Time wasting

My good chum "moritherapy," who does all the psychobabble stuff, gives me a link to an article about how "autistic children read faces and interpret other people's emotional state." It is just the kind of thing I might have benefited from. [translation - at least three years ago]

Some autistic children are "notorious" for their inappropriate responses. Some poor luckless child scrapes their knee at playtime and the heartless autistic child with no soul nor empathy for the human condition, cackles with laughter. Some people are aware that the contrary is true, that in general autistic people have far more sensitivity to others, a greater degree of compassion, it is merely a bad wiring job in the "response department." Faulty cataloging and a dodgy retrieval system means that response 35a comes out instead of 53z.

The "paper" basically tells us that the autistic child is just dandy at reading a person's emotional state from their facial expression, although the paper far more detailed and interesting than that.

This information forces me to count the number of outrageously expensive books I have on this very topic. 'Picture' books with adult text, so that the parent can assist the child in learning this skill. When I think of the tortuous minutes I have wrestled with child and book on the sofa, in a vain attempt to persuade his eyes to look in the general direction of the very expensive book, it makes me want to sigh.

Whilst sighing is all very well and good for some, I prefer action. The most appropriate action for the current situation would be to hit myself on the head, with the very expensive book. More fool me for not realising, that if it is true, that this is a skill that he already had, then is it any wonder that he tried to escape? Diagnoses = terminal boredom.