I, suppose, no the only one area about Asperger’s syndrome, I think there again that we didn’t cover was you know people think that you can’t have a relationship with people with autism, a bond, but you can. And it is there and there is things that you notice when they are really little, like when Arthur was little it is only like when you get the diagnosis then you start to think back and you read about and you think, oh, oh yes I remember that. And that you wouldn’t take like, I can remember with Arthur, because he was always really difficult to take shopping I would like drop him off with my sister and then I would go shopping on a Saturday morning and then I would come back to fetch him and he wouldn’t ever come running up, hello, so nice to see you, you know, or missed you mummy or you know he would kind of stay back and I always used to think maybe he was cross with me because I had left him, but when I actually think back I think he actually wasn’t sure, because with Asperger’s syndrome and the autism sometimes they have difficulty recognizing peoples faces and I think he just had to watch to see that it was me, because slowly then he would come up and start talking to me.

And interacting, not necessarily talking, but you know. And that and I never knew that that was a problem, and it was only when he went to the mainstream school he… about six months after he had been there, we would see kids from his class out of school and he wouldn’t recognize them. They would say, “Hello Arthur.” And he would go, “Now how do they know me?” And I would say, “Well that is Chloe from your class.” “Oh.” You know and those sort of things people don’t always tell you that those are things that you know, that … yes, facial recognition I think is quite a thing. And you don’t realise that and so it is kind of hard to explain that with strangers, you know, that they don’t recognize you because you are not wearing the same clothes or you are not in the same environment and but because of that it doesn’t mean that the child doesn’t like you, or doesn’t you know, bond with you or can’t, you know.

I mean my daughter, Nita, will say to me, “How are you mum?” She won’t actually want to know really how I am and she is not particularly interested but she knows that is something that I like her to ask me. Or if I fall over and hurt myself or cut my finger, she will say, “Oh I am sorry, mum” because she has learnt that is the response. She doesn’t particularly feel it I don’t think. Or even particularly care if I have cut myself. But these are the cues that she has learnt to pick up from society. So she is really learning by some kind of observation not by osmosis, like we sort of pick it up as we go through our lives. They don’t do that. That bit of the brain that is to do with understanding those kind of things that go on in society is very faulty.

And she has become very adept but not adept enough to fool people for long. She says to me that when she is out in neurotypical or normal company, after about two hours, may be three hours, she has become utterly exhausted and all her ploys and tricks and schemes that she has worked out start to fall by the wayside, because she doesn’t have the energy.

Her brain, the intellectual part of her brain that makes these decisions is having to work so fast. Faster than you or I can ever understand. Here is a situation, I have twenty solutions, twenty things I could say, which one should I choose? And she is going through those twenty solutions, those twenty answers at the speed of lightning and picks one. If she is tired she may pick the wrong response and so that is when things start to fall apart and that is when people start to think, hang on, something is not quite right here. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I don’t know what it is but, I feel uncomfortable in this person’s presence. They are not like me. That is what others will say to her and then they back away and once they have backed away, they never return because people have made up their minds about her, which is why she leads a lonely life.

Barbara’ Things like that, like. Oh and I say to you, “I love you,” and he will say, “Yes, I love me too.”
Howard [laughs].
Barbara’ They say there are a lot of things that autistic people can’t, or can’t do, but they can learn it. Certain things that we can do you know, you know learn automatically, it comes to you automatically, it doesn’t with autistic children, but they can learn it because you have over learnt with a lot of things that you do. You know. He is marvellous. And as I say his sense of humour, well I don’t know where that comes from. I don’t know where that comes from. It is terrific.