My wonderful brother

My brother is an amazing kid who has jumped a lot of hurdles in his 18 years. He was born when I was four and a half. Before he was very old it was obvious he was different than most babies. He hated loud noises, unless he was the one making them. He would scream if I decided to bang on my pots. So we didn't get along well at first. I have the most adorable picture of him when he was 2 sitting in a wooden salad bowl watching TV in his white jumpsuit with blue stars on it. He always had to watch TV in a bowl or pot.

We were told he was ADHD when he was about 7. He did the ritalin thing as well as alternative and expensive attention treatments which involved him walking on a 2x4 in the living room. This I could kind of understand but the glasses baffled me. These treatments never seemed to work like the doctors always said they would.

I don't remember how old he was when we got the news. I think 10-12. I had been dealing with my own problems and as I got better I realized I hadn't treated my brother very good. Our relationship was pretty good by this point. We found out my brother was mildly autistic. He was diagnosed with Asperger's/Asberger's (the spelling differs even in the proffesional areas). The characteristics of this type of autism are quite intriguing. The social center of his brain, the part that understand personal space, facial expressions and body language doesn't connect to the rest of his brain. So any non-verbal language he has difficulty understanding. He had to learn that a frown means sad the way the rest of us learned math.

His facial expressions have always been greatly exagerated and we realized this was because he was learning them from TV! Particularly amine whose facial expresions are very exagerated. He forgets obviously at times but he tries so very hard that it's sweet. My parents bought lots of books to learn about Asperger's and only read a few. I read every single one, many times. Especially the one written by someone with Asperger's. It was facinating to almost understand my baby brother. We became closer than I ever thought possible.

Now, I understand my brother so much more. He comes to me for help, and to talk. He doesn't feel comfortable with my parents because they treat him like a child. True he has the maturity of a 12 year old, but he'll never act 18 unless he's treated his age. I will admit I do resent the way my parents coddle him, not because it took time away from me (I got over that many years ago) but because they won't give him any chance to grow up. They talk about their hopes that he will be independent one day and be able to fend for himself but they give him no chances to spread his wings.

It's true that autism is difficult. I don't think it applies to just the severly autistic. There are different things to do for each kind and we keep finding new autism spectrum disorders. I'm not going to say I want a cure, because I don't. I love my brother how he is and can't imagine him any other way and don't want to. He is Sam and he is my brother and I love him. I just wish it wasn't so hard or so controversial to deal with.