Interaction with People and Adolescence
Friends and Family
Samuel said that when he messages his friends from school, they don’t usually text him back or talk to him. However, he said that he has other friends outside of school who he sometimes talks to.
Boaz jumped in saying that Samuel does keep in regular touch with her brother’s daughters.
“They wave at me,” Samuel said. And when his cousins wave at him over Facebook messenger, he waves back and finds out everything going on in their lives.
“When they have holidays, when it reopens, when they'll be at home, when they won't…,” Samuel listed out.
Having a younger sibling has also helped Samuel a lot, according to Boaz.
“Zubin's been a very very supportive younger brother,” Boaz said. “And Mihir has also been a very very protective older brother. So that bond they have has really helped them both.”
Boaz also said that when she or Zubin are around, he likes to rely on them to communicate and speak on his behalf.
“I’ll enjoy,” Samuel chimed in.
Samuel likes to stay in the background and let his mother and brother speak for him when they’re around, according to Boaz, but he said he’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself on his own too.
“Yeah, exactly, but you're just lazy,” Boaz told Samuel. “You don't want to do it when we are there.”
Mihir and Zubin on Mihir's 18th birthday
“I'm not lazy,” Samuel argued back in typical childlike fashion. “You know I'm not lazy.”
Samuel also had a wonderful grandfather who never treated him differently, Boaz said.
Boaz’s father took Samuel on buses, trains, even boats in Besant Nagar without telling her, she said.
“So I think when you realize,” Boaz said, “at one point it hits you, that there's no need to hide it, there's no need to feel ashamed - cause everyone kind of slightly feels ashamed that my child is like this.”
The Adolescent Experience
Most children with autism have mental health problems around 15 to 18 years old, according to Sriram.
“They would get depressed, they would get into schizophrenic mode,” she said. “That's because of the chemical imbalance which is happening in the brain during the adolescent phase. And already the brain is affected because of autism.”
Sriram also said that behaviors that are normal for children with autism reach their peak during the adolescent phase. She’s noticed that parents of children with autism come to her when the child is around 18 years old saying that the child has suddenly become more violent. It could also manifest in another way.
“Some parent will say, 'My son doesn't talk with anybody, he's gone secluded. He giggling, he's laughing to himself, he's talking to himself’ - which is there for autism, but at this phase it goes into the peak,” she explained.
Like any adolescent, these children also have to deal with hormones and feelings for the opposite sex. But Sriram said they don’t know how to deal with these hormones and feelings, leading them to develop learned helplessness. This learned helplessness leads to frustration, which can lead to violent outbursts or withdrawing themselves, or develop into behaviors that are destructive to themselves.
However, the opposite can also happen. Sriram said some differently abled children may develop an attitude where they try to manipulate people with their disorder.
“It all depends on the environment which they're grown in and the kind of response they have got from parents and teachers when they are just beginning to understand 'Can I use this disability as a strength? Or can I use this this ability to manipulate people?’” Sriram said.