My Nephew's Cinematic Experience

My mother took my nephew to see Madagascar yesterday. This is the kind of little experiences that show us how much he has improved. He was like a normal kid. He didn't mind the crowd on the ticket line, and sat through almost all the film. About five minutes before the end, he wanted to leave because something in the movie pissed him off, something that may anger intelligent (emotionally and smart) kids. You wouldn't normally expect an autistic to be bothered by it.

Spoiler warning for those of you who still intend to watch the movie:
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The lion gets hungry and bites his friend the zebra in the ass. This shocked my nephew. "He bit his friend?!?" He saw this as a grievous breach of trust. So he asked my mother to leave, and they did. But he sat there more than an hour before that. When he was younger, he could barely sit for five minutes. Besides, he gets along well with children. Sometimes he gets mad at the other kids for things most children don't get upset about, but that is getting rarer as time goes by.

He's such a genius. He saw a book, where a character inside it is reading the same book. He said, "and inside this book, there's book, and in that one another book, and in that one another..." What kid would think about that? He also decided he doesn't believe in evolution. "I don't think our great-great-great grandparents were apes. My great-great-great-great grandchildren might think I was an ape, and I'm not." What other 5-year old thinks about himself as being a father in the future, let alone a grandfather or great-great one. The examples of his immense intelligence are endless.

I really don't understand the "Autistic Pride" advocates who seek no cure for autism. My nephew, through the hard work of his family (including me) and professionals, is now more or less cured from the worst symptoms of autism. Would the "Priders" rather we didn't do all that hard work and that he'd still be unable to communicate and fear company? Maybe I misunderstand them and they don't see the ABA treatment my nephew received as a cure, and it seems acceptable to them. I don't know.

Tag: autism