I just finished reading Temple Grandin’s mom’s book called Thorn in my Pocket. It’s a memoir of raising Temple from a severely autistic baby/toddler to a very high functioning adult.
Anyway, in that book she was talking about what autism is and then said that one scientist (shoot I don’t have the book anymore so I can’t cite this properly) noticed that most children with autism have a parent or a grandparent who is/was an engineer or a career a lot like that.
It’s struck a massive cord with me. The man who comes on here and comments as Grumps is my grandfather on my mother’s side. He was an engineer and probably has THE most organized thinking I’ve ever seen in my life. Then I thought upon my mom who is the same, and my sisters Jennie and Juliet who’s a lot like that too. Then I thought about Brent and his dad who are both TOTALLY like that. Neat, tidy, left brainers who are good at things like math and organizing and compartmentalizing.
My dad’s side of that family, well, there’s a lot of genius there. My dad’s IQ is REALLY high along with my uncle Greg and many many of his children, if not all of them.
There are other family traits but I’m not going to point out the negative ones 🙂
Silas has a lot lot lot lot of genes in him that, when all put together, can be autism. Which, for some reason, comforts me greatly. I just think of how enduring my Grumps is. How wonderful of a person he is. How much I adore him. I love love love that Silas fits into that, an autistic child with a grandfather who’s an engineer. It makes it make a lot more sense and I love that I’ll always always always have a little bit of my Grumps with me :).
I think I’ve told you before how much I can relate to Silas. It’s scary. I can sit forever and sort buttons into colours. It’s so soothing. And lining the letter cards up with the squares in my carpet — oh what joy.
I like order also (but don’t look in my garage just now). I remember enjoying the details of printing just as exactly as our Mechanical Drawing teacher insisted. You could not advance to drawing lines, circles, shapes, etc. until your printing was exact. (This back in about 1938) Gramp