All My Friends are Heathens

This is the official video for the song All my friends are heathens by Twenty One Pilots. My oldest son who is frequently assumed to be ASD by people who have barely met him had that song on repeat in the background on his computer at one time.

Not that video because it's got people in it and tells a story and that's not his thing. He found some video with repeating patterns or something he liked.

This is the refrain:

All my friends are heathens, take it slow

Wait for them to ask you who you know

Please don't make any sudden moves

You don't know the half of the abuse

If you have an ASD person in your life, odds are high they are visually impaired. This is documented that they tend to have poor central vision and better peripheral vision.

Visually impaired people don't deal well with sudden movement near them. They tend to be jumpy in reaction to that.

ALL people with handicaps require extra time or other accommodation to learn new things. If it's an obviously physical impairment like wheelchair bound, "normal" people are typically assholes who write them off as wholly INCAPABLE and if it's been classified as a personality disorder or mental issue, "normal" people are typically even bigger assholes acting like they aren't trying or something.

My oldest is substantially visually impaired and accommodating his visual impairments is a large part of what we do to make his life work and make him seem relatively "normal."

The one and only microwave I ever bought was chosen because it had black glass in the door, a white body and large buttons with large letters. It popped out visually from the beige on beige nightmare of a kitchen and looked 3D to him and the buttons worked for him.

A lot of his favorite furniture pieces were medium wood tones with black accents. He doesn't like black on white -- it's too garish -- but he needs substantial contrast to help him physically navigate his physical environment.

I read an article once about a bedroom makeover for a special needs child. They removed all the extreme contrast and bright colors typical of play spaces and created a medium blue calming space.

My most successful website was an inadvertent success. I was homeless in San Diego and trying to track resources for myself and created San Diego Homeless Survival Guide.

It was originally predominantly red. I was homeless and angry. I felt it was an energetic color. It made sense to me.

I got complaints about that. 

I changed it to something calmer. All my websites addressing emotionally difficult subject matter are given color schemes intended to be calming.

If you have a high energy child with sensory issues, I highly recommend you find a means to create a child led calming environment for them.

My youngest son chose his black, green and gold bedding set and then over the course of several months borrowed favorite pillows from the couch and never returned them. He created his own version of a daybed -- a twin bed used as a couch during the day -- and had excellent taste.

I would buy stuff for me that I liked. My oldest son has the same medical condition I have and also additional impairments. He would borrow some of my stuff and never give it back.

Children don't know how to tell you why. But if you give them a little latitude, they will behave like a crow and build a little nest for themselves that makes them happy.

No matter how wonderful you are as a parent, special needs kids are typically treated abusively by other kids at school and have a lot of negative experiences with adults who don't understand them, aren't really trying and are quick to blame, shame and punish.

I work at clearly communicating and arranging for them to have time to think about it and get back to me. After we began homeschooling, I stopped expecting them to drop everything to listen to me and began telling them I wanted to talk and began expecting them to give me the same courtesy.

When they were in public school, that kind of worked. But with homeschooling, they were home all day and it's like being on call 24/7 for your job.

They typically have sensory issues and "normal" people feel like they should just get over it. If you have a sunburn and don't want people touching you, who is in the wrong here if someone touches you, you scream and they act like "God! So SENSITIVE!"?

If they don't WANT you touching them and it's not absolutely necessary, well, don't touch them. How complicated is that?

If they are willing to allow it sometimes, figure out why. Some kids like bear hugs but not lighter touch. So make sure you are being firm but gentle and stop acting like that's a problem.

A child who doesn't like light touch will probably not like kisses. They may be okay if you kiss the top of their head through their hair to express your affection. Why do you care so much and insist it needs to be on the lips or cheek?

Why is their preference weird and yours is the word of God or something?

Last, I had a book at one time about sensory issues. Because of that book, I arranged for my clumsy youngest son to be allowed to go to one or more playgrounds two or more times a day most days of the week for several months while his brother was in kindergarten.

We walked to school and there were multiple playgrounds and I was a full-time mom. I did up to two hours a day at playgrounds with him and also worked on improving nutrition.

Substantial playground time is cheap physical therapy for such children. He's still not normal but he saw substantial improvements.

I didn't make him do this. He wanted this. I just made the time for it in my schedule.