I am reading Ruby the
Red Fairy’s adventure. At the point where the fairy says she’s been looking
for a little girl to help her, Bobby touches my arm. “Boy – a boy to help her.”
“Sorry,” I clear my throat, smuggling a smile. “Boy to help her.”
I glance up at Bobby’s bookshelf, where about two dozen
similar tales are squashed alongside Horrid Henry, who is no doubt pulling
faces and trying to push the twinkling little stories off the shelf, which
happens quite spookily at night.
Bobby is about as blokey as they come. His Skylanders
Giants, the most macho looking bunch of cartoon heroes you’re likely to meet, scowl
out of the poster on the wall above his bed. A ‘Raving Rabbid’ dances alongside
them (never quite worked out the appeal, there). Sonic and Mario take centre
stage, arms folded, on the wall opposite.
And then there are the fairies.
“I’m not reading you a fairy book,” groans Gavin, reaching
onto the shelf for the easiest, quickest story he can get away with before Top
Gear starts.
“Not another Mr Men story!” protests Bobby, but soon perks
up because dad is good at adding all sorts of silly hidden extras. It’s my job,
evidently, to animate stuff concerning gauzy wings, toadstools and all sorts of
other sickly sweetness in a series that’s distinctly lacking in ironic humour.
I’m not bothered. To hell with macho. This is where it all begins
for our little autistic guy – the world of imagination! A little later than his
peers, he has discovered an entire universe of characters that live at the
bottom gardens, inside trees and in fictional places. He is inspired, he is
moved – and yet it’s a common myth that autistic children ‘don’t have
imagination’.
What’s actually meant by that, is that autistic people can
struggle to see things in abstract ways, or from another’s viewpoint. That’s
not the same as lacking imagination. Evidence for that statement is Satoshi
Tajiri, who invented Pokemon, Alan Turing, who created one of the first designs
for a stored-programme computer and countless other current and historical
inventors, scientists and creatives.
However, autistic people do tend to be literal thinkers.
They like the solid, the visible, and the tangible and tend to shy away from
abstracts that are more uncertain in their nature. Perhaps that’s why the myth
pervades that they lack imagination.
When Bobby was two, he enjoyed spinning objects. He pushed
cars backwards and forwards. He flapped a lot (he still does, at nine, but only
when especially excited). He didn’t understand imaginary play whatsoever.
In toddler group, whilst others were gathering around the
toy cooker making plastic fry-ups, they’d glance bemused as Bobby sat on the
floor repeatedly opening and closing the oven door, flapping his arms and
bouncing on his bum. Pretty embarrassing
at the time, but he needed no more stimulation than that. It was only when he
started showing that he could read and count before he could talk that we
realised how bright he was. Even so, at his first autism ‘test’, which he
passed with flying colours, the paediatrician got hold of a block of wood and
pretended it was a plane – ‘Neeaaaauggggh’, he said, convincingly.
All Bobby
could see was a very stupid adult holding a block of wood over his head. When
the block of wood was given back to him, he ignored it, perfectly sensibly.
I can’t remember how long this went on for but I do remember
almost fainting with surprise when he first attempted to ‘feed’ a doll (with a
bit of encouragement). He wasn’t exactly showing early promise for social work,
as he soon threw her to one side, preferring to assess whether a cube would
spin on its corner.
At school, Bobby would take little walks round the
playground with his lunchtime helper. He wasn’t a loner, and didn’t mind physical
play, but stories conjured up from nowhere were a sticking point.
In the meantime, he was happy to immerse himself in the
imaginary world of Mario and Luigi.
With solid ideas to build on and real
figures to play with, he began to extend his beloved screen time with some real
life play, using building blocks to create his own ‘Mario’ levels and jumping
the characters over them. At school, his teaching assistant allowed him to
write Mario stories, whatever the subject matter in literacy. Character descriptions
were very factual. Luigi was green; Mario was red and blue – end of.
Autistic kids can be phenomenal when it comes to computers,
and Bobby is no exception – this is his strength. Some adults have a fear that
computers can make an autistic child even more isolated. But rather than hold
him back, his PC games formed a stepping stone into the world of imagination.
Last year, Bobby’s class did knights and castles as their
theme. Before long, the oak tree at Bobby’s school became their adopted ‘Dragonland’
and at the age of 8, something clicked. Bobby started visiting ‘Dragonland’
every break time with different friends and having proper ‘adventures’ there.
This year, the school cloakroom has become his ‘time
machine’ (just like in his Horrid Henry story) and a vehicle for history
lessons on the days when he isn’t being so co-operative. Now that we have
fairies into the bargain, I can’t actually believe that I’m looking at the same
boy who stared blankly at a wooden block that day.
He’s still literal, of course. That’s part of him and part
of the autism (same thing). He still worries that a fairy will ask him for help
and he won’t know what to do about it. He also has a little prayer that he
repeats to himself; hand on heart, like the American national anthem each day:
‘I still believe in fairies, myself, magic and everything else.’
And I still believe that autism isn’t a condition which is
solid and inflexible, it’s something that keeps moving and changing and
adapting with its environment, just like a developing child. So when you read that
autistic kids have ‘difficulties with speech, social skills and imagination’, that
doesn’t mean non-existent.
Bobby learnt to talk at four, he gathered social
skills that he wasn’t born with like bluebells in a forest of mainstream
children and now his imagination is developing, too.
As parents, we have to keep encouraging and keep believing.
Then one day, you might even see something as magical as a fairy landing on
your windowsill.
