I have a very close relative, now early 20s, with Asperger Syndrome, now renamed High Functioning Autism. They have a “social” age of about 2/3 of their chronological age. Even though they can often stay in their academic year grade, their maturity is very delayed.
What matters in a case like this is that especially under stress, they CANNOT process a situation like “neurotypical” folks. If a cop screamed at a 13-year-old with A.S. standing a yard onto a street during a parade, for example, they would totally freeze up. Deer in headlights. Can’t process. Can’t move. Can’t speak. The mental gears are jammed.
Ditto if a cop screamed, “Get down on the ground!” or “Drop the gun.” They would freeze up. Their gears would jam up, for example, at “Drop the gun!” Their first and only thought would be “Who? I don’t have a gun.” They are “literal thinkers,” and to a kid with HFA, a plastic replica is NOT a gun, it’s a toy. So the order has no meaning.
Parents of kids with HFA/A.S. live in fear of a situation exactly like this. In the time that their kid is frozen, unable to process the crisis situation, Joe Rambo Cop would shoot them down dead on the street. In a situation like this, for a kid with A.S. attempting to process with frozen mental gears, ten seconds is a blink of an eye.
To a cop, it might be a long time. Not to a “stuck” kid with A.S. during a crisis. For him, it’s a microsecond, and then he’s dead at a cop’s hand.
Chilling Matt....indeed