 Look Me in the Eyeby Benison O'Reilly on Friday, October 30th, 2009I’m a great devourer of books in general and books about ASD in particular, although I do go through times when I need a break from all things autism and during those periods read about anything but ASD. Anyway, after a few months’ hiatus I have just finished reading Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison (Bantam, 2007). This book was published a while back, so forgive me if you’ve already read it and I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but I wanted to comment on how much I enjoyed it and how it helped me better understand my son, Joe. Just after Joe was diagnosed, at age three, someone kind recommended I read Temple Grandin. I dutifully bought one of her books, but it was too early. I didn’t dare imagine my little blonde cherub as an adult with autism. That future seemed way too scary. And while Temple Grandin is definitely a poster girl for autism success, she seemed at the time…well…a little humourless, and humour is a big part of our lives. I really need to go and read her again now. Maybe she isn’t humourless at all. Maybe she is wonderfully droll, and I just failed to pick it up five years ago because nothing seemed very funny to me at the time. Now I have reached the stage of acceptance where I can imagine Joe as an adult and, if his present trajectory continues, hopefully working with computers. We regularly drive past the Microsoft headquarters in Sydney and one day he told me he plans to work there when he grows up. Fingers crossed. But back to Look Me in the Eye. It’s a wonderfully entertaining reading and definitely funny in parts. I loved reading about John Robison’s vivid imagination and tall story telling; the day, as a child, he realised that when someone made a comment you were expected to make a related comment back; why he finds it distracting to look people in the eye; that he often doesn’t even know when he’s fidgeting (Joe is a big fidgeter) and how his wife knows the right things to do to calm him down. Lots of other things I’ve probably forgotten too. However, it was the chapter called Becoming Normal that really caught my eye. In that he talks of being, at the age of 16 years, before two game-show doors: Door Number One, the ‘anxiety-filled, bright and disorderly world of people’, and Door Number Two, the comfortable world of machines and circuits. He chose Door Number One and has no regrets, even though he feels he has lost some of his savant skills as a consequence. Door Number One is the door we are gently edging Joe towards and I was pleased to have John Robison’s endorsement. Of course my Joe isn’t John Elder Robison, but I do think he seems a little bit like him. I heartily recommend Look Me in the Eye to other parents, particularly parents of children with Asperger’s, as an insight into the world of ASDs. Books like this can only help our understanding.
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