A Good Source for Anthropomorphic Writers

Anyone hoping to write novels with anthropomorphic animal characters would be greatly served by reading a bit of non-fiction first, namely Temple Grandin’s “Animals in Translation.”

Grandin has spent her career helping make slaughterhouses more humane. That may sound like an odd place to draw from for cutesy behavior in a fantasy novel, but Grandin has focused on animal behavior in her work, and that focus on behavior, particularly the section I’m reading now on what makes animals frightened in ways that humans might not recognize, ought to be a great help for any author wanting to make their anthropomorphic creations more realistic.

That may sound like a contradiction in terms, But wouldn’t it be fun to read more books where animals behave more like animals, even if they’re being used to tell a story humans might be interested in.

Richard Adams, in Watership Down, succeeds at this. He drew on non-fiction in the form of “The Private Life of the Rabbit,” by R.M. Lockley, to write his adventure story of rabbits on an adventure of survival.

I’ve read a lot of these kinds of books, from the early Beatrix Potter and “The Wind in the Willows” to more modern takes, and most of them fall into two categories (which I love very much):

1. Twee animals with clothes on. They are animals, and have a few animal traits, but generally behave like humans.

2. Animals in Tropetude. No clothes, more animal traits, but still wonking along as if they had half-human brains plotting conquest and revenge and whatnot.

A sharp writer with Grandin as a guide could augment the second and make the animals more animal-like as they struggle with the bigger bits of philosophy the writer cares to toss into that particular salad.

I’m reading right now about what Grandin has noticed causes fear in livestock. Don’t know if this translates across the species, but it gives me some things to think about as I write Doleful Creatures, as fear is a primary presence in the book. Reading and implementing what Grandin writes could help me move the book further from Camp 1 to Camp 2. Not that Camp 1 is bad; that’s where the book started out in the first place. But it’s moved to Camp 2 gradually, and I think I like it better there.

The book also gives me a few ideas for The Hermit of Iapetus. The more I think about that character, the more I think he is autistic. And while I have an autistic son to draw inspiration from (and enough from my own life) seeing it in print will also help me better in the translation.

Autism, Vaccines, and "The Debate"

I’m going to tell you what infuriates me about the autism/vaccine “debate.”

The so-called debate detracts from the challenges of raising an autistic child and places the “blame” – and that’s what they want to do is place the blame – on some choice they think they can make to protect their children, when reality tells us things quite different.

And it’s reintroducing the world to childhood diseases that have been successfully kept in check until the “debate” arrived on the back of one faked study.

One faked study. Take that in.

Meanwhile at our house, we’re dealing with autism all the time. Not brought on by vaccines. But brought on most likely by genetics because the condition gallops on both sides of the family and has for generations, even in generations who lived before vaccines were common.

I’ve learned with autism there’s coping mechanisms. For example, I can ease my own anxiety if I know I have a task coming before me and I mentally go through the motions of accomplishing that task. This “priming the pump” makes performing the actual task a lot easier.

There is no coping mechanism with which to handle the “debate,” except not to engage.

I don’t know what the root of our family’s struggles is, I just know that over the first weekend in February, two things:

1. Super Bowl
2. Autism.

Autism first. Our oldest at the center of it.

First a bit of a story.

The Sunday before Christmas 2018, we were pulled in to meet with the bishop and stake president. The stake president had received an email from Salt Lake, honorably discharging our from the obligation of serving a full-time mission. (We’re Mormons and Mormon boys – and increasingly girls – are expected to serve a full-time mission for the church, giving two years of their lives to spread the gospel. I served in France, by wife in England. In my family alone we had missionaries serve in Argentina, South Korea, two in France, and in Hungary.)

That he received a discharge was real surprise. Back in November, we took him, at the behest of the church to LDS Family Services to be tested to see where he fit on the autism spectrum because we’d known since he was a preschooler that he had Aspergers. At the time, I told the tester that I suspected our would struggle on a regular mission and might be better served as a service missionary, but also tossed in the caveat that he’d go wherever the Lord saw fit to send him. The testing must have revealed my hunch as right. So the paperwork to get him on a service mission, after some hiccups, is underway, with a calling time likely in mid to late April.

In the meantime, we decided to get him enrolled in some BYUI classes. He’s taking 12 credits – a calculus and physics course, a Book of Mormon course, and is in one of my Foundations English classes.

Calculus has proved to be much harder than he expected, so he’s falling behind in his other classes. This past weekend, he had to go to Rexburg to take a test at the testing center – after missing the first test because I don’t know why. He’s done calculus to the expense of all else and wants to drop physics. He’s lost his scholarship for the semester because he’s not taking enough credits, but I don’t see how we can add any more to his load.

So this weekend he snapped at his mother when she asked how he was doing. Thus Sunday after church we had a come to Jesus meeting where we talked about how that kind of behavior isn’t acceptable, and that when we ask how he’s doing it’s not to point fingers or to catch him doing anything wrong, but because we know he’s struggling and we want to know what we can do to help him. So after a rather tense pre-meeting meeting with him on my own Saturday night to prep him for Sunday, the path forward is this:

1. He needs to communicate with us quickly where he’s at in his classes, so we know where he’s at.

2. He has to let us communicate with his instructors to see what he can do to get him up to speed. This might be difficult, depending on the instructor. Calculus instructor, so far, seems to be reasonable. I haven’t winkled a contact number for his physics instructor out of him yet.

3. We’re getting him set up with BYUI Disability Services. Hopefully that ball will roll quickly, but as LDS Family Services is involved, it might take up to 30 days. Hoping we hear much sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, things are in motion.

4. He is also committed to using his planner to plan his weeks out, and to communicate with his supervisor at the DI to minimize schedule changes and duty changes, in order to reduce his stress and anxiety. I might have to follow up on this, particularly to ensure they know he’s on the autism spectrum.

I’m hoping this will help get him back on track and off the thinking that Mom is checking up on him in some kind of GOTCHA capacity. Which she is not.

Because I’ve had the thought – we had pretty easy kids and teenagers, for the most part. Maybe we’ll pay for that in their young adulthood? Then there’s Isaac who’s just barely a teenager and really gearing up to be a pain in the butt. We’ll see.

I shared part of this message from James E. Faust with son and wife on Sunday. Hoping it helps.

The Super Bowl is, of course, anticlimactic after all of this. We watched the boring game and the mostly boring commercials. We had pizza and chocolate milk, which was the best part.
Sounds fun, right?

So the “debate” calls up. If you could do just one thing to help your child – any child – avoid the struggles of autism, you’d do it, right?

My response to this question: Depends on that “one thing.” What do you recommend?

No vaccinations, the “debate” says.

Fine.

So I’ll potentially subject my son to this instead:



By golly this guy came up with some coping mechanisms, didn’t he? Right down to having to sleep inside a device for which he can no longer get parts because a vaccine made the machine an antique. A relic.

Or I could have let him die as a toddler from the measles.

Autism is a long road.

But the “debate” offers a string of Hobsons choices. I know what path I’d rather be on. Because I suspect the autism we see would still be there whether the “debate” won me over or not.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be. Because my kids would be dead or crippled and out of the gene pool, killing off the chance that they’d spread their autistic-carrying genes to another generation.

That’s where the “debate” lands us.

No thank you, folks. No thank you.

Social Interaction: SCARY

As a parent of an Asperger kid, you learn to take your victories when they come.

Last week, our son went to a scout meeting. He was there a bit early. Two other scouts were there early too, playing a round of Connect Four. The game ended and the champion wanted another opponent. He shouted to our son to come over and play.

Our son hesitated, of course. Social interaction. SCARY.

But with a little encouragement, he went over.

He’s played Connect Four before, of course. They launched into a game. And launched, awkwardly, herky-jerkily, into a social interaction that the other scout will likely never know how important is to our kid.

Our son started winning. “Wow, you’re good,” the other boy kept saying. And our son responded, nicely, thank heaven. The game went on, and with the click of the pieces, the social interaction went on.

Victory.

Thanks, in part, to some primitive technology and another kid not scared to reach out to another kid to play a game.

So reading things like this, about a robot being used in England to help autistic children with social interaction, I have to think there’s ways to use technology to teach social interaction.

I’m contemplating singing our son up for Second Life so we can interact together in that virtual world (I already have an avatar, if it’s still active, which I created for a class based in Second Life I took through Utah State a few years ago). I’m hoping that perhaps by going through simple interactions in a virtual world, our son can learn how to translate that activity into the real world. At least we can use Second Life as a practice space, once he gets over the newness of the whole thing.

And this isn’t far off the mark. Our school psychologist says there’s computer software out there that helps such kids in virtual social situations – but of course the district can’t afford it. Second Life is free – albeit fraught with other dangers; we’ll keep close rein on him while he’s there.

We’ll see what happens.