The Thomas the Tank Engine Checklist of Social Interaction

Truman has always loved tracks and trains, and Thomas the Tank Engine has long been a fixture at our house. It was deemed babyish for a time, but has made a comeback in this weather that's too hot for any real outdoor play. When Truman becomes interested in something it's never just a little bit, so now that he's turned his attention back to Thomas, all thoughts that it might be too young for him have been forgotten, and he's gone full bore back into the tracks, trains, accessories, books, videos, games and internet research.

The interesting thing has been to see how his interaction with Thomas has changed since he was younger. When you are a little boy and track obsessed, I think Thomas is appealing because it puts a friendly face (literally) on trains. Like girls with dolls, boys can ascribe emotions to the trains that aren't centered around fighting the way lots of boy toys are intended. (I can leave my judgement for another day about how "cross" those damn trains are all the time and the good Reverend Awdry's sadistic take on work ethics and what constitutes "useful"). As an older kid, now he is questioning Thomas' motives. He's analyzing story lines that were surely never meant to be analyzed. And most interesting to observe, he's an autistic person attempting to figure out the emotions of things that don't talk. And talking, I've come to realize is a large part of the gauge he uses to judge an interaction with someone. That is, when 20 other things aren't precluding his ability to even care about the interaction in the first place.

Last night we were reading one of the original Thomas stories where Thomas is given a train to pull for the first time. But on his first run, something happens and the train is uncoupled, sending Thomas out running around the Island of Sodor thinking he is pulling a load when he isn't. There is a picture of Thomas on one page that shows Thomas speeding away without his train while men in the station try to get his attention. The text reads, "What happened then, no one knows. Perhaps they forgot to couple Thomas to the train, perhaps Thomas was too impatient to wait until they were ready, or perhaps his Driver pulled the lever by mistake."

Truman asked, "What do you think it was, mom?" (When I am asked to read these things, most times I don't actually pay attention, so I had to ask what he was talking about.) "Why did Thomas speed away without his train? Was it a. that they forgot to couple him to the train, b. that he was too impatient to wait or c. that his Driver pulled the lever by mistake?"

"I think he was just impatient." I said without thinking about it.

"Me too. See, here's why. The look on Thomas' face is slightly different than his normal smile. The eyebrows are tilted like when you make your thinking face. The mouth is not smiling, but it is on one side which doesn't look like a smile but it isn't a frown either. And his eyes are looking behind him instead of forward, which could mean he's looking back at the men at the station like he's saying 'ha ha!'"

My whole family has this disease where they can't see something that's plainly in front of their faces. I know that if one of them asks where the milk is in the refrigerator, that I am going to have to get up from what I am doing and go in there and hand them the milk unless I want to be tortured with yelling precise descriptions of items in the refrigerator so they can locate the milk via food landmarks, and even then more than likely they still won't find it. Jim, the oldest of the disease-havers, is aware of having the disease and tries very hard to recognize when the disease is showing itself. He'll look extra hard at the refrigerator and inventory it item by item, but lots of times it still doesn't work. It's like a missing brain connection or something.

On top of it all, as a part of his Asperger's, Truman doesn't realize that he should turn his gaze to something to which you are pointing, so even if I get up and go to the kitchen, if I just point at the milk, it will mean nothing. Depending on the time of day, his attention might be so completely out of whack that he can't even follow the answer to "Where's the milk?" He might ask, and then completely move on in his head, and maybe circle back around to it after I yell from the other room 3 or 4 times about the precise location of the milk. It can be very frustrating.

As we read the Thomas story and he explained to me his way to deduce Thomas' motives, it struck me again just how much precludes his ability to read someone or something. Where I can quickly glance at the Thomas picture and read the paragraph and intuit without even knowing that I'm intuiting it that Thomas was being impatient, to Truman it's a whole checklist of a process. Facial features all have to be examined individually, followed by a thorough reading of the options in the paragraph in order to come up with an answer that you or I might just read on by. Now, let's add to that his attention and focus is absolutely nonexistent. You and I intuit, he has to checklist, but if he doesn't have the attention to check the list, then he just... won't. I can imagine that it would be pretty easy to not think at all about what anyone thinks or feels because it would be such a... job... that is, if you were even aware of having to check the list. That's a lot of stuff working against his ability to quickly process, or really, to be motivated to process at all.

It always comes back to... I get it, world. I get why you are frustrated with him. With no readily visible signs of any kind of issue, your own intuiting would say that this kid should be able to do whatever the task is at hand without a problem. Every day is a new reminder for me, a new revelation or a deeper understanding of what it's like to live under layers of things that impair someone's ability to interact with the world in a typical way, especially when the intuitive signs say that all systems should be go.

With one in 88 people in the world interacting in this muffled way, it might be worth our while to turn the idea of Autism Awareness toward actually becoming much more aware of the intricacies and differences in others' perceptions and communication abilities.