Social Issue

Recently I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime  by Mark Haddon.  It was about a kid named Christopher who has autism. He struggles to understand things as life gets more complicated, starting with him being accused to killing a dog in the nighttime. What follows is a sometimes funny, sometimes, tragic book that is centered on a social issue.

Most of the main issues are because no one quite understands Christopher. His mother leaves the family after she realizes she just can’t deal with him. The father has a difficult time being a single parent of an autistic child. Christopher screams when he’s touched and often huddles in a ball. He can be violent at times too, and hurts people without realizing. The biggest problem is that he can’t understand human emotions.

This book raises questions on how to raise, or just understand autistic children. Autism was relatively unknown 70 years ago, and the amount of children diagnosed with it has skyrocketed. Why it happens is still a relative mystery.  In the The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime  the father and mother get very frustrated with Christopher. But it’s easy to see why.  So what should they do? What should society as whole do?

The truth is I don’t know.  The cold, logical person might say that we should put them away, that they are not functioning members of society. Indeed if we were a species of birds they would die off because of natural selection.  But we’re not a species of birds. We’re humans, and emotions like sympathy, kindness, and patience set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. They are one of us. But raising these children is just so taxing. And usually the child cannot return the love. It just seems so unfair.  And as the children with extreme conditions grow into adults, they need just as much help as when they were 4 or 5.  

It’s one of the most complicated social issues, because there’s not a definite answer. For racism it is easy to identify what is right. People who judge others by the color of their skin or where they come from are awful, stupid people (The problem is convincing them of that).  And autism is growing. There are no definitive numbers but many of them said about 5 out 10,000 children are diagnosed with autism. (1 out of 2000). The best thing I can offer is that we found out why it happens and how to prevent it.  But for now, I am conflicted on how to deal with the issue.