Listen — I am in here!
Way long ago in another time, I was lost and adrift, though I wasn’t far from shore. I could see the shore, but nobody on shore could see me. One day I tried my best (again) to get someone’s attention and, wonder of wonders, someone noticed me. She wasn’t sure that I was there, but she thought that she saw somebody. While she was searching for me, people who had found others who were lost like me showed my parents a way to find me. My parents may never have listened except for she who had seen glimpses of me and had tried to show them where I was. They did listen, however, and consequently they searched for me as they were instructed to do. I was found.
Time has passed since then and my parents have helped rescue many others like me. One day everybody like me will hopefully also be found. Unfortunately, the way they can be found has been discredited, often by well meaning people. The time has come to set these people straight.
I will explain. I was lost on the autism spectrum, on the part of the spectrum where people either can’t talk at all or only utter meaningless things. It is also a place where people can’t control their actions in the way most people can. It is a place where no one seems to pay attention to the rest of the world. We seem to react slowly if at all to other people’s efforts to communicate with them. Self-abuse and tantrums quite often happen. It’s a place where intelligent behavior seems to be absent. Therefore, it’s a place where most people think intelligence itself is missing. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Facilitated Communication is just a long name for a low tech solution to the dilemma faced by people like me. Human touch on the hand frees us to be able to type our thoughts. It isn’t a perfect method, but it is all we have. I will post one fact about Facilitated communication (i.e. FC) each day.
Fact #1: Some of the FC users who were accused of being typed for by their facilitators (and thus not doing their own typing) during the early days of FC now type independently, without their facilitators touch.
March 18th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Ian, We are thrilled to have found your site! My son Jake and I have been reading your writings all morning and he has finally found someone who he can truly relate to. We too live in Indiana! Jake is in 2nd grade with all A’s and B’s so far. He has only been using FC for 10 months, but has done very well with it. He too had been placed in the “severe” special ed. room at school, and underestimated for quite sometime! His world is limitless now, and thanks to folks like you with positive attitudes, and sharing your insight, more people trapped inside will also be set free!
You are a talented writer, and we wish you the very best.
Karyn and Jake