Autism and law enforcement
I've been reading a few articles regarding Asperger's. This excerpt really spoke to me:
"...A common way I would describe this, is that the brain in a person with AS is similar to a computer which has a huge hard drive, but with a slow audio and video processor and not enough RAM. So, like a computer can lock up when it has inadequate resources to manage incoming data, so does the AS brain when too much is going on. You get "memory overflow" when there isn't enough room in the buffer to save the incoming data until it gets permanently saved on the hard drive, so data is lost..."
If only we could get everyone to understand that feeling. We're able to breathe through straws to somewhat see what it feels like to have asthma attack (well, close anyway - nothing will truly compare). We're able to cover our eyes, and feel what it's like to be blind. We're able to plug our ears and feel what it's like to be unable to hear. But can we truly feel what it's like to be autistic? There are *many* autism spectrum disorders - and I struggle myself with trying to figure out what's clicking in their brains half the time (both TJ and Bug - in different ways of course).
There are some other good articles that I'll link to and post excerpts from on occasion, on different sites. We all need a better understanding of how to deal with these differences - not to excuse anything (because I believe we're all held accountable for what we do), but to help people understand that while we're being held accountable, it just can't be cookie cutter for everyone.
If you're interested, you can read the whole article here.
"...A common way I would describe this, is that the brain in a person with AS is similar to a computer which has a huge hard drive, but with a slow audio and video processor and not enough RAM. So, like a computer can lock up when it has inadequate resources to manage incoming data, so does the AS brain when too much is going on. You get "memory overflow" when there isn't enough room in the buffer to save the incoming data until it gets permanently saved on the hard drive, so data is lost..."
If only we could get everyone to understand that feeling. We're able to breathe through straws to somewhat see what it feels like to have asthma attack (well, close anyway - nothing will truly compare). We're able to cover our eyes, and feel what it's like to be blind. We're able to plug our ears and feel what it's like to be unable to hear. But can we truly feel what it's like to be autistic? There are *many* autism spectrum disorders - and I struggle myself with trying to figure out what's clicking in their brains half the time (both TJ and Bug - in different ways of course).
There are some other good articles that I'll link to and post excerpts from on occasion, on different sites. We all need a better understanding of how to deal with these differences - not to excuse anything (because I believe we're all held accountable for what we do), but to help people understand that while we're being held accountable, it just can't be cookie cutter for everyone.
If you're interested, you can read the whole article here.
posted by Chicka at 2:12 PM
1 Comments:
We were once advised to let the police department know we had a child with Asperger's Syndrome in the neighborhood. That way if he was ever out doing something unusual he wouldn't be picked up and taken downtown on suspicion of drug use or whatever.
We tried talking to the police department and they were only confused by our request. To me it seems simple enough. The officers patrolling our neighborhood should be in touch with its community enough to know that a child doesn't belong in a particular place or that the unusual behavior of another is normal. Then again, that may be a relationship with law enforcement from yesteryear.
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