A note to teachers about kids with autism. My grandson is in seventh grade and they are studying slavery. Just like his mother, he sees images in his head and with the autism it is like whatever he hears about he thinks is happening now. He cannot quite process that this is something that happened before. So when he hears about the slaves, he pictures his grandmother, my wife, with whom he lives. He maintains in class but when he gets home, he “loses it”. It took us a while to figure this out.
Then in his karate class, two boys of Chinese descent were teasing my grandson about what Black people eat it turns out this is the time of year in all the schools when they deal with slavery and talk about the slaves’ diet, etc. and they know he is part Black b/c his grandmother comes to the dojo sometimes. (I thought about letting him read Shark’s Fin And Sechuan Pepper in which Fuchia Dunlop recounts her dietary adventures in China, but that would just be retaliatory and just as unfair I recommended a karate kick instead).
Anyway, my point is to be aware that kids process information in ways we often cannot predict.