About Stuart Duncan

My name is Stuart Duncan, creator of http://www.stuartduncan.name. My oldest son (Cameron) has Autism while my younger son (Tyler) does not. I am a work from home web developer with a background in radio. I do my very best to stay educated and do what ever is necessary to ensure my children have the tools they need to thrive. I share my stories and experiences in an effort to further grow and strengthen the online Autism community and to promote Autism Understanding and Acceptance.
Author Archive | Stuart Duncan

My child’s future with Autism, my goals

By on October 25, 2011 in Autism

I can’t set goals for my son, I can only set goals for myself in hopes of making his future a little better. People say the best way to achieve your goals is to write them down. It makes you accountable for them and reminds you of them later.

Anyway, I’ve been blogging for a little while and even had the opportunity to work with a few charities/groups on some things… so it got me to thinking about what I am going to do.

I don’t mean in the vague… “promise to always be there for him” sort of way but in the “what specifically can I do to improve his life by doing things within/for the Autism community” kind of way.

goalsSo here are my personal goals for the future, as they pertain to the world of Autism.

  1. Develop a web/mobile app that will change the Autism Community
    This is something I’ve already envisioned and outlined. I do not have the resources but do have the plan. This, if/when completed, has the potential to benefit each community as well as the global community in incredible ways.
  2. Write a book
    I have begun work on writing an Autism book, one that takes a very different approach from most other books. It’s something I’m very passionate about in that, completing it, may help to raise people’s understanding, not just awareness. This will help in my son’s future in that, the more people that understand between now and then, the better.
  3. Ensure my son is not ignored
    Now, I don’t know how exactly this is to be accomplished… through many smaller goals, I suspect… but should my son desire to speak up about Autism later in his life, in any way he should choose to do so… it is my mission now to make sure that he is not ignored when he does.
  4. Make this my source of income
    This one may sound a bit selfish, but it’s not. I don’t necessarily wish to make money from helping people or “doing good”, however, having to maintain a day job in order to have an income greatly limits my time, resources and ability to achieve all of the things that I would like to achieve. If it was my source of income, I could devote all of my time to doing it. So no, I don’t wish to become rich by any means.. in fact, I could make the same as I am making now, I don’t care. I just need to find a way to work harder, read more, write more, be more involved and the only way I can do that is if doing it replaced my day job.

It’s not a very big list, my skills and resources… as well as my ideas are limited. Having a family of 4 and a day job will do that. None-the-less, the few goals that I do have there are rather hefty.

And now that I’ve shared them with you… I have to do them!

So I will.

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I wish I could be a grown up..

By on October 23, 2011 in Parenting

A short thought today

While I was doing dishes and my wife was at work, my two boys were in the living room, playing a video game and discussing how much they wished that they were grown ups so that they could do anything they want.

Even though I couldn’t help chuckling to myself, thinking they didn’t really think this through very well… I remember quite clearly wishing for the same thing at their age.

And now, while doing dishes, listening to them play video games, I’d love to just be their age again.

calvin being a grown up

Click for full size

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The Adventures of One Sock [Review]

By on October 20, 2011 in Autism Review

When I get books in the mail relating to Autism, they’re usually for me. However, this one wasn’t… it is for my boys.

one sockThe book

The Adventures of One Sock is a fun tale about a child with Autism that gets spooked when he spots, what he thinks is, a lion in a neighbor’s yard while on his walk to school with his dad.

With the help of his family, he’s able to cope and even over come this fear and makes a new friend in the process.

The Story

The story, along with some very cute and fun art work really were easy to relate to for my children because they remember the stroller days, they have an imagination that could conjure up a lion as well and they really like the… well, I don’t want to spoil the ending for you.

I do have to be honest in saying that it’s a little obvious that this is the first children’s book for this author, in that I found myself replacing a few words as I read, since they didn’t feel all that natural to say to a child… but even with those few exceptions, it’s still a wonderful story and very engaging for my boys.

Aesthetics

One of the things that they really got right with this book (which most people don’t think about) is the aesthetics. It’s a nice big book with paper covers. It’s not a lot of pages but those pages are quite big, making the art work really stand out and the words are very clear in big letters.

This really lets little hands hold it, explore and even bend it all they want without having to worry about it. Also, as my older boy is just learning to read, I can more easily point to words or even letters since they’re in a nice big type face.

Conclusion

This is a great little book to pick up for your little ones… I’m sure they’ll be able to relate to a lot of parts in it even though, at 24 pages, it’s not a long story. Yes, it is a story about a boy with Autism but that is never really an issue. Whether your children have Autism or not, they’ll relate to this story.

The Adventures of One Sock is now one of the bed time stories that my boys hear before bed… I’m sure one day, when they’re able, they’ll love sitting down to read it themselves.

You can pick up The Adventures of One Sock at ClearSpace for $10.92.

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The common, not so common, issues

By on October 18, 2011 in Autism

One of the problems I often encounter when discussion Autism with someone that does not know much about Autism is overcoming their need to relate.

Which sounds really odd, doesn’t it?

The Problem

Here’s the problem: for every sign of Autism that I explain, the response is often “but a lot of kids do that”.

And when that happens, you kind of have to go…  “yeah… a lot of kids do do that, but not like this and not with the combination of all of the other things my child does.”

Here’s a quick laundry list of Autism symptoms, off the top of my head, where “a lot of kids do that”:

  • meltdowns
  • not listening/ignoring
  • get aggressive
  • get bullied
  • be shy
  • picky eating
  • have trouble sleeping at night
  • speaking delayed
  • miss milestones
  • be repetitive
  • need routine
  • wander off/elope
  • refuse to look you in the eye
  • be brilliant

The list goes on and on… and when your child is having an issue with one of those things and you mention it to someone, often times the response is “yeah but a lot of kids do that.”

Understanding

same but differentThis is why the DSM tends to combine signs, meaning that your child has to have several signs and meet several areas of criteria in order to qualify for an Autism diagnosis.

The truth is, they’re not wrong. A lot of kids do that!

Here’s the thing… most kids go through phases, most kids don’t do these things to the same extent or severity and most kids don’t do many of these things all at the same time… making it a fully quantifiable disability.

And that is what is so maddening when someone responds to me with “but a lot of kids do that”.

It’s a struggle to admit that they’re not wrong and yet they’re so far off base at the same time… how do you explain that without upsetting them? Especially those stubborn family members that are so certain they’ve “been there, done that” and that you’re just young and “finding out what it’s like”.

See, I can see you sneering right now because we all have those family members.

In these cases, it’s best to remember the 3 key points that make your experience different from theirs:

  1. Most kids go through phases. Autism is for life.
  2. Most kids do these things to varying degrees. Autism tends to be all or nothing.. to the extreme.
  3. Most kids do these things one or two at a time. Autism means that several or even all of these signs are present.

If you really want to throw it in their face, you can add a fourth point… that their children were just brats and yours has an actual disability. This often results in a discussion about how much medical experts know and don’t know vs now and then, how they just have to give everything a name these days and so on… so it may be best left out.

Chances are, if you’re like me, it will really bug you every time you hear “but a lot of kids do that” but you have to remember that they mean well. They’re either trying to relate what you’re saying to what they know or they’re just trying to show their support, in their own weird way. That they “understand” what you’re saying because they’ve seen it.

Then you can hand them the gluten free food and/or therapy bills and say “consider yourself lucky that not a lot of kids do that”.

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If you can’t say something nice…

By on October 13, 2011 in Autism

I know, my mom was the only mom to ever use that expression, right?  No?

I think it’s one of, if not the, first lesson most of us can remember having learned… because right around the time we start retaining memories for later is about the same time that we learn to just say what ever is on our mind.

Before kids learn to lie, they learn to be honest… brutally honest. If your ass looks fat in those jeans, your little one will tell you about it.

I bet my mom never imagined it would be like this

So now I’m a grown up, I have children of my own and I get to sling the old cliché’d lessons around too… but it’s not the same for me. As the parent of an autistic child, I have a better chance of teaching this lesson to my 3 year old than I do my 6 year old son with Autism.

Autism is classified as a social impairment and a lack of fundamental understandings in communication… more to the point, autistics have a hard time maintaining friendships, relationships and even simple conversations.

One of the reasons for this is that people in society aren’t very good at accepting brutal honesty. To most people, an insult is an insult… whether it’s true or not. If you call an ugly person ugly… you’re insulting them.

Why? Because of generations and generations of people saying “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Would we still take offense to brutal honesty if people didn’t say that? Probably. Still though, when you think about it… it’s actually rather silly.

Essentially people have become so insecure that hearing a negative, even when true, is an insult. And so we teach people not to say anything unless they have something nice to say.

Autism – “don’t say anything at all”

Now I’m presented with two problems that my own mother never had to deal with…

  1. People, especially children, with Autism are already less likely to say anything at all. Either from being non-verbal to begin with or being socially unable, either via anxiety or fear or what have you. So telling an autistic child not to say anything at all becomes very counter productive.
  2. People, again, especially children, with Autism are very much inclined to say what they believe to be true, whether nice or not. Lacking social aptitude as well as having a lack of understanding how and what other people think, they don’t tend to take into consideration how what they say will affect others.

So not only does this expression discourage my son from speaking but it also puts a very heavy weight on him as he will either never know, or never know with any certainty, if what he is about to say is something nice or not.

First, I encourage him to tell the truth and not lie… then I have to tell him not to tell the truth when it’s not nice. This is a lot for any child to deal with, so how well is it going to be taken by a child that is unable to comprehend what others may or may not be thinking.

What to do?

if you dont have anything nice to sayWell, I can’t really go around society convincing people to just be more secure with themselves and accept a little honest criticism sometimes… I’m pretty sure even I can’t live up to that expectation all the time…. although it is a nice thought.

Do I tell my son the same old cliché in hopes that he can figure it out and make the most of it? Do I hope that it doesn’t only complicate matters for him?

Ultimately, this comes down to the age old debate that sometimes still causes arguments among parents of autistic children… do I help my child to conform and be a part of society or do I allow him to be his own person, which in all likelihood will make him a better person but also cause a lot of problems for him down the road?

The problem is, there is no one right or wrong answer and certainly not an easy one.

The best that I can do, for me, I think, is to convey the message but abandon the cliché. It’s true, I need for him to understand when to speak up and when not to, to consider the thoughts and feelings of others but it’s also true that I can’t put the same kinds of expectations on him that my mother put on me.

In other words, I can’t just cliché him to death and expect him to get it.

In the television show Parenthood, Max (child with Autism) tells a former alcoholic that he shouldn’t go to a party because he’s an alcoholic… Max’s sister is quick to respond, as though Max shouldn’t be rude, but the former alcoholic says “it’s ok, he’s just looking out for me. I should be as honest with myself as he is.” and realizes that Max is right.

A part of me never wants to squash that in my son. There’s something there to be admired.

It’s a delicate balance I think… not an all or nothing system. Which just makes it all that much more difficult. I don’t want my son to never speak up for fear of not being nice but I also don’t want him unintentionally offending everyone he meets.

Unfortunately, you won’t get any solid answers from me on this one… this is a life long lesson that even the best of us sometimes still wrong.

Like many things, this is going to be a process… one that will hopefully help him to understand society and his place in it as well as to help me learn some new things along the way as well.

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