Father says son’s autism helped save his life
by Beth
The tendency to always see a disability as a negative can really get to me sometimes. “Wow, you’re blind. It must be hard to get around!” Instead of, “Wow, you’re blind. You must be good with directions!”
Ask about a kid with autism, and you’ll hear, “He has such weird behaviors — he does the same thing over and over and over again.” Instead of, “that kid really has perseverance!”
So it was nice to read a CNN story emphasizing a benefit of autism for a change. The story is about Walter and Christopher Marino, a father and son who were swept into the Atlantic Ocean.
Despite the danger, Christopher, who has autism, was enjoying himself, his father said. The boy lacks a fear of death because of his autism and finds comfort in the water, Marino told CNN.
Marino finds comfort in his son. Their unique circumstances helped keep them alive for more than 12 hours in the open ocean, Marino said.
“With many kids with autism, the thing that is so dangerous is that they have no concept of fear or fear of death,” Marino said. “In this case, though, it perhaps saved him — that and the fact that water is one of his favorite things. Whenever he goes missing or tries to run away, we can always find him near water … even at the mall if it is just near a fountain.”
The CNN story was part of their Incredible stories of survival series — the series tries to answer the question of why some people survive disasters while most others die. You can read the whole story and see pictures on the CNN site — the rescue is pretty amazing.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:04 am
“Ask about a kid with autism, and you’ll hear, “He has such weird behaviors — he does the same thing over and over and over again.” Instead of, “that kid really has perseverance!””
When I first heard the word “perseveration” in relation to my son, I thought they were saying perseverance. (In fact, the spell checker doesn’t even recognize the word as I post. It thinks it’s perseverance.) Your first quote above, about doing something over and over is a common definition of perseveration, BTW.
It’s funny, when you stick to something that society sees as a worthy goal, it’s called perseverance, a good thing. When you stick to something that you think is a worthy goal, but society doesn’t, it’s perseveration, a bad thing.