Pieces of My Heart

Hello everyone! Welcome to my new blog. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jae. I am a Marriage and Family Therapist Intern, and I spent the last year working with special needs children and autism. After spending two years in the difficult population of troubled teenagers where growth was slow and success was rare, being thrust into the sometimes puzzling but always improving population of autism was both mystifying and incredibly rewarding.

I first began to learn of autism when a sociology class in college required us to read a book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, a story about a young man with autism struggling to solve the mystery of his neighbor’s murdered dog. The book detailed the everyday life, various activities, and thought-processes of an autistic mind. Though I found it interesting, it didn’t consume my focus and I moved on to other disorders.

When completing my pre-graduation internship for my Bachelor’s program where I worked with juvenile delinquents, I listened as my classmates discussed their days with autistic children, and became fascinated by the unique approaches they used to engage these children in therapy. Post-graduation, I attempted to get a job in autism, but no one was hiring without experience, of which I had none.

Finally, for my Practicum, a pre-graduation internship for my Master’s program, I got my chance. Thanks to the tip of a classmate, I was soon hired at a non-profit counseling agency that specialized in autism, among other types of therapy, and housed a non-public school for autistic children. I enjoyed it immediately. After the third week, I recall being asked how I felt about the job, and without hesitation blurted out “I love it!” I had fallen in love with the therapy and the many milestones it gave, I was fascinated by the condition, and most of all, I fell in love with the kids I worked with. Under the wing of my clinical supervisor or as I called her, the Autism Guru, I became her protégé, and did my best to absorb the wealth of knowledge she had on the population in my time with her.

With this blog, it is my hope to share that knowledge, combined with new ideas and information I’ve acquired, some academic, some anecdotal, with the autism community and any who wish to learn more about this spreading epidemic. While I can hardly call myself an expert after one year, I feel that the experience and knowledge I've gained can be of some help. And along the way, I may slip in some memorable moments with the amazing children I had the blessing to work with, the pieces of my heart.

Now, though it will be discussed to some extent later, I won’t get into debates about whether or not there’s a cure for autism or whether or not autism should be cured. My work with autism consisted of only the most severe cases, which require treatment in one respect or another to ease the difficulties parents of autistic children are faced with and help autistic children connect with the world around them, a critical attribute for the socialization our species so desperately requires.