Reader Wisdom: What a boy with Asperger’s taught me about friendship and being different

Carol, a retired paraeducator shares the lessons she learned about Asperger’s, friendship and being different.

In response to a prior blog post from a young woman with Asperger’s Syndrome who questioned whether she really needed friendships, Carol, a retired educator shares the wise lessons she learned about friendship and being different–from a boy with similar challenges.

I had the experience of being a paraeducator (a school employee who works under the supervision of a teacher) with a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome for almost four years. I met him when he was in sixth grade and he helped me to learn of his challenges with this syndrome. To make a very wonderful story short, I think he is going to graduate, leaving high school with many, many people who would call him a friend. He may not use that term, but he does it his own way.

In my heart, I feel his best friends are his family members who are there for him and made the effort early on when there was not much known about Asperger’s. I feel he does friendships on his own terms and for me I think it’s the way we all need to do them.

As his paraeducator, I have continued to have healthy boundaries with him. I like to know how he’s doing in his life but do not hang out with him or his family. He is well-known at his high school and because he ventured out to interact with classmates and the teaching staff. He is respected as a human being who may not be like everyone else, but he is uniquely himself. Isn’t that the goal in life, to meet people who care about you for this reason? Because they want you to be yourself?

The students who have been given the gift of knowing him and learning about his challenges will go out into to the world with the ability to meet other young adults with Asperger’s or other personality challenges (we all have them) and be more open to knowing them and becoming friends.

We have all kinds of connections if we are lucky. Some people are advisors, some people are supporters, some people who we can play with and have fun, some people with whom we count on to be there for us, others we just say “Hi” to as we pass by each other in life.

I am retired now, but worked with Special Education students for over twenty years. This was a new assignment for me and as it turned out, the most interesting student and one I will never forget. He had so much courage to get out of bed every day and come to school. This is how it is for any of us who are “different” in other people’s eyes. Thank goodness students are no longer segregated from others and we are all beginning to see we are more alike than different. The point being we are all human beings.

I once read that if a person doesn’t experience anxiety in life, they won’t experience freedom. Stepping up and finding who and what you want to find when you feel freedom from judgments (another human trait we all have), will allows us to find out what is important in our lives. This boy taught me what courage really is: Be brave, be yourself.

Click here to read the original post: I don’t seem to care about friendships. Should I?

Tags: Asperger's syndrome, Asperger’s, keeping friends, personality

Category: KEEPING FRIENDS