I entered the classroom in the first days of the school year and waited for my child when everyone got ready to go home. When he was asked to get ready he got up from his chair and stared at the floor. He tried to come to me but the teacher asked him to finish getting organized. I looked at him and encouraged him to do what he was asked, but he looked back and forth between the teacher and me and remained standing. The teacher started talking him through the tasks, repeated each action separately again and again until he succeeded in completing it and then moved to the next one. I waited for several minutes until he collected his stuff into the bag, put up the chair as the teacher asked and returned some papers on which he worked to his drawer. I looked at him and realized that at this stage there is no way that he could perform all actions in a sequence.
My son, like many other children and adults on the autistic spectrum, can tell details but struggles with composing the whole picture. He would be able to say in the morning as soon as the morning call is over whether the tune was changed. He would be able to say that the regular guard is not there and that this is the free day of the vice principal. Each tiny detail is photographed and etched in his memory and he should be prepared in advance of any expected change in any detail. He has difficulty in performing several actions in a sequence.
This is still the beginning of the year and he has a very hard time. The class is the same, the group of kids did not change, the “sponsoring” class was not changed and only some of the staff was replaced. I wondered why is he having such a hard time?
During my wait I looked at the class: same tables, same students (except for one new girl who joined just now). The class is decorated, full of signs with symbols and words describing the Tishrei Holidays. I looked at the different corners and the way the closet drawers are divided according to subjects and students. Everything looked the same as last year. I still could not identify the small changes, because in contrast to him, I see the whole picture. But after a thorough look I realized that it might be the type of characters that was different, the different ornaments chosen by the new teacher, the location of the personal drawers that was changed, the place in which the daily schedule was placed and the different colors used. All of these were hard for him to contain because the details are different.
We have a tendency to ignore the small details, but he simply cannot.
