A bit about my son Sébastien.

My son is autistic. Mildly mind you, but still... He's often in his own mind, makes little (sometimes louder) noises and sounds when he is happy. Although he has made huge progress with his speech, which we are very proud of him for, at 11 years old he still shows signs of difficulty with his phrase structure. He would rather play alone than with another child. He is autistic. But worry not, he is a generally happy little person, and gets lots of love from his parents and sister, which is probably the main reason why he is doing well and show constant signs of progress.


One other common characteristic among autistic children is either hyper-sensitivity, or hypo-sensitivity. Mine is hyper-sensitive. Today, he seems to have certain control over most of them, most of the time (but not always), except for the sens of taste. For example, yesterday at school, they had a gym class outside in the snow. They made them do all sorts of exercises I guess, one of which was made them crawl in the snow. Afterwards, he was all wet because of the snow, and he could not stand it. He was frustrated about it. They did not tell us if he cried, but I would not be surprised if he did.


But autistic children also have strengths, most often shown by signs of high intelligence in certain domains. For instance, some are very good in mathematics, some have very good memories (remember the movie "Rainman"?), some have strong spacial perception, and others might be very good at puzzle solving (remember the movie "Mercury Rising"?). Often they will have a combination of many of these abilities. Seb is very good in drawing. Not that he draws realistically, but he's good at reproducing the "emotions" in his drawings. You know what a character is feeling by looking at the drawing, and he does that very easily. He also has a strong spacial perception, and that shows in his art too. He's been drawing in 3D since he was 2 years old!!! He understood that principle long ago. He also has a very "musical" ear. He can easily repeat by singing the notes, a song or a melody he heard. Sometimes he only heard it once. And some of those melodies are very complex (I know that because I am very much into music myself), but that seem to be no problem for him. They have strenghts, but commonly have the same weaknesses also, like difficulty with the language, and with social skills for instance, which my son has.


So that's our Sébastien (on the right in the picture obviously, my daughter Ophélie on the left, who is autistic also, and my wife Annie in the middle). I will not lie to you and say that everything is easy. Because it is not, even if they are "just" mildly autistic. And the "not so easy" part is not just about them, it's about the system. Actually, I'd say it's MORE about the system. The things we constantly have to fight for, even if it's for services they are allowed to get. The things we always have to explain to people at school who don't always "get it". Members of the extended family who had or still has trouble accepting them, and still doesn't give a care about them (or don't show it anyway). Etc etc... Fortunately me and my wife still love each other very much, thus we are still together (parents in similar situations are often torn apart by all the difficulties). It makes things better, easier for the kids. I've always thought that these two little souls were given to us for that reason.

Seb, Ophie, Annie... I love you! (OK, everyone say: "awwwww")... ;-)