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Old 06-19-2019, 02:03 PM
 
17,183 posts, read 22,755,318 times
Reputation: 17472

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Please Share the following poem and song to those who would like them. It was written by Valerie Foley, an Australian who was in our online autism group and has an autistic son.

Imagine If a poem by Valerie Foley

Imagine if…
You had a bee buzzing around your head
And someone asked you to say the alphabet backwards

Imagine if…
You were in a moving car with all the windows down
And someone wanted to know the names of all your aunts and uncles

Imagine if…
You were wearing three pairs of gloves
And someone told you to eat a box of sultanas one by one

That’s what things are like for me, a lot of the time.
I’m autistic.

Your brain is like a computer motherboard, full of connections and wires
With messages to your body whizzing around telling you what to do
My brain looks the same as yours, except some connections work really well, and some work really differently.
And my brain wires can get crossed really easily.

So, if you think I’m ignoring you… I’m not.
I’m probably just focussed on something else, like a tiny spider on the ceiling on the other side of the room.

And if I’m doing something a bit funny looking… try not to laugh at me.
It’s just one of my brain connections clearing itself out.

And if I tell you something over and over… just ask me to stop repeating.
It’s just one of my wires plugged into the wrong socket.

Autism is a different way of seeing the world.
And seeing things the way I see them is awesome, but it can get really tiring.

So, I might not always understand what’s going on.
And, I might need time by myself to think things through.
Or, I might crash or jump or swing for a while to straighten myself out
Don’t worry if I don’t always do things the way you do.
Try to imagine what it’s like inside my head, then you’ll see…

I’m not being rude
I’m not being naughty
I’m not sick
I’m autistic
And I’m just being me.
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Old 06-19-2019, 02:45 PM
 
Location: colorado springs, CO
9,512 posts, read 6,014,765 times
Reputation: 28830
Thank you for that & she hit the nail on the head!

The regression in Autism starts when the Microglia cells stop maintaining the synaptic connections. Synapses are learning based & during early development must constantly be ‘pruned’ away to make room for the new, more advanced learning synapses.

In Autism, an atypical immune response turns the Microglia ‘off’ & the synapses continue to grow & tangle. If the brain grows as a garden, then the Autistic brain must resemble Sleeping Beauty’s castle; locked inside a tangled growth of briar thorns.

By the time an autistic child is about 5 years old, their brain will have an increased volume of up to 10% due to the unpruned synapses. It probably hurts & many of them can’t even say “I hurt”. Imagine if you had 100 times the ‘wiring’ with which to process the sights, sounds & smells of a grocery store & some were faulty & immature & others were more streamlined & advanced.

I might scream until somebody got me out of there, too.
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