Plus, Sheldon Cooper reminds me of many of the kids I work with and have worked with. Obviously, none of them were "rocket scientists" like Sheldon's sister called him. It's his personality and affects which make him (amazingly) the most real of the characters to me.
I bring this up, because I had a real life Sheldon experience today. It's hilarious on the show, but sad in real life. I really feel for the parents of this one student I teach.
Long story short, he doesn't like his name. He doesn't like it AT ALL. He will go on at length about how his parents are stupid, he hates them, and they need to change his name, because they're bad parents. Instead, he goes by his nickname which he refuses to admit is related in any way at all to his legal name. Once, I logged on to the computer, and showed him on wikipedia that his name ______ was a nickname for ________. His response? "That's a lie. I don't believe it. Anyone could have put that on there." I looked up another 'more legit' website. Same response. It's like talking to a brick wall. I then told him that I knew people who had the same name as him who also went by the same nickname. More lies.
Otherwise, this is a bright student so it makes the rigidity more frustrating when you can believe you can reason past it.
Student: "I hate my parents. They're stupid and I'm going to murder them some day if they don't change my name."
Me: "You realize, they're the ones who first call you [nickname], the name you really like, right?"
Pause.
Student: "I hate my parents. They're horrible and the worst parents ever. Other kids all have better parents than me. I wish they would die."
At this point, I'm looking up and down at the kid for bruises, because his parents must be saints to not want to smack some sense into him. I really feel sorry for them that their child would take such a dim view of them because he's not overly fond of his name (which I might add is a completely normal name and not some off-the-wall-hippie or sadistic name like Unicorn or Sue).
This whole situation began in my study hall class. I noticed the student was typing on email when he was supposed to be working. I told him to do some school work, he complied, and then I did a loop around to make sure he didn't hop back on email the moment my back was turned.
He was back on email.
This time, I made a point of correcting him. While I started to talk, I also looked at what he was trying to write. "Mom, you need to change my name. Because of you I will never be able to get a job." Curiosity strikes and I ask the student why he would write that.
Student: "In career class today we had to fill out a job application that wanted our full legal name. I will never right that on one of those ever. It's wrong. I hate my parents and they need to change my name."*
What followed was a lunch bell, the other kids leaving, and me spending 10 fruitless minutes trying to reason with the student. "You're wearing nice clothes, you don't look like you've ever been homeless and you have food to eat. You also talk about your computer at home, so I'd say your parents aren't doing so bad."
Student: "All parents do that. Everyone else's parents are better than mine. Mine are so stupid. They think they're so smart. I hate them. I hate my name. They should change it."
I talked about my parents doing foster care and the life many of those kids faced.
Nothing.
I talked about my own experiences with the homeless.
Nothing.
Normally, I like to get a student to talk so that they can start making their own connections. I ask questions and try to get them to think about new things. Every time I tried that with this student, his response usually involved the words 'stupid,' 'hate,' and sometimes 'kill.' I ran into this before Christmas as well when all of the students were supposed to write a card to their parents and I took exception to statements like "Thanks for staying out of my life as much as you can" and "you need to change my name."
This story could go on and on, but I don't want to write a novel tonight. One of the hardest things about the spectrum is that individuals with autism can be rational about so many things that when you come across something they're rigid on....well, there's always that hope that just maybe they'll be able to change their view. I'm not going to say that there is no hope, but I feel like I've had many moments where it felt like a breakthrough was imminent only to realize that no ground had been gained at all. I really hope that this student can eventually move past this obsession with his name or get his name changed so no one has to hear about it. One of my coworkers mentioned that it would be nice if there was a program that "dropped some of these kids in rural Africa for a couple of weeks so they could see how good they've really got it."
Anyway, I pray that this student's parents survive him. I emailed the counselor to check up on him later on the day, but she'd already been warned he was on the warpath by an earlier teacher.
*(Yes, he really does say all of that repeatedly. I'm actually fairly certain I'm quoting him exactly because of all the repetition.)
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