My Perfectionist Autism Angel

My autistic son Ferdous Mahi is a perfectionist autism angel. Most of the autistic individuals are like the angels, free from any sin. They are so innocent that they are never dishonest, cheater, selfish, mean, immoral, greedy, jealous, and critical like us. They do not know how to commit a crime, offense, fraudulent or cheat and deceive others which are done by us regularly.  So, I call them as perfectionist autism angel.

Generally, every autism angel possesses an extraordinary intellect or potentialities in a particular sector. If we can identify it and train them properly, they can perform like a genius in that particular field. Since their minds do not deviate otherwise like ours, they can learn many things up to the highest level of perfection if they are motivated and concentrated on learning it.

My autism angel is a less-verbal boy with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) along with Attention Deficiency Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He can only tell one or two words at a time but cannot frame a meaningful sentence. He started to talk one or two words at the age of six years and till today he is limited to it.

At his early age, he was very hyperactive, which was the main challenge of his all learning. However, we have tried to teach him many things required in his day to day life and succeed in a few. If he is motivated to learn anything he learns it nicely and can deliver it perfectly.

In this article, I would like to discuss some the potentialities of my autism angel and his outstanding intellect in some of his liking fields.

Basic Needs of an Autism Angel

My 21 years autistic son is really an angel. He is not liar, greedy, selfish or cheater; he does not know how to quarrel with others or how to commit a crime. So he does not have any sin in his life. The Almighty has brought a balance in this heterogeneous society through these angels.

Maslow's Hierarchy of NeedsMy autism angel does not understand the necessity of anything in his life other than some of his basic needs. He can perform most of his day to day works by himself. Some of those we taught him and some he learned by himself.

As per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, an individual always feels the requirement of different kinds of needs like physiological (basic) need, safety need, social need, esteem need and self-actualization need at the different stages of his life.

The physiological needs are the requirement of breathing air, food, water, clothing, sleep, sex, homeostasis, and excretions. Most of the autism angels require only the metabolic needs like air, food, water and some other needs like clothing, sleep, and excretions for their livelihood.

Other needs of an Autism Angel

My autistic son Mahi does not have any needs other than his physiological or basic needs. Even, he does not demand all the physiological needs of a human life. He only wants air for breathe, food for hunger, water for thrust, sleep for rest and the natural excretions.

He does not have any knowledge about the requirement of sex in an individual’s life though he is 21 years old physically sound boy. He remains far away from the other levels of needs of a human being in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

His demand is only to have some food may not be rich food. If he gets rich food, certainly he enjoys it. He does not understand the value of money in the life. He understands the money as a paper to get his snacks from his school canteen only; nothing more than that.

So what is the demand of the autistic individuals to the society; nothing but food, water, clothes, and shelter? Such helpless individuals they are. That is why all the autistic individuals are the heavenly angels and my Mahi is one of them.

My autism angel’s daily routine

Autism Angel when StudentGenerally, the autistic individuals remain rigid on their daily routine without being deviated. My

autism angel is not an exception to it. He has a common r outine in his life and he never likes to go beyond his routine.

In the morning he gets up from the bed, goes to the toilet for freshening up, and then prepare himself for going to the school. His mother assists him for preparing and going to school. He can dress up himself except tying the shoe laces. He remains in the school for about 5 hours. Then he comes back, takes bath and goes for lunch.

In the dining table, he generally wants very simple food. He has a routine menu for breakfast and snacks every day. Though he cannot identify different days of a week. But if there is any deviation of the menu from the routine, he can understand it and becomes stimulated.

His mother understands his liking. Many times he takes the foods that are presented on the table. But occasionally he demands his chosen food. He does not like home-made bread, rather he prefers rice.

Demand of my Autism angel to others

He does not have any demand to anybody. If anybody wants to present him something and ask him what he wants. His demand is maximum a packet of chips or a chocolate (he is 21 years boy!!!).

Mahi’s elder sister is staying in China and she is due for coming to Bangladesh in the next month.Brother & Sister S he asked Mahi what she would bring to him from China. Do you know what his answer was? He told her to bring a ‘Samsung Games CD’ from China which is available in Bangladesh by $0.50 only. Now surely you can understand his demand to his nearest person.

My autism angel has only one friend in the world that is his only sister. He shares many things (as much as he can being a less-verbal boy) with his sister. She wants to bring anything and everything for her beloved brother only if he asks it.

He never asks or demands anything during the different annual festivals. But he becomes happy if something new is presented to him.

Why the Autism Angel is Perfectionist

Mahi at ComputerMy autism angel possesses lots of potentialities like other typical autism angels. Regarding precision at the work, I want to explain something about him. Whatever he does he always tries to do it perfect and flawless without any mistake. As you know, many people including me cannot type Bengali letters. But the expertise of my autism angel in typing can be graded higher. He can type both Bengali and English using even an English keyboard without any mistake. I think he can type Bengali better than English and you will not get any mistake in his typing.

He is very good in handling computer and he learned it in his own initiative and with the assistance of his school teacher. His interest in the computer is such that he always plays with the computer whenever he is inside the home. He can efficiently locate everything in the different drives of the computer. He can also play the video games very efficiently.

Mahi in Computer WorkHe can do drawing on the computer by the Paint (a graphic app) very nicely. Here you can see his work (left side photograph) in the Paint. Now, if he observes somebody is doing some jobs on the computer he can learn it on his own. In this way, he has learned few tasks in Adobe Photoshop. But problem is that he does follow any body’s command or request; he does those only if he wishes to do.

He does not know how to see the time in the watch. But he knows the proper timing of his chosen Hindi TV serial. He will be present in front of the TV just at the time of his chosen programs or drama serial (only Hindi), takes the remote control in his hand and selects the channel as per his liking. It is very difficult to say, how he understands the timings of those programs.

As we already know that my autism angel Mahi is very good in art. But we cannot imagine how perfect he is in his drawing. Everybody knows that while a child is coloring an art, the colors spread on different places of the paper, especially if he is an autistic child. But when my Mahi is coloring any art, the color never goes beyond the designated area. He does it so perfectly that people become astonished. Let us witness a video of that nature.

Conclusion

My autism angel Mahi, is lacking in many fields and cannot do many jobs which are supposed to be done by a boy of his age. At the same time, he has got lots of potentialities and some excellent traits to perform some jobs perfectly. Even a normal boy of his age can not perform those jobs like him. As such he is my perfectionist autism angel.

To conclude, I want to say the autism angels are not a liar, dishonest, or selfish like many normal people of the society. They are by heart honest and perfectionist like angels.  So, if we can identify and utilize their potentialities, they can be turned into assets of a country.

The perfectionist autism angels can turn the world into a real heaven. For that matter, we need a combined effort. I want to call upon all the parents of our autism angels to come forward and extract the best potentialities of the autistic children and transform those into their strength. Then the society can certainly be benefitted out of them as they are by born honest and sincere, and remain such throughout their life.