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Sunday, January 29, 2012

... of babies and monsters

What scares you? What do you love? Likes and dislikes are very personal things, and none more unique than those of people on the autism spectrum.

From the beginning, Adam loved monsters and skeletons and all things creepy ... Halloween was his "high holiday", and he learned to spell "skeleton" before he could spell "and" or "the". So we taught him everything from language arts to math and science using monsters and mayhem:

Sentence construction & comprehension - January 2000 - by Adam

Monsters were great! ... but babies? ... well, that was another story entirely. Adam found babies to be scary and unsettling - they would poke you in the eye, move your stuff, cry loudly - they were even more unpredictable in their actions than regular people (and that was saying something!).

Here is one of my all-time favourite stories drawn by Adam, answering the question "Which is more dangerous, a lion or a baby?"

I set up the situation by drawing the first square .... a baby encountering a sleeping lion:



... the baby takes action:



... the lion gets a rude awakening:




... look how scared the lion is, and how happy (and in control) the baby is:


... the baby has had his ride, and now he leaps off:


... love the theatrical flair as the baby casually lifts one leg and leans over towards the lion's tail:


... with one hand, that baby grabs the lion by the tail and swings it around his head:


... then sends the poor lion sailing off into the stratosphere:


.... babies are much more dangerous than lions!


And this is why I work in the field that I do ... I love the minds that see the world in such a different (but equally valid) way ... once you look through the eyes of autism, the world never looks quite so mundane and humdrum again.

And just in case you were wondering what might happen if a baby met an alligator .... here's one more picture for your education:


picture by Adam

... no contest!!!

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