Thursday, 19 November 2009

• Ahh, amusement! or The Rational Thought Process of Someone with Autism.

  So I had my nephew over this past Saturday to watch Titanic and pop bubble wrap. (The secret to keeping my autistic Nephew happy for three hours, I might add.) He has been seriously fixated on Titanic here lately and I have been promising that we would watch the movie as soon as I was moved into my new house.

  Now, since this was on VHS, and because he had watched it at my parents house a million times already, it needed to be rewinded. So he poped in the second tape, affectionetly called "Part 2", and hit rewind. When it got to the part where the ship breaks in half, he looks at me with the most serious look I have ever seen and tells me that if it keeps rewinding, he will save all of the people from drowning.

  It was so cute and I could not help but chuckle a little at the idea. But, he did make me wonder just how easy things would be to fix if we had a universal rewind button. :) This also made me begin to think about how he precieves the world. He knows that the Titanic was a real ship and that it really did sink, and he also knows that a rewind button is real and that it will rewind a tape, which is also a real thing. So this made me wonder, was he displaying a sense of humor or does he really believe that a rewind button could have helped save the people on the Titanic? 
  

  It is easy to see why he would think such a thing, and yet how does one explain to him that it is not possible. Especially when he rational mind says it is? It would stand to reason that if a rewind button can "save" the people on a tape from drowning, that it could also save real people from the same fate, right? How do you explain away something that seems so rational to someone who does not fully understand the concept behind pretend?

  I am curious, for those of you who have/know someone with ASD, how would you explain to them that such a thing could not happen?

   

   

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