Another School Year Has Started

With the new school year comes many new things, new schedules, different lunch time and certainly different teachers, different classrooms, different lockers and combinations, many new numbers that I need to remember. It's allot to think about and remember on just the first day of school. All this new information is a bit of OVERLOAD!

People on the Autistic spectrum have different methods to communicate, some scream, some cry, some flap their hands. One of my ways to communicate exactly how I feel is through drawing. In the beggining of the school year everyone is issued an agenda, it has plenty of space to doodle. I drew a cartoon of myself. It had three frames. The first frame was a picture of me with my head smoking. The second frame was the word, "BOOM" with explosion marks around the word. The final frame, there I was again, my head half blown off, it was on fire and smoking heavily. The word OVERLOAD hanging over my exploded head.

I felt like I was about ready to explode but I'm sure I looked perfectly normal to my classmates and teachers. On the inside, I smelled smoke-the fuse was lit-BOOM! I held it together, but I wasn't happy. I had to hold it together even on the long bus ride home, then, when I got home I had to sit on the floor. It takes me a long time to decompress. I know the teachers think that I am perfectly fine but in the inside I may be having an enormous meltdown. I need to feel safe before I can explode but sometimes people on the spectrum cannot hold it together. Sometimes they need to explode immediately, and this sometimes looks like tantrums, hand-flapping, screaming, crying, jumping up and down, and throwing things.

This is the same situation for not only school but for other things as well, like sports and games and grocery shopping and family outings.

It's important to be compassionate, we just need a little time, please be patient.

I'll talk more about this at a later date.