I work with severely disabled children, most with mental retardation and another issue (autism, cerebral palsy, seizure disorders, other syndromes/disorders). Even with the help they get, what the parents deal with is staggering. Imagine a kid with such severe autism they have never reacted to their own name, a kid whose walking is so unstable they wear a helmet, a deaf child who will hit you and pull down his pants in public, a girl who will bite you when you say it’s time to go to the bathroom, or a 16 year old who will scream in the mall that you are abusing her.
I am being evaluated for Asperger’s myself soon and my parents have always treated me different from my siblings. I can’t stand to be touched most of the time, I get so oversensitive to sounds I want to tear out my cochleas (organ of hearing), and I get extremely anxious at changes as small as not being able to sit in the same chair everyday at my college’s library, I’m extremely oversensitive and can cry at the drop of a hat, I have always been a very difficult child always needing things to be exact (if you said we’re leaving at 6, I would freak out if we left at 5:58 or 6:01). Really I don’t know how my even mild symptoms wouldn’t drive a person crazy.