It's very difficult to try and explain autism to someone who has never had to deal with a child who has it. They just don't understand. Every parent has different methods of disciplining their children and different parenting styles; they deal with their children the way they believe is proper parenting. But with children like my brother who suffer from autism, there is a right way and a wrong way to discipline or punish them. Children like my brother must be dealt with very differently then how a "normal" child would be dealt with.
My cousin didn't know how to deal with him. He was stemming, but in her mind he was annoying her (on purpose), and when he ignored her when she asked him to stop she got angry, and when she took it out on him he in turn hit her quite hard across the face. He does this a lot, the hitting. But not knowing she got even more angry and pinned him down to the ground making him feel scared giving him the impression she was going to choke him. He's 11, but mentally he's still 8 or 9.
She's 16 and in her family she deals with her brother in the same manor, who is only a year older then Ian, but both of them come from a father who believes in corporal punishment. So when her brother acts up it's normal for forced restraint to be used on him and her brother growing up with that form of punishment has learned to just accept it. Unfortunately when that method became a normal reaction for her dealing with Ian hitting her, she did the only thing she knew.
Of corse what could have been dealt with in a quiet and calm manor got blown out of proportion and became a big issue that every one in the household in some form or another got involved with. The stress just added more anxiety and Ian locked him self up in the bathroom. After I had a talk with both of them we did manage to get things smoothed out, Ian apologized to his cousin for hitting her and she apologized for pinning him.
But what upsets me the most isn't that Ian was pinned down by his cousin but what she said when we were trying to explain his autism to her. She just didn't understand and she said she didn't want to understand because she "doesn't like being around him".
It hurt my feelings, this is my baby brother who I have more or less raised as a child of my own, but also because I know it would hurt his feelings even more if he had heard her say that. He has to live with autism his entire life, he is going to come across many obstacles in his life, but what's going to be the most difficult for Ian is having to live knowing that there are going to be people who are going to dislike him based off of his autism; that there are going to be people out there who won't understand and won't want to understand because it makes them feel "uncomfortable".
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