Audra doesn’t like the terms “high functioning” or “low functioning” when it comes to autism. Her experience, and now mine, is that words like these do not paint the whole picture of that child (which is an awesome picture, as it is) and create a class stratification, usually from outside society, parents, friends, and family. Kids aren’t awesome kids but something to compare and rank against.

Nauseating.

She likes addressing the autism itself: how sensory seeking the kids are, how perseverative and repetitive their interests are, what and how their socialization is effected, what is their (current) range and level of communication. Also, what is their specialization of awesome, as they all awesome, and when I say “all” I clearly mean “all kids ever, even the bratty ones”.

I work with one little girl who could be called “low functioning”, if you are terrible. That she has, or is effected by, “severe autism” is better. Her speech therapist and the teacher I work with thinks she could learn Sign language. She is extremely stubborn little thing that walks with a swish.

The point of this story, as my lunch is about up, is how I got her to, voluntarily, make a fist. This is necessary pre-Sign skill.

I’d like thank Shawn Spencer and Burton ‘Gus’ “Ghee Buttersnaps” Guster for the invention of the fist bump.