't understand why everyone else doesn't know that it's in the pantry. So, in our conversation, the autistic man said, "Did you hear the news? I just came back from my trip to Ireland." I thought this was pretty funny because in his mind, he assumes everyone knows that he went on a trip to Ireland and just came back, so we should talk about it. Very fun and interesting encounter.

We went to get ice cream after lunch, and while the other two staffers were inside getting the ice cream, I sat outside with our guys. I started making small talk with one of our residents that can talk and found something interesting. I asked him what his favorite color was and he said, "Ummmm....," looked at his shirt, and said "Blue and black and white." His shirt was blue, with black and white stripes. As we got his ice cream, I asked him what his favorite ice cream was. He said, "Chocolate and peanut butter and chocolate syrup," which is what was just handed to him. When I told another staff member about the favorite color thing, she asked him what his favorite color was, and he looked at his shirt again and repeated his answer. She told him, "That's what color your shirt is. What's your favorite color?" I think pressing on the subject made him confused and uncomfortable and start to panic, so he just tried to make an answer and said "Ummm, brownies!" We gave up after that.

On the van ride, I asked another resident who has limited speaking cabalities, "Hey, what's my name?" He said, "Gary." Wrong. I asked him again, and he said "Dave." Closer. I told him my name is Dan, and he repeated, "Dan." I asked him what his name was, and he said, "Dan." I told him, no, that's my name, and asked him again what his name was. He said, "Lisa." We're going to need to work on this in the future. I want to see if it's possible for him to recall names correctly. So, now I was curious if anyone else that I've spent the last two months with actually knew my name, so I asked the first talker my name, and he said "Dan" quickly. It's nice to be recognized.

posted by Daniel @ 6:57 PM