Warning: Undefined variable $themename in /home/public/wp-content/themes/projectbeta/functions.php on line 12
» Page not found

Living With Autism

My name is Jack Durrant and I have high functioning autism. The mainstream definition of autism is “a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people” –The National Autistic Society. However, this post is about my life, and the purpose of it is to give people a better idea of what autism really is.

When I first found out I had autism, I was essentially told the mainstream definition of it. I was about 7 or 8 and had very limited language back then, so my mum could only really tell me that I “find it hard to make friends”. Now, this is good as a basic definition of autism, as I do find it hard to talk to people I don’t know. However, as you can imagine, I wanted to find out more. I wanted to know why I found it hard to make friends, and I wanted to find out why I was getting beaten up at my school.

When I was 5, I started going to Robert Blair Primary School. The reason I started school a year later than everyone else is because my mum wanted to find a better school. Robert Blair was a terrible school. However, it was the only school with a language unit for students with communication difficulties.

I was bullied a lot at Robert Blair because I was different. To the other students, I was the freak. Not all the other students hated me, and a lot of the students were actually alright. However, there were enough bullies to make me forget about everyone else and to make me think I was a freak.

I was told, multiple times, that when another student messes with me, I should tell a teacher and they would sort it out. However, the teachers never helped me out and, as far as I can remember, the teachers never mentioned in an assembly that you shouldn’t bully someone else for being a bit different.

There are three memories I have from Robert Blair that I would like to share. If you want to know more, just ask in the comments. I have plenty more to share. My first memory is of being punched in the face in the lunch queue, right in front of a teacher. I didn’t see the student who punched me, but a teacher watched it happen and did absolutely nothing about it.

My second memory at Robert Blair is in the break time. I was hiding under a sort of climbing frame, hiding from other kids who potentially wanted to beat me up. Then, some kid walked up to me and said “Hello ugly”. Before I had time to say “I’m not ugly” and get a proper look at his face, he threw gravel in my face and ran off. I ran out, crying like a three year old.

My third memory was the work I was given. The school were treating me like I had a learning difficulty, and I eventually thought I did. I was in Year 4, and I was being asked to find words that rhyme with “cat”. This is work that is insultingly simple, even for nursery kids. When I asked my teacher for something else to do, she told me in a disrespectful manner to sit down and carry on finding words. The teachers at the school were too lazy to give me proper work and a lot of the time, they were very disrespectful to the students.

I made a few friends at Robert Blair, and most of them also had autism. However, they all left the school and went to Hillingdon Manor. I asked my mum about going there and she said that probably wouldn’t be possible, as it was in the outskirts of London. However, we took a look at the school and eventually, I started going there.

Robert Blair and the council’s education autorities didn’t want me to change schools because they didn’t want to get a bad reputation by admitting that they couldn’t meet my needs. They said I would never do very well in life and even said that I liked it at Robert Blair. However, my mum took me out of school to have an IQ test. My mum had to get all the evidence she could, to prove I needed to move on from Robert Blair until, eventually, they gave in.

When I went to Hillingdon Manor, there was a massive difference. The 90 minute bus ride it took to get to school every day was a bit of a pain. However, I fit in a lot better at that school, as everyone else was as weird as I was! Hillingdon Manor is an autistic school. They focus less on educating students according to the national curriculum and more on helping them out with their autism, and at the time, that was more important for me.

I loved going to Hillingdon Manor at first. However, eventually, it was time for me to leave. Hillingdon Manor is a great school, but for me, it wasn’t perfect any more. In the math lessons, I was being taught insultingly simple stuff that I already knew from learning it the year before. I was starting to become Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. If you haven’t watched the Big Bang Theory, end your misery now. Click the link and watch some videos.

When I left Hillingdon Manor, I went to the International Community School. This school is an International Baccalaureate school. The IB is recognised as a better education system, as it gives students a wider education. However, it didn’t work for me. The IB requires students to learn a foreign language and a humanities subject to get a diploma. I also joined the IB course in the middle of it, when I was 14. To do the IB, you really need to start from the beginning. Besides, A Levels better meet my needs anyway.

Another problem with the International Community School is that the school was not made for students with autism. A lot of schools tend to hire people who don’t know a lot about special needs. I don’t know why that is, but at some point, I had an assistant sitting next to me in class telling me to hurry up, when I am very slow at handwriting. Eventually, I told her that I found it annoying, to which she said she found it annoying that I don’t look at her. She had no right to say that, as difficulty with eye contact is a very common aspect of autism.

Because of my autism, I get extra time in exams as a right. I read and write slower than other people and need that extra time. However, when I was at the International Community School, I was told I had extra time in an exam, but I saw the next class in that room waiting outside. They weren’t annoyed, but, as anyone who doesn’t work at that school would understand, I felt very awkward. My extra time should be in a room that doesn’t have another class in it, and I should not have to feel embarrassed to use it. When I told my school that, they understood meĀ and started properly giving me extra time almost immediately. However, the initial mistake wasn’t very clever.

The International Community School said they couldn’t send one of their school buses to my house as it was in an area without that many students, which meant I had to take the London Underground to school. I couldn’t handle that very well, as the trains were packed. The Tube in London isn’t as bad as the Tube in Tokyo, but it is still overcrowded and I eventually started taking the bus, which isn’t much better.

When I was at the International Community School, I changed loads. I went from being a confused, very emotional child in a completely new place to being the computer freak. The students at the International Community School thought I was a bit different, as I didn’t talk as much as the other students did, but I wasn’t the freak I was at Robert Blair.

Now, let’s go back to what this blog post is meant to be about – my definition of autism. It took me years to figure out what autism meant and before I had it all figured out, I looked at it in a slightly negative way, being told it was a disability. However, I know now that I am not disabled. I don’t feel disabled and I look normal like everyone else.

Some people with autism let themselves become disabled, and some don’t get the help they need and end up thinking they are disabled. However, I look at in the same way I look at homosexuality. People think it is a bit weird at first and people like Adolf Hitler don’t think they should be allowed to live. However, when it is explained properly, a good person will understand and accept that some people are a bit different.

Commenting is encouraged.

Posted on Wednesday 3rd October 2012 - 13 comments

New School

I couple of months ago, I left London and started attending a new school up north. I am overall quite happy with my new school. However, it isn’t all perfect, and I have been wanting to write about my experiences at the new school for a while.

Enrolment Day

My first experience at the school with other students was on the enrolment day. I didn’t have a good impression of the school on that day, as all the other students seemed to know each other. That wasn’t a big problem. However, when I tried to say something to the other students, they ignored me. I enrolled for the courses I wanted to take and then I got the hell out.

First Induction Day

My second experience at the school with other students was the first induction day. That day was a lot better for me. I sat in an assembly hall full of other students, next to a student who said hello to me and introduced herself. I found that to be a very nice change from being ignored. When the assembly finished, the students were sent to their forms for class activities.

My mathematics form shared a room with the physics form for the class activities. In the beginning, the students were given pieces of paper with questions to ask the other students. The purpose of that activity was for the students to remember each other’s names. It was a bit pointless, as I forgot most of the names quite quickly.

Later on, the students in the room were split into groups to attempt to build the tallest freestanding tower out of paper and a length of sticky tape. Each tower had to be able to support an egg on the top, and the height of each tower was measured by how high it could hold the egg. That activity was also pretty pointless, but I enjoyed it and I got to know some of the other students.

Second Induction Day

On the second induction day, I had to go to a university. I didn’t know I had to go straight to the university, and I assumed all the students would be going together. I was given a map to find the university walking from the school, but like a genius, I left the map at home. However, when I went into the school, there was a teacher in there who was quite happy to take me to the university.

When I got there, I went into a lecture hall and there was a teacher in front of a PowerPoint presentation talking about when we would have to apply to go to university. I found it quite boring, and I was also quite hot, which didn’t help. When that assembly finished, the students were sent to different rooms, according to what their main subject was.

My main subject is mathematics, and I got to know some of the other math students at my school. In that time, the students went through their math summer homework. I didn’t bring in my summer homework that day, as I had no idea what the day was about. However, I could still help with solving some of the questions in the summer homework, and there were other math related activities.

Daily School Life

As I said, I am overall quite happy at my school. I understand most of what is said in class and ask my teachers about what I don’t understand. However, there is one problem I am having and it doesn’t seem like it will go away any time soon. I am finding it hard to make friends at the school, and I like having friends now more than I did at my previous school.

A lot of the students seem to ignore me. I don’t know why that is. My best guess is that the other students already have friends and don’t need any more. However, I don’t see that as a reason to ignore someone else, and I am still trying to figure out the real reason why other students ignore me.

Thankfully, I have made a couple of friends. In my physics class, someone noticed that I don’t have that many friends. She isn’t a crazy computer geek like I am, but in any case, having one friend is infinitely better than having none. My other friend at the school is another student with autism. He read one of my blog posts about autism and was interested to get to know me. I don’t know which of my posts he read, so rather than guessing, I’m just going to link them both below:

How My Mind Works Living With Autism

Posted on Tuesday 20th November 2012 - 1 comment

How My Mind Works

I recently wrote a blog post called Living With Autism. It was mostly about the schools I attended in the past. It has recieved a lot of positive comments, so I must be doing something right. However, the original purpose of that blog post was to give people an idea of what autism is. It can redefine autism for peeople who already know about it, and it can give people with autism a better way of looking at it. However, for people who haven’t heard of it, I think I could do better.

Autism affects the aspects of the human mind that involve communication. For most people, autism affects general social skills. However, it can also affect language, and some people with autism never learn to speak. Although most people know this, a lot of people don’t know what to make of that definition. This post is there to clarify this definition, and to clear up what is and isn’t true.

To begin, autism isn’t always a disability and therefore shouldn’t always be treated like one. This mistake is made a lot, particularly by schools. At my previous school, I had someone sitting next to me in some of my classes telling me what to write in my lesson notes. One of my in class assistants insisted on reading to me what was written on the whiteboard. I didn’t need that and to be honest, it drove me mad.

The next thing I want to make clear is that people with autism generally think a lot more than other people realise. No matter what everyone thinks, this is nearly always true. This means that if someone makes fun of me for what they think I don’t understand, I’m going to know. A lot of people would get offended by that stuff, but I just laugh at those people and ignore them.

Something else I want to make clear is that I am more interested in getting to know people than you think. I haven’t always been interested in having a social life, but I am now, and that is the same for many other people with autism. When I am at school, I don’t talk to other people because I find it hard to start a conversation. However, if you talk to me, I will talk to you. As I get to know you, I will come out of my metaphorical shell and seem like a normal person by the mainstream definition.

One more thing I want to make clear about myself is that I am happy to be asked about my differences. That isn’t true for everyone, but people who don’t like to be asked about autism likely look at it as a negative thing. My previous post about autism, linked in the first paragraph, should be able to help those people by giving them a different point of view, as well as knowledge of the life of someone else with autism. If someone with autism looks at it with my point of view, they will see it as a good thing in some aspects, and they should therefore be quite happy to talk about it.

So, how do you tell who has autism? Well, obviously, it is easier said than done. However, there are common aspects of autism that can make it easier for you to take a guess. The most obvious way to tell is if someone isn’t talking to other people. However, that way of making a guess on who has autism shouldn’t be used exclusively. That person could be depressed, or simply, just choosing not to talk to anyone.

Another very common aspect of autism is an avoidance of eye contact with other people. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why people with autism don’t seem to be interested in talking to others. If that same person isn’t talking to other people, that person probably has autism. However, if they are talking to others, they could just be trying to ignore you.

The most reliable aspect of autism, for guessing who has it, is a sensitivity to loud noises. Not all people with autism have this problem, and a lot of people have this problem only some of the time. In my case, I am usually able to drown it out. However, I am less able to ignore it if I am sick, stressed out, or if I have to listen to it a lot. As far as I know, not many other people have this problem.

To sum it up, autism isn’t like many other mental conditions. I think of my mind as more like a computer in certain aspects. I programmed my mind to understand English and to talk to other people. I am a bit different, but I don’t see myself as “disabled”. Because of that, if scientists found a “cure” for autism, I would stay away from it and die before trying it. On the inside, I am a lot more like a normal person by the mainstream definition, and people realise that as they get to know me.

Posted on Sunday 11th November 2012 - 8 comments