September 2011 - Frozen Thoughts - My accomplishment -
What is not possible for love?
- Hema (11-year old)
Let me tell you about my classmate Ryan who has Aspergers syndrome. I met him in Primary-4 in the gifted stream. As fate would have it, I sat beside him for the first term. He was very irritable. Ryan had a perpetually runny nose and used tissues to blow his nose. However, the disgusting part was that he did not bother to throw away the dirty tissues and when anything was pointed out to him, he would throw a tantrum and become dangerous, trying to hit anyone in sight. I disliked Ryan. When he talked, saliva sprayed out. I always had to lend an ear to him not to make him angry. I used to complain to my parents everyday I was unable to listen to the lessons and I did badly in the first exams. There were a lot of complaints from the parents and after that in every exam. Ryan was made to sit in the school library to take his exams.
Soon many parents started a petition to get Ryan out of the class. My parents refused to sign the petition because my cousin has a similar disorder and wethought about how sad it would be for my aunt, if my cousin were forced to quit school. Once Ryan kicked a teacher during a meltdown and his mother had to sit in the class to keep an eye on him. During that time he kept very quiet and I got even angrier when I realised that he was scared of his mother and not the teacher. Since nobody wanted to sit beside him, the teacher made him sit separately and he had to find fault with that too.
Sometime in the middle of Primary-5 the change happened. I had a glance into Ryan's pencil case and bag. In every place, his mother had written, "You can do it Ryan. You are a nice boy. Keep quiet. Stay in your seat," and so on. It made me feel very guilty that I have been so heartless. I felt bad for his mother. From then on, I tried to really listen to him and realise that he is actually a normal boy inside. I also saw that some of the boys in my class were trying to provoke Ryan on purpose. I tried to tell them not to provoke him. Ryan is not the most polite person, but he seems to mean well. Once he saw that I was taking a long time to dig out my mathematics worksheet and he rudely said that my homework file was very messy. Though I felt very insulted, I changed my file to one with dividers and it has been very useful.
This year I have seen his drawing" of buses and found them very detailed.' ,Also he took my suggestions well and his anger management is very good. I told him once that his buses were very empty and that he should draw the driver and passengers. In a drawing that he was going to submit to the library, he drew the people as silhouette shapes. I thought it really looked professional and asked him to sign it. Taking the suggestion he did so and smiled. He was positively glowing with happiness.
I watched a video about Asperger's syndrome for a thinkquest project and I realised that Ryan's meltdowns were actually a defensive action. The class played a game called 'Angel and mortal' in which each of us has to pick a classmate's name at random from an envelope. That person will be the mortal. Unknown to the mortal the person who drew the name, that is, the Angel would have to send notes and little gifts to the mortal. Ryan was rather disappointed that his angel had given him nothing. Even though I was not his angel, I made a puzzle and put it in the mailbox to cheer him up. One day he told me that I was his best friend and I felt like I had won an award! As he had opened up to me, soon he opened up to the rest of the class. My achievement of these three years is that the person I had disliked had become the friend of the whole class.
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