This post inspired by movie ” I Used To Be Famous ” on Netflix. One of my favorite movies about autism. The review is still in my draft. Maybe i will post that soon. Yes … yes … i admit it is too late to post the review because the movie released maybe almost 3 years ago. But better late than never. Hehehe.
In that movie, a mother described as a very protective mother to her son that has autism. Thats what i feel about Jesper too. Sometimes impression that i got from him about his mom is a protective mother.
I have a daughter too. Teenager. I also have a super protective mother too. I am a neurotypical but i don’t know why she was very protective to me since i was born till about grade 7. So everywhere i went, she always sent her employee to go with me. Now also if her kids go somewhere that new, she will nonstop worried.
I guess i understand why the mother figure in that movie and Jesper’ mother for example, are very protective to their kids with autism. Actually their purpose is to protect their kids so people won’t hurt them. Usually related to bully.
But i can feel also that very protective treatment from mothers can brings uncomfortable feeling for the kids (the people with ASD or asperger) because it is usually still happening even until they are adult. Sometimes their mothers also try to get involved in their “things” for example about their love life. The mothers usually try to be more strict or controlling or wanna know about their kids’ relationships. Usually that will trigger friction between moms and kids.
I guess there are some ways that can be solutions to have a better condition :
Try to be open and honest to your mom about your feeling and what do you want. For example you want to be trusted or you want your mom to stop worrying about you or you wanna have relationship with someone but free from her control. You tell her and also listen about what she feels. Discussion with opened mind and patience.
Try to gain trust from your mother. So after you talk to her about what do you want and for example you get chance to do things your way without her being involved, make sure you keep the agreement you make with her and being responsible. With that way you can gain her trust. After you gain her trust, dont ever dare to break it. Moms are so hard to trust again when trust is broken. Especially to their beloved kids. Prove that you can be trusted.
Don’t stop communication. So keep your mom informed and updated about yourself and about trust she gives to you. So she doesnt wonder about things and she can be relax. Not easily to get worried and dont try to get involved again.
If those things above go well, i think the friction because of super protective behaviors from the mothers can be prevented. Your moms love you. It is just they need to prepare you for the real world. Not just keeping you in her protection all the time.
And for mothers, we need to listen about our kids especially the ones with autism. They can be strong and independent if we let them to be. We cant always beside them to protect them forever. Expose them to the world so they will have strength and chance to be participate in this world with all kind of people. So they can be independent.
Autism ( or specifically, asperger’s syndrome) is not that famous in Indonesia. I mean, it is not well-known here. I am sorry i need to say bluntly, even word “autism” widely used by people for joking. So when i heard word autism, i just knew about “ohhh that is special condition” period.
But life is a journey. Destiny brought me to meet one special friend. Call him O, i mention initial only because i haven’t asked his permission to mention about him here. He is a person with asperger’s syndrome. Since beginning he said it, i started to feel interested in asperger’s syndrome. But i didnt really find info about it. Until we became closer and i felt “wow this guy is different. He is quite difficult”. Because the way he acted and treated me were quite different from other friends i have. I felt hurted often. Felt difficult to understand him. But deep inside my heart, i believed he is a nice guy. And then i decided, i need to learn more about asperger’s syndrome. I need to find out why he treats me like that. I didn’t want to give up with this friendship. Beside that i really love challenge. I felt challenged by O and his characters. So i collected articles about asperger’s syndrome. Read and learned about it.
We talked a lot about it. He taught me about anything related to asperger’s syndrome. So many and maybe i cant explain it perfectly but he taught me so many important things that affected my life after knew it, in good way of course. What a precious life experience i learned from him. Life changing events. I feel grateful for that.
He showed me his good characters and traits that he has and mostly related to asperger’s syndrome. And i need to admit, i started to think, people with asperger’s syndrome are very nice, unique n interesting. I admire some of their traits.
Finally we reached next stage of friendship that was better than before. I was very happy, admired our friendship. We started to know each other better and less conflict.
More i learned about asperger’s syndrome and aspie people (people with asperger’s syndrome) , i could understand “ohhh being unique and different is sometimes not as easy as we can imagine” . I got conclusion, mostly people with aspie got bullied. I thought about it and felt sad. No. That happened because people dont understand enough about asperger’s syndrome. It is not fair. They face difficulties in life that they don’t deserve just because people don’t know much about them. So i told him about my idea. Let’s make a book about friendship between aspie people and neurotypical people. Make more people aware about asperger’s syndrome and accept the differences. Let’s tell readers and people about our experiences. And he agreed.
Unfortunately other destiny brought us into different way of life. So we walked into different path.
But sometimes it is life. You need to lose someone or something, in order to get more space for someone or something new in your life. Maybe something better or more suitable for you. And unexpectedly, i met Jesper after that.
I didn’t know that Jesper is an aspie, in the beginning, until i found it later. Ohhh my … ! I felt so happy. Yeay. I had thought maybe it is my destiny to have aspie people surround me again so i can learn more about asperger’s syndrome.
I remember O told me. An aspie is an aspie. So i wont find other aspie that same like him. Every aspie is unique. He is correct 100% and i finally proved it.
Jesper is having different characters with O. It means i need to learn again about him from zero. Ok. I love it. I love the process and the challenge. But because i have experiences from friendship with O before so it is bit more easy than i had with O.
O and i have very different characteristic but with Jesper , we share some similar interests. Walking, watching movies, travelling, old songs, and some other things. I told Jesper about the idea of making web or something similar like this. But Jesper didnt feel interested before. He said hey so many people already did that. But i told him about an aspie is an aspie. Plus we can make based on our experiences that i believe different with other people’ experience. And i told him about his dream become kindergarten teacher to help kids with asperger’s syndrome (autism). Until one day … he said yes. Hahahaha. I don’t know what made him finally changed his mind hahaha. But here we are. Yeay 🥳.
I feel grateful for Jesper’ presence in my life. So far we have beautiful friendship. Sometimes misunderstandings happened but i think we never fight. He is very patient friend. Always by my side in hard or happy time. He did many things to help me or simply, to make me happy. He has so many good characters, i.e honest, sincere, blunt and funny. I think i need to make new post, special, under topic Jesper in my eyes. Hahahaha.
Sometimes i had frustration time. When Jesper treated me differently from what i thought he would do, in some certain conditions. But it helped me to be patient and tried to understand him more. Many things in life that he haven’t experienced it. So i think it is normal that sometimes he doesnt know how to do. But he is very humble person that want to learn. So we learned about many things together and i think we are happy to explore and discover things in life. I can see clearly, he made so many progress in his life lately. I am proud of him.
One of plans for this web is we will share our friendship experiences between aspie and neurotypical. We hope to get more new friends. Both from aspie and neurotypical people. We will learn more with other aspie and neurotypical people. Maybe we can share our experiences too. Have discussion. Sounds nice. Hahaha. But no judgement. No negative vibes. We learn together here. We make mistakes here.
Suddenly i remember about Atypical series on netflix. About Sam and Paige. Thanks for Kay, a friend that told me about this series. I watched the series right before i met Jesper. This series quite helped me to learn about asperger’s syndrome or autism.
This is link for atypical series on netflix in case you are wondering or feel interested in.
I believe things that happens in Atypical series , most likely happens in an aspie’ life and their friendship or relationship with neurotypical people around them too. From what i heard, sometimes, aspie feel bit hard to understand about neurotypical, social interaction and social clue. O said because the aspie’ brain wired differently. So let this journey begin. I hope at least a little clue can be found here. For aspie n neurotypical. Let’s celebrate life and differences.
You but different 