Christmas Through The Eyes Of An Autism Patient

[UberScout]

You wake up from a dream about fighting a dragon with two heads. Boy, those video games really get to you.

The living room is right through the hallway to your bedroom. You stop at the bathroom to relieve yourself, and make your way to the living room. Being the grateful kid you are, you aren't really expecting much, but however your family may go all out for you, you are wont to appreciate any amount of effort they give, big or small.

As you half-stumble into the den, rubbing your crusty eyes and adjusting to the view of the cloudy, overcast light coming from outside, you barely trip on the corner of something big, and it rattles. You look all the way up, and are beside yourself when you see the most amazing, bewildering sight that a young, eight-year-old Aspie can contain in his mind....

THE ENTIRE LIVING ROOM IS NOTHING BUT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS!!

The couch and love seat are riddled with marble courses and LEGO sets, remote-controlled cars, helicopters and vehicles line the dining table, your GameCube in the living room is buried under an avalanche of region-free import games and gaming peripherals, Pokemon plushies are "playing" near the Christmas tree, and sitting in front of the living room television is an item very familiar to you, as you saw it at the mall; a Power Player Super Joy Mk. III plug-and-play console, pre-loaded with over 70,000 NES and Famicom games!!

You're going to be quite the busy kid today...

I just have one question;

What do you do first?

 

[Thinx]

Make coffee

 

[UberScout]

You're kidding right?

Dude.

You're a kid.

Your living room looks like Toys R Us, Walmart and Target had an exorcism and exploded into toys, video games and anything that a kid could get some form of entertainment out of.

Not only that but there are so many presents that they are spilling over into other rooms of the house. You can't even sit on the couch yet until you move all the stuff off of it because it's full of merchandise.

All of those things combined, depending on how they are played with, could easily put together a total of 153 hours of play time, if you did so nonstop, not even counting the 1/3 of GameStop shelf and a very bizarre part of the Japanese eBay site your parents bought for your GameCube. You're not going to be bored for a while.

And the first thing you want to do is make coffee.

What is wrong with you.

 

[Autistamatic]

If I was a kid... I'd make coffee. Always start the day with a strong black coffee. Always have done. The presents will still be there once I've woken up a little bit and it'll be even more fun

What's with the "patient" thing btw?

 

[UberScout]

"Patient" is just the clinical term for someone with such a condition.

 

[tlc]

Go wake up mom and dad and make sure they are really for me, or what's going on. If I just tore into them I might be in for a whipping later. I learned early about stuff like that.

 

[SusanLR]

Being an only child, had this ever happened to me as a kid, the first thing I would still do is grab a bite to eat and a cuppa.
I'd be more awake then and ready to play!

 

[Bolletje]

"Patient" is just the clinical term for someone with such a condition.

Autism isn’t a disease or a psychiatric disorder though, so it feels kind of wrong to me to label people with ASD as patients.

 

[Autistamatic]

It's bad enough being medicalised and objectified outside without it happening here too. I realise you're not trying to cause offence, but autistic people are only "patients" when they are receiving medical treatment. Autism is not a disease or an injury so the term doesn't apply and is quite distasteful to many. Maybe edit the titles perhaps?

 

[Progster]

I keep hearing how people with autism don't like surprises, but as a kid, I always loved getting presents. The best ones were the ones in my stocking, which I got to open in my room, in my own time, and without people watching me to see my facial expression, so away from social pressure. Other presents weren't really surprises, though, because I got to ask for things I wanted for Christmas.

I agree about the coffee. Coffee is definitely my morning 'on' button.

 

[GrownupGirl]

I didn't like coffee when I was a kid, and even now I usually only drink tea.

We didn't have Pokemon or Gamecube back then. My brother and I once got the NES for Christmas though and I loved it. We even got R.O.B. and the light gun with it.

When I was a kid I'd be too excited to sleep on Christmas Eve so I'd be practically rushing into the living room when it was technically morning or sneaking out of bed to look at the gifts at least.

And mainly, when I was a kid no one knew about Asperger's and my parents never thought that some of my behavior around the holidays may be a part of my being aspie, although after I was diagnosed my mom told me she thinks she understands now.

And autistic people should not be defined as patients, as if autism was a disease, which it isn't. Of course, a few other people here have already mentioned that.

My older brother never got as worked up or excited about Christmas the way I did. Oh, he'd like his presents and stuff, but it wasn't that big of a deal to him. In fact, he hardly ever gets excited about anything. He'll call my mom and tell her that he and my sil are going on a trip to Las Vegas, but act as if he's just driving down to the store to pick up some milk. But I digress.

 

[china autie]

Maybe "Christmas Through the Eyes of an Autistic Child" ?

You write well. I take it your son had an excellent Christmas!

 

[china autie]

PS Some kids do drink coffee. There is nothing wrong with those of us who drank coffee as kids.

To all coffee drinkers: Coffee is an acquired taste. No one naturally likes the stuff.

People-first vs identity first language:
The Autistic Community by and large has rejected things like "autism patient", "autism parents", "person/child/adult with aitism."

Autistic is not a bad word. I am autistic. Being Autistic or autistic is interwoven with my neurology.

Most disabled or Disabled people (and some of us will tell you that it is society that creates disability and then Others us via medicalization) are not people with disabilities. Disabled, disabled, disabled.

The D/deaf community prefers "I am deaf" to the nonsensical 'people with deafness. Similarly, B/blind and Little People [not short-statutes or dwarven] and crippled or crips and gifted.

As one actually Autistic blogger wrote (sorry I do not recall who) would you tell a child that they are a child with giftedness? Or a person experiencing the label of giftedness?

The notable exception is the community of people with Intellectual Disabilities.

Most of the rest of us use identity first.

To use the words "autism patient" puts you in the camp of Autism Speaks, Loovas who thought that we autistic kids did not feel much of anything so it was okay to administer electric shocks, autism parents and autism professionals who very much do not get it celebrate neurodiversity.

Language matters. Words matter.

So we Autistics are "overthinking" things again-- I hope you are not saying that.

"Autism Patient" is incongruent with the warmth expressed by the rest of the piece. Please don't Other us (even unintentionally). We have enough of that in our day to day lives.

Thank you

 

[Mia]

What do you do first?

I'd have breakfast, and then I would open my gifts one by one and fold all the paper into nice neat piles.