A Look Inside a Black and White Mind

If you know me very well you have probably heard me say that I believe I could almost get an Asperger diagnosis (or DSM Level 4 as it is now called). I have a lot of the characteristics. I was painfully shy as a small child and have never been a people person, although I have taught myself how to behave in most social situations, I still find it very difficult to interact sometimes. I am a visual thinker, thinking in pictures and categories. Ironically, being a visual thinker does not help me in the area of facial recognition. I do not recognize people’s faces until I have seen them several times. I am also a black and white thinker. By that I mean I have a lot of trouble with gray areas. In other words things are right or wrong and there is no in-between.

Many of the people in my life, even those who know me best, say I hide my insecurities in social situations very well. The story of how I learned to “fake it” goes back to my teen years. I had very few friends in grade school. I was in a large school district and very few of the same kids were grouped together year after year thus making it hard for a shy kid to form relationships. I had one friend in second and third grade that I was close to but the school boundaries changed after that and we were sent to different schools.

In the fourth grade I became friends with a girl who I truly loved. A lot of my childhood memories revolve around her. She moved away when I was in seventh grade and I spent the next year in a depressed state. There were two girls that year that got their kicks by bullying me and I had no idea how to defend myself. Then, at age 14, a couple things happened that changed my life. We moved. We moved from a VERY large school district to a VERY small school district. AND, my brother who was five years older than I, and the coolest, funniest guy who was always “the life of the party” told me something that forever changed my life. I told him how afraid I was to start at my new school. I told him how hard it was for me to meet new people. My cool brother, who had dozens and dozens of friends, told me that he was just as introverted as I was. He told me that I had to go into that school and ACT the way I wanted people to perceive me to be. I had to think of it as a play and I was an actor. I remember him saying that I had been a little fish in a big pond at my old school and I would have the chance to be a big fish in a little pond at my new school. I could totally change who I was by how I acted. I had the chance to redefine myself. I looked up to my brother like no one else I knew and I trusted him. I did what he told me to do. Within days at the new school I had made more friends than I’d had in years at the old one. Of course it helped tremendously that everyone at the new school was so welcoming and friendly. Those four years of school were amazing and because of those four years I went off to college well-practiced at making friends and maintaining friendships. I had mastered the art of social relationships, much later than my peers, but I had done it.

I am a visual thinker and categorize everything I learn or see. I had no idea that I think differently than the general population until I read Temple Grandin’s book “Thinking in Pictures.” I read her book when Tate was diagnosed with autism and I learned so much about myself. I knew and had always known I was “different” than a lot of people but had no idea why. I think differently. I did not know that everyone else did not think in pictures. I would still not know this had Tate not been born with autism and had I not needed to educate myself about it. Knowing that I think differently has helped me to understand so many things I had always considered a mystery.

Temple Grandin likened the way she thinks to a video player with clips of video she can pull from files. I would describe the way I think this way: I place the pictures I have and the “rules” I’ve learned in a sort of list and categorize them in a filing system, like a rolodex. I can think quickly through my files and find a picture or a rule that applies in most situations. When I was young my list of rules was shorter and I didn’t have a lot of “files” to draw from so I didn’t know how to act in a lot of situations. Consequently, I appeared socially awkward in new places and around new people. Now that I am older and I’ve had a lot more experiences, my list of rules and how to act in almost any situation that occurs is quite extensive. Everyone learns from their past experiences I know but apparently I am different in that I visualize my list or quickly run through my list of rules so that I can decide what responses will be socially appropriate. It doesn’t just come naturally for me. As a young adult I sometimes misjudged and came up with an inappropriate reaction occasionally. I rarely do that anymore because I have memorized and know how to use most social cues and respond appropriately. Thus, I appear very “normal” to the world. Don’t get me wrong, I feel very “normal” all of the time. This way of thinking and my rolodex works for me. It may be different than the way you think but it works for me. I get by just fine and up until a few years ago I had no idea that my way of thinking was not universal with human beings. HA

It makes no sense to me that a person who thinks in pictures like I do has such a hard time with facial recognition. I am what some call face blind. I recently read almost two percent of people have this issue. I have to meet someone more than once, and usually several times, before I can memorize a face. Then, when I see them in a different setting than I met them in, I am unable to identify how I know them. I often recognize people by their voices though so sometimes if they speak to me that can save me. Sometimes I can tell who a person is by the way they walk. If I see them walking toward me or away from me I might be able to identify them but if I walk up on them then I struggle for to place them. This inability to recognize faces is a real handicap for me and I appear to be a snob often as I walk right past people that I should be stopping to speak to. I honestly do not understand how everyone else DOES seem to recognize a face after one encounter. Unlike people with autism, I do not have any trouble with eye contact so that is not the issue. I think it is that people basically all look similar to me. Oh, there are differences, like hair length, body shape and size, and color too. So that all helps but I see maybe one of a dozen different faces when I meet someone. Weird, I know. If there is something very unusual about a person then I will recognize them after one meeting but otherwise, it is not going to happen. Most of the time when I meet someone I think, “She looks so much like ______.” However, when I mention to someone else that I think the two look similar they usually will not agree. I volunteer one day a week with a teacher friend in our local school and it takes me all year to match the kids' faces to their names. Some I never learn. That is just not "normal." Movies, especially old ones, are a real big part of our family life but I can rarely tell the actors and actresses apart. I take a lot of teasing over that.

I always dread hearing the words “gray area” because I know there is going to be a conflict my mind will have to wrestle with. There are almost no gray areas for me. Gray areas do not fit in file folders. There is no place on the rolodex for gray areas. You see, when you are a concrete thinker like myself, issues are black and white, right or wrong. I recently heard a doctor refer to concrete thinking as “rigidity of thinking.” I thought that was a pretty good way to describe the way I think. There isn’t much flexibility. There is a right way to do things and anything other than that one way, is wrong. And THAT folks, is the reason I can sometimes come off as self-righteous, calloused, or uncaring. My patient husband has taught me to rewrite many of the rules on my mental rolodex. I now can accept that there is more than one way to do some jobs and still get satisfactory results. He has taught me that people who do not do things exactly the way I do are not always “bad guys.” My rolodex continues to expand. So, why don’t I just accept all gray and expand every day? It is not that easy when you are a concrete thinker. Each bit of gray has to make sense. It has to be tried in the courtroom of my mind. If it doesn’t make sense and cannot hold up then it will NOT be added to the rolodex. Many, possibly even most, of the gray things I am asked to consider do not even get a trial date. HA. I am being a bit facetious but this  is sort of how it works for me.

I do not have autism. I have a great imagination, a sense of humor, super eye contact, and no problems with communication, empathy or theory of mind. I do not have any stereotypic behaviors or a lot of sensory issues. I do not perseverate (obsess) on things (although around election time, some might argue about that one.) HA Oftentimes, relatives of a person with autism have some of the characteristics of autism. That would be me.

I am 51 years old and still adding to some of the “rules” I probably should have known for a long time. Moral issues, biblical principals, and God’s commands are extremely easy for me to believe and obey because God’s word is very cut and dried on most issues. It is the social rules and relationships that have always been harder for me. If I wrong someone then it is very hard for me to forgive myself. I spoke in anger to a friend several months ago, apologized, and was forgiven yet I am still ashamed of myself over it. If someone wrongs me or betrays a trust then I will probably never be able to confide in them again. My respect for them is gone. I can forgive them. I can love them. I can be nice to them, but I will not ever trust them again. 

I illustrate my thoughts and feelings with pictures all the time. It is how I think. Following is an example of how I pictured it recently when someone I love did something that hurt me, and others. My mind saw a clean, steel kitchen sink, full of clear water. There was a drain in the bottom of the sink and a stopper in the drain. When my friend did the horrible thing he did, the stopper popped out of the drain and all the water quickly ran out. The water was my respect (not my love, just my respect). It is gone. The sink is dry. I have tried to refill the sink but the stopper just will not hold. Can I try and visualize another stopper and fixing the sink? Oh, I can try; and try; and try again; but there is only so much a concrete thinker can do. Can I change? I've been trying for at least forty years and praying about it daily. If anyone can soften concrete God can so I will keep praying and trying. 

You might wonder why would I want to write a blog post like this? People will think I am “weird” now. I have a couple of reasons. The first being the usual: to raise awareness and tolerance for people with autism. Sharing some of the same characteristics with Tate, perhaps does give me some insight into how he thinks and feels. Secondly, I have tried to describe some of these things to my family and close friends before and wanted to get some organized thoughts on paper. Hopefully, this will explain a few things.

If you liked this post then these two would be recommended for your reading pleasure: Why does Tate act that way? and Look into my eyes.

Like what you read? Want to become a follower? Click on the Google Friend Following gadget on this blog. It's over on the right side and asks you to subscribe. Or you can add the URL (the web address in your search bar) to your Reading List. You can do that by clicking the plus sign in front of the URL. Thanks! 

Teaching Sydney (or TRYING to)

Impulse control. You probably have not thought much about how important it is to people unless you are close to someone who has very little self-control. The frontal lobe of your brain is the part that helps you stop yourself from doing or saying the inappropriate things that you think about. Believe me, impulse control is extremely important. Without it a person will constantly be in danger. They will break rules and laws. They will lie. They will lose friends as fast as they make them. THEY DO NOT LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES.

The frontal lobe of a person’s brain is damaged when they are exposed to alcohol in the womb. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is 100 percent preventable. A huge percentage of the people in our prisons have FAS. It is no wonder. When you have FAS you barely stand a chance in our society. Sure, many of the children are adopted into homes with good parents. But, mom and dad can keep a child safe for only so long. They do grow up and they still have FAS. They still have no impulse control and they still need constant supervision.

Sydney’s lack of impulse control affects us every day. It shows up in so many ways. Sometimes it is funny but usually it is not. This morning I told her to stay in her room until 9:00 while I showered and dressed. She came into my room at 8:55 and said, “It’s 9:00.” Me, knowing I had five more minutes said, “It is?” She responded, “No, not really.” Then she asked me where her popcorn was from last night. I told her it was in the kitchen. She said, “I just looked.” I said, “So you left your room?” She said, “No I didn’t leave my room but I went into the kitchen to look for the popcorn and it wasn’t there.” She tattles on herself quite often and then talks in circles trying to fix what she uncovered, contradiction in every sentence. Sometimes I think she believes I am an idiot. Sometimes it is hard not to laugh right out loud when i should be scolding her too.

A few days ago she had lifesavers and was trying to open the packaging. She was with her daddy in his truck. He asked what she had and she quickly responded, “Oh, you wouldn’t like these” trying to convince him that she shouldn’t have to share. She forced the package open and dropped the first one in the floor. She said a word that society would not consider a curse word but one our family does not use. Shawn frowned at her and shook his head saying, “We do not say that.” She immediately tried to convince him that he heard wrong and what she REALLY said was “I’m missing out on that one.” He managed to keep a straight face, barely.

Doctors have told me that Sydney will not learn from her mistakes and I have seen that consequences do not really teach her much but I keep trying. A few mornings ago I told Sydney she could go upstairs and play Nintendo in her sister’s room if she did not wake her brothers who were asleep in their rooms close by. She assured me she would be as quiet as a mouse. She went upstairs and two minutes later I heard her singing at the top of her lungs. I told her she could not play Nintendo for a few days. She can tell me WHY she cannot play Nintendo and she can tell me she won’t do something like that again but she will. I know she will.

Sydney loves flip-flops. Flip-flops are almost as important to her as the air she breathes. The winter months when I hide them (yes I have to HIDE them) are torturous to her. A week before school was out we had a cold rainy morning. Sydney was very upset that I wouldn’t let her wear her flip-flops. I insisted she wear socks and shoes and take a sweatshirt. She asked if she could take her flip-flops in her backpack. I told her she could not. She asked why. I explained again that it was a cold day and I wanted her feet to be warm. When I picked her up at the end of the day, she was wearing flip-flops. It didn’t even occur to me she would have snuck them into her backpack. I have watched her do things like this for nine years and it still shocked me that she would openly disobey like that and not anticipate any consequences. I took all her flip-flops and put them up for a week. I believe it was the longest week of her life and she cried about it several times. Will she learn from it? Well, I know she will REMEMBER it but I do not think it would deter her from doing it again.

This past weekend we went to a little rodeo in a small town nearby. There was a fenced-in play area with four of those big bouncy houses and slides next to the arena. Five dollars got you a ticket to come and go all evening. Several times throughout the evening I allowed Sydney to go jump for five or ten minutes. The medication she takes for ADHD had long worn off and sitting in the stands was asking too much of her. (See? I’m a reasonable person.) It was hard to keep track of her among all the kids coming and going out of those houses but I managed. The last trip in, I watched as she ran over to a mom with a toddler. Sydney LOVES babies and I predicted quite accurately what I was about to witness. I was not close enough to intervene before it happened though! The mom was helping the toddler bounce on a corner of one of the play sets. Sydney crowded in between the child and her mother and tried to take over as caregiver. The mother was so surprised she actually turned the toddler over to Sydney for a few seconds before she realized what she’d done and regained custody of her baby. I grabbed Sydney and was too flustered to come up with words. This time I asked her Dad to explain what she had done and why it was inappropriate. He did. She listened but I honestly do not think she understood a single word about why it was not okay to walk up to a stranger and try to take their baby away from them. Sigh.

At the rodeo

Last evening I witnessed her doing a similar thing but it was not with a baby (thank goodness). A friend of ours was over and playing a hand held game when Sydney came over and crowded right it. She began touching the screen and intervening in the game without an invitation. If I had not stopped her she’d have had that video game in her own lap or been in the lap of our guest with her own body between that game and the owner. I can explain and explain but she just cannot help herself. If she sees something she wants, there is no willpower for her to use against those desires. I can only imagine what her teen years and adult life will be like. It is a constant worry for me.

I know Sydney can learn rules and abide by some of them but I’m not sure why some are easier for her to obey than others. We have a pool and she never goes near it unless she is given permission. She is able to behave herself (for the most part) during worship services. She doesn’t hit other people or tantrum. She is polite most of the time. Her ability to abide by some rules and not others has to have something to do with her ability to plan. There is that frontal lobe again. Being able to think ahead to the consequences of your actions based on past mistakes is controlled by that frontal lobe. Impulse control is managed by the frontal lobe. Rules seem so much harder for her to obey when there are other children involved. She can go a long time without getting into any real trouble but add a peer and she is going to find all kinds of ways to make that kid holler. She’s quick at finding ways to push their buttons. She invades their space. She plays much better with children younger than her. A six year old is almost perfect, but only one, not two. Although she is ten, age six is about the level she functions at herself. We are so lucky in that we live out in the country. A neighborhood full of children (and adults) would have brought so many challenges with it and so many dangers. Sydney’s playmates are her family members. Oh, and a dog, several cats, two calves, and a gentle old horse. She spends hours outside with those animals and her dolls. Sydney’s imagination is one of the most active I have ever known. Our dog and one of those calves have an amazing bond with Sydney. They do not care how many times she invades their space or how much she talks or how loudly she talks.

Sydney and Pepper

We almost never say “no” when Sydney wants something to eat. Number one: her preferred foods are healthy. Number two: the doctor tells us to push her to eat because she needs to gain some weight. Sydney still tries to hide food and lie about food. I have told her over and over there is no need because she can eat almost anything she wants, anytime she wants. One of the only rules I have is: no food the bedrooms. I often do find food and wrappers and dishes in her room but I do not impose any consequences for it. These issues surely cannot be from her memories of the orphanage when she was probably hungry, because she has no memories of the orphanage. But food issues could stem from anxieties, according to her doctor. I cannot imagine trying to live without the ability to fully control my impulses. What a confusing place the world would be. Trying to understand the rules and abide by them without the damage to your brain is hard enough sometimes when you are little. This little girl has a disability that was 100% preventable. Alcohol to a brain is poison and exposing an unborn baby to alcohol is unconscionable.

Past articles about Sydney: Saturday Morning with Sydney and Life with Sydney

Find us on Facebook at Quirks and Chaos! Like what you read? Want to become a follower? Click on the Google Friend Following gadget on this blog. It's over on the right side and asks you to subscribe. Or you can add the URL (the web address in your search bar) to your Reading List. You can do that by clicking the plus sign in front of the URL. Thanks!

breaking the rules

Flexibility is not easy for a kid with autism. Tate wants rules written in stone. You do not bend them, tweak them, change them, or rewrite them. SO… last night when I chose to follow a couple of cars into town, THROUGH the “road closed” barriers, I paid. It would have been easier to go the extra two miles, using the detour, in the end. I explained over and over (as Tate protested) that the road crew had gone home for the night and the road was still in perfect condition to use. If he had better language skills I know Tate’s argument would have been “You cannot have it both ways Mom. You finally have me convinced that detour signs are not evil, and roads closing are okay. You teach me these things and then you amend it all?” See a previous post about our detour into town by clicking on this link: Under Construction 

Tate is rarely without a hat.

Tate lives in a black-and-white, rule bound world. This is typical of autism. There is no gray allowed. The few gray areas Tate can tolerate have been taught and reinforced over and over so they are also a sort of black-and-white rule. “You cannot wear your hat in the church building” was a black-and-white rule. Gray came when he did not have to take his hat off if we stopped at the church building to work or clean, and it was not a time of worship. He “wrote” a new rule he could put in his black-and-white mind then, and the gray area then became a black-and-white rule he could follow too. This way of thinking affects everything for Tate. It is why he has such a hard time learning that some words have two different meanings. Last night, someone said “I want to train for a half marathon.” Tate couldn’t identify the word “train” in that sentence, nor does he know what a marathon is. He made a comment about “a train,” thinking he was adding to the conversation. A train runs on rails and is not something you can do, in his mind. I defined the word as a verb for him, but I am not sure he ever really understood. It took several explanations before Tate understood the word “chilly” could be used as a word describing the temperature, but it is also a food. And now people can even tell him to “chill out” when asking him to calm down!

Think about what a kid like Tate goes through in a typical day. Can you imagine how hard it must be to sit in a room full of peers that seem to understand all kinds of things that you do not? Can you imagine the confusion when an adult is lecturing on a topic that you do not understand and they keep using words that have double meanings? We pass a test and we pass the salt. We haul out the trash and we walk down the hall. We keep the beat in music and we grow vegetables called beets. We would never beat a pet but it is a good thing to beat everyone else in a race. All these things are learned fairly easily by a child with a typically developing mind. They are like sponges. Autism robs a person of this flexibility and “absorbency.” Even if Tate were able to decipher all of the words and his brain had all of them defined correctly, we would still have to slow way down and let him process things at a slower pace. Tate’s processing is so slow that he gets lost in all the language if people talk very fast. I think that is why he “gives up” and just seems to stop listening sometimes. He is living in a world of language that does not make a lot of sense, and surrounded by adults that keep changing the rules on him. 

Find me on Facebook at Quirks and Chaos. Like what you read? Want to become a follower? Click on the Google Friend Following gadget on this blog. It's over on the right side and asks you to subscribe. Or you can add the URL (the web address in your search bar) to your Reading List. You can do that by clicking the plus sign in front of the URL. Thanks!