( Everyday Life with Autism )

Why doesn’t the grapefruit have any grapes inside?

I was taken aback and shocked when a HF (high-functioning) student asked me this question. I had never thought about it before. I had never asked myself the same question.

Don’t you think that the question really makes sense? How is the grapefruit related to grapes, apart from being both fruits?

I told the student that I really have no answer to her question and that I’ll research a little bit more to find an answer.

How come we call this child a “special needs” child, while she is thinking out of the box, questioning the questions that has never crossed the mind of the “NT (neurotypicals)” ?

This is the kind of mind that when grown up will make discoveries and invention the ordinary or “normal” people never thought about it.

This is the kind of mind that will be able to connect the dots, and see what we “normal people” aren’t able to see.

What is normal? Where is the fine line labeling people and dividing them into “normal” and “special”?

While some are asking the right questions and daring to think differently they get stigmatized and treated as inferior. How fair is that?

These special people managed to escape the molding process which most “normal” people were the victim of. Our neurons got pruned when we were little by being told: “do this don’t do that”. We had to follow blindly or otherwise we were given a consequence.

Why aren’t we flexible and open for such topics? Then we accuse others for being inflexible.

nadia shanab

Tags: communication, consequences, flexibility, parenting, research, rewards