What was my experience with school like with autism? Read on to find out what my experience with school looked like, and how I journeyed through it.
What my experience of school was like for me
My education years began with kindergarten at age 5. Typically, most children in Australia begin kindergarten at four, however due to my extreme prematurity and diagnosis of severe autism, I commenced a year later.
At 4 years of age, I was still nonverbal, although I could understand most things spoken to me. Also I only began learning to walk at 4 years of age. I have little memory of kindergarten, except that I did not like the experience, and in my opinion I benefited very little from it. Socially, I made no friendships.
The department of education employed a disability teacher to support me for most of the kindergarten session, although my Mum thought she was very good, I did not find it helpful because the environment was too loud and busy causing overwhelm.
At this age, I was toilet-timed, wearing pull-up pants, but was not fully toilet trained as I was not aware of my body signals, and I was very frightened of the hand dryer noise being emitted in the bathroom. This caused me to have a meltdown.
When it was sitting on the mat on the floor, or story time, I did not like having stories read to me, because I wanted to do my own thing that I found interesting. I didn’t like being that close to people. The teacher gave me a special metallic silver circle placed on the mat for me to sit on, to designate my spot. They also tried to sit me on a little chair in the group so that I was sitting higher than the other children. This was done to make it easier for me, it did not.
Kindergarten had shared fruit time with the other children every session, but I did not eat fruit and preferred pureed foods, I did not enjoy eating anyway and never showed signs of hunger or asked for food. There were approximately 15 children per session, which for me was too many. One thing that I did like was water-play outside on a special water-play table. Pouring water seemed to fascinate me with the water specularity and refraction it made to the image. Also, I didn’t have very good hand dexterity and fine motor skills so, play and holding paint brushes were difficult. I also had tactile hypersensitivity with everything.
My thoughts of school back then
I did not enjoy kindergarten, I would rather have stayed home with my Mum. In hindsight from my perspective, it would have been a lot better to be taught by my Mum, because I didn’t have enough ability or coping skills to attend a kindergarten school.
Princess Lilli Lilac
Introducing Princess Lilli Lilac!
Lilli is my therapy cat, and she is a purebred lilac bicolour Ragdoll cat. She is also 9 years old.
We have been inseparable since her arrival in my life as an 8 week old kitten and she assists greatly with my autism, helping me to stay calm. Lilli is very precious to me. 💜
School Books Animation
Enjoy a short video clip (formerly a GiF) of three schoolbooks made in the 3D modelling software Blender 2.79: