Guest writer Josh is Sarah Steinberg’s brother. Josh is 29 years old, lives in California and has autism. As a child, Josh struggled to communicate and he didn’t speak until the age of 4. Over the years Josh learned to communicate, and today he has a lot to speak about and share with listeners. Josh now lives on his own in his own apartment with some in home support. This independence came after years of therapy and special education working toward this goal. Josh writes a monthly article for our blog. We encourage readers to send in questions to Josh to be featured in a special question and answer series with Josh.
For any life-form, a big part of growing up is something called assimilation. Assimilation is taking observation of any occurrence or surrounding and incorporating assets and effects from it into your own psyche. For children with autism, this can be akin to speech therapy in terms on how crucial it is to their development, perhaps even MORE. While therapy teaches children how to verbalize, assimilation teaches them WHEN.
For me, I’m one of the fortunate ones. Assimilation comes swiftly thanks to all the parties and the conventions I’m going to. (I’m actually gonna be attending Anthrocon in July if any of you want to meet me face to face). As tempting as it could be to interject and make your presence known right at the get-go, a better strategy is just to stand back and watch how others talk or interact. Then, if they notice you and ask your opinion, then you get the chance to mimic that behavior and if you’re successful, you could end up with a new friend. One minute, you could be drinking alone from a can of Sprite and watching the action and the next, you could have a whole group of people asking your opinion on Anime or Hollywood. It’s really quite an enriching feeling.
But assimilation doesn’t come naturally to everyone and it even took me at least a YEAR before I fully got the hang of it. But don’t be perturbed if it takes longer. Everyone has their own pace in learning social cues and integrating them into their own routines.
But there are some things you should NEVER do. Never be afraid to ask someone to explain things, pride can be a very destructive thing in this instance. Never go in blindly unless you are 100{bbe81630a84164ece03ad00d10a3dcee80cd6a042f89782cf10f680516890a10} certain you know what you’re doing. I’ve been put in a lot of bad situations for going in without confidence. Above all, NEVER yell at your child if they’re struggling with it. This could cause irreparable damage to their self-esteem and even, in severe cases, permanently arrest their development.
Imagine if you will that you’re at your first board meeting after 5 years at Warterman Cable Company and you’re eager to jump into the thick of the discussions. If you go in too early or too brash, you could end up getting in trouble or even getting canned (this is from experience). But if you take your time and go in at the right pace, you could end up leaving that boardroom no longer just an alien, but a worker with a nice big bonus.
I hope that all my words are able to get through to you all. I want you all to be able to become skilled in the way of words and movements and I want you all to have great things happen. But it will take time for it to come to fruition. The question is… are you patient and disciplined enough to wait?
I’m hoping the answer is yes.
Your friend,
Joshua
Check out these other great blog posts written by Josh: