A Reluctant Tourist in the Land of Laughter

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know that our 16 year old daughter was diagnosed last year with High Functioning Autism. To recap, the classic 'Triad of Impairments' of Autism/Asperger's Syndrome are,

• Difficulty with social communication
• Difficulty with social interaction
• Difficulty with social imagination

It's still so very hard for us to understand and relate to this condition even though we've had the dx for 18 months and I've done so much research into it. Her difficulties are not with language itself, her reading and writing abilities (including spelling and comprehension scores) are quite good, its the SOCIAL context of language which is so disabling for her.

One of the books I read recently gave the following eg.

A person with autism was disturbed by a sign next to an escalator which read, 'Dogs must be carried on this escalator'. He asked the store manager what he was supposed to do as he did not have a dog with him. We can see from this eg that persons with ASD are prone to use language in a literal way. They lack subtlety, are unable to draw on experience, unable or unwilling to break social rules *once they understand them* and find it immensely difficult to use the social context clues which would make the language so much easier for the rest of us.

This was certainly Grace as she grew up. Because she had mastered literal language quite early and efficiently, we were perplexed by her lack of social imagination, fear of social interaction, particularly talking to strangers. And the thing that really flagged up our concerns was that she just didn't get our sense of humour.

Now, one of the reasons Jamie and I are still together in an intact marriage (other than by the Grace of God), despite many tough times, is that we share a strong sense of humour. We love the ridiculous, we see the absurd in everyday situations, we are prone to laugh hysterically at precisely the same moment because we've both identified the same source of humour in a situation. And we think we're pretty funny people. {g} When we have friends over to our house, for any reason, we do tend to laugh together a lot. I enjoy making people laugh.

But we had a daughter who didn't understand us. Clearly, we needed to TEACH humour to Grace. So, every day, we'd bring a new joke to the dinner table. We'd tell it, laugh, she'd remain impassive, struggling to think it through. We'd explain the dynamics of the joke, why and how it works, she'd try it out, it would go wrong because she'd miss some crucial element that makes the joke work. But she'd press on, analysing it further, with exclamations of 'Oh, I SEE! It's because you wouldn't expect a policeman to say that!' or 'Ah, that's because that word has two different meanings!" She'd then proceed to deconstruct the joke until our eyes would glaze over.

Then she'd laugh. Partly because she could now find it funny, partly because she was proud of her ability to understand what was (to her) something so monumentally complicated as a joke and partly out of relief at being able to share in her family's delight.

Thus we taught Humour 101 in our home.

Sometimes, though, Grace would get it seriously wrong and she'd assume humour where there was none. She'd laugh inappropriately and then be devastated to learn that we'd been serious. It was an emotional minefield. She'd cry or explode with fury at her own misunderstandings or at us for 'trying' to confuse her. So, we agreed on a code. When we were using irony or exaggeration or some other trick of humour in our conversations, we'd make 'bunny ears' on our heads with our fingers. This would alert Grace to the fact that some humour was going on and that she did not need to take it seriously. It save us from having to interrupt our conversation with asides to Grace of 'not really' etc.

That worked for a while but soon she believed that she was too grown up to have us employ the bunny ears and that she now understood ALL the subtleties of language and ALL jokes and humour and no longer needed explanations of how her literalism was affecting her understanding. She abruptly stopped bombarding us with questions during movies. ('Why does his face look like that?', ' Why did she say that when she really loves him?', 'Did he really mean that?') She accused us of thinking of her as a 'baby' who couldn't understand when we offered explanations.

But this new found linguistic independence was only partly justified. She believed that she no longer needed an interpreter in the Land of Laughter, but she was still so confused. You could see it in her face as she struggled to understand the communication of her peers. Their use of humour was complicated by their shared experiences which excluded her, and their use of a transient, particular, form of slang.

Her lack of an interpreter and her inbuilt communication deficits worked to attack her relationships and confidence and about a year ago she hit an all-time low. She stopped going to the church youth group. It was just too hard for her to keep up. She sought the company of much younger children. She at least understood their jokes. They were more direct and less subtle in their use of language and therefore more predictable and comprehensible.

Grace still loves to watch tv shows like Basil Brush, with its heavy-handed puns and it's predictable slapstick comedy. She laughs and laughs. Jack grew out of this kind of comedy years ago, but Grace still clings to it. But what amazes me though, is that she is still learning and growing. She is becoming quite self-confident again. She will now sometimes even crack a joke of her own, she will spontaneously laugh in the right places during adult conversations and most incredibly of all, she will sometimes refer to her ASD differences in a humorous way. She has returned to the youth group and it's getting easier and easier for her.

Grace has travelled so far as a reluctant tourist. She needs to go a long way further. She's picking up the language and although she'll never speak it like a native, but I'm so proud of her journey.