I had told you all that I would keep you updated about the process that
Sean moves through as Rocky enters his last days.  So I thought a good
place to begin would be the very first time he experienced death at all.
 
I have no idea how the autistic child visualizes or understands death.
And I can't get inside of Seans head to even tell you how he has viewed
it growing up.  But I can tell you what I did see with Sean from a
mothers point of view.
 
Sean did not realize when he was a tot that when something stopped moving
and sleeping forever that it was "dead" like other children.  He was
violent and hurt living things.  He not only didn't realize what "dead"
was, but he lacked the ability to empathize.  Later on he changed in very
strange ways.  He was still awful with people and some animals.  But not
with insects.  So he knew something was up.
 
In fact, when I think about it, perhaps he feared what he could not
understand back then.  He knew that if you crushed something it wasn't
"good anymore".  This was obvious when he was as young as a preschooler
and he would throw temper tantrums of we swatted flies.  It actually
became an ongoing joke with our friends.  Our home was FULL of flies.
Awful.  As Sean grew to five years old, he cried when ants were crushed.
We'd find him sitting among ants with them crawling all over him as he
grinned.  Autistics don't feel pain the exact same way as we do.  Some
hardly "feel" it at all.  Some can't express it.  Sean even liked sitting
in red ants.  Yet he went out of his way to smack babies, crush plants,
and he was incredibly callous towards large animals and people.
 
Sean never used the word dead by the time we had ferrets.  Ever.  He
never acknowledged the word, or what we meant by it.  Did he know what
it meant?  I don't know.  But her sure never gave any indication that he
did.  This is something taken for granted with children.  It's natural
for them to pick up, spec by spec, things such as death.  They notice
as a toddler that if they crush a grasshopper it stops moving and its
insides come out.  And they notice when things sleep forever or a
carcass decays.  By the time they can adequately speak, the fully begin
to grasp the concept.  All without us going into detailed and technical
explanation.  Autistics are different.  And I'll give you a less
complicated example.  Nobody, ever has to explain to a child what simple
things are such as the word "hallway".  They learn it themselves by
listening to people.  They don't have to go through great lengths to
teach the child that a classroom chair and a picture of a chair are the
same thing.  Sometimes the severe never get this.  Things that are not
concrete or tangible (or in present time) are difficult for them to
understand while they are developing.  And ... the severe never get it.
Death is both tangible and intangible.
 
Wolfy
http://wolfysluv.jacksnet.com
[Posted in FML issue 4870]