Hi. Please hang on for a second…

“ Mother! He is drawing on my homework AGAIN!”

Sorry for the crappy introduction. Blame it on my brother or else I can do much better than that. Forget it. This is not the first time. Anyway, I am Carolyn Lee (what kind of name is that) and as for my brother, just call him L.

Sometimes, I wish I had a normal brother. You may ask what’s wrong with my brother. Well, he is autistic.

Q:What is Autism?

Ans: Autism is a biological and neurological disorder that typically appears during the first three years of life. It affects the functioning of the brain and is a life long disability in the central nervous system resulting in 'odd behaviors’, which effect communicational skills, includes exhibiting certain 'trait' behaviors and it affects social development. It is an interference with the normal development of the brain in areas that control verbal and non-verbal communication, social interaction and sensory development. This complex development disability is four times more common in boys than girls and occurs in 1 in 500 people (centers for Disease Control and Prevention 1997). Social, ethnic and racial factors have been shown not to contribute to the cause of this disorder. One thing that characterizes autism is it's early onset. Typical behaviors show up before the age of 36 months, but one of the problems is the symptoms are often somewhat masked during the first two years of life by developmental milestones. Autism is a spectral disorder that has a wide spectrum of severity, symptoms ranging from person to person. Autism is a brain disorder that prevents people from properly understanding what they see hear and sense.

Q: their characteristic behavior

Ans: Autistic children display unusual behavior. A typical autistic child's behavior is likely to include some of the following:

1)No speech

2)Non-speech vocalizations

3)Delayed development of speech

4)Echolalia: speech consisting of literally repeating something heard

5)Delayed echolalia: repeating something heard at an earlier time

6)Confusion between the pronouns "I" and "You"

7)Lack of interaction with other children

8)Lack of eye contact

9)Lack of response to people

10)Treating other people as if they were inanimate objects

11)When picked up, offering no "help" ("feels like lifting a sack of potatoes")

12)Preoccupation with hands

13)Flapping hands

14)Spinning

15)Balancing, e.g. standing on a fence

16)Walking on tiptoes

17)Extreme dislike of certain sounds

18)Extreme dislike of touching certain textures

19)Dislike of being touched

20)Either extremely passive behavior or extremely nervous, active behavior

21)Extreme dislike of certain foods

22)Behavior that is aggressive to others

23)Lack of interest in toys

24)Desire to follow set patterns of behavior/interaction

25)Desire to keep objects in a certain physical pattern

26)Repetitive behavior (preservation)

27)Self-injurious behavior

28)"Islets of competence", areas where the child has normal or even advanced competence. Typical examples:

-Calendar arithmetic

-Memory skills

-Perfect pitch

-Drawing skills

-Musical skills

-Arithmetic

Q: is there a cure for it?

Ans: there is no cure.

That’s enough FAQ for now. Back to my life, I am a chinese singaporean. Pardon me if I use singlish(what is singlish?check the wikipedia to find out). I have straight dark brown hair and dark brown eye colour. I like hamster, watching animes, reading books and manga and SLEEPING! I hate history ,maths and being interupted when I doing things that I enjoy or like.

“ Carolyn, wash the vegetable!” yelled my mother.

I groaned. See ,what did I tell you that I hate being interupted. Oh well, I guess I will had to continue this some other time…