non verbal

It was difficult to distinguish the autistic children I grew up with from the severely retarded - another example of a term that's been ruined. We're not supposed to use it at all anymore, but "developmentally disabled" or "cognitively impaired" is too vague to communicate what I want to communicate. I'm talking about severe retardation, and I don't know of another term that would suit my purposes here. 

It was impossible to have any kind of conversation with any of them. If they were verbal at all, they only used words as tools to express needing something and the like. Any effort to socialize would either be ignored entirely or met with some sort of shrieking tantrum, because you've invaded their boundaries. 

One of them I got to know a little better than the others, as his mother would babysit me sometimes. He was more laid back than most, hardly ever did any shrieking or throwing of food. He could talk, but he would only talk to himself, pacing back and forth muttering incomprehensibly. He had no interest in playing with me or really playing at all.

What's remarkable about autism is that it's not mental retardation in any sense, despite any similar outward manifestation. It can resemble it behaviorally, but the underlying reasons for the behavior are entirely different. It is more mysterious than a straight forward impairment of ability or capacity, but rather seems to be an impediment to their experience of the external world, including their own bodies.

They see, hear, feel, but how their mind interprets the data seems to be different. Muted, confusing, unreliable, it is difficult to say, given only the information they give us, but that is my interpretation of what was going on with these kids. 

To say they had difficulty socializing is misleading. They were trapped in their own minds, such that they didn't understand socializing. They'd ignore someone, not due to an attention deficit, but because they were barely aware of a person's existence, never mind why it matters. They don't experience other people, until people force their way into their awareness, which must be jarring. Lacking basic social experience, because of how they're cut off from it, they express their distress in more infantile or animalistic ways.

As they get older, they do gain that experience eventually. It may take a lot longer, simply because the information comes in at an erratic and confusing trickle. They learn to adapt, they learn to communicate, they learn why it matters. As adults they can seem more normal, but still distinctively autistic.

When I talk about them being non-verbal, it occurs to me how even this could be misunderstood. When I am depressed or anxious, I have trouble talking. I can't think of anything to say. I might refer to that as non-verbal. There is no comparison though. It's not a lesser degree of the same impairment. I might look at that symptom on a list of diagnostic criteria and think it resonates, if not for having known autistic people and what non-verbal means in that context.

I would say they clearly have a distinct disorder with no correlation to most people who are diagnosed as being somewhere else on the spectrum, but I'm neither authority nor consensus. Words and their meanings change whether I like it or not, but I can say that I think the concept of autism has been stretched to cover a range of different and unrelated disorders, such that it's become useless as a descriptor.

Autism is just a word. We can believe words mean one thing or another, but it's what they mean that matters. I've spent my whole life trying to figure out why I'm like this, but there are lots of reasons, lots of explanations and ways of diagnosing the problem. In the end, what matters are consequences. Whether we're too hard on ourselves or too forgiving, we have to face a world that doesn't give a shit one way or the other. We have to make the most of the reality of our lives, regardless. What we think only matters in so much as it effects what we do.