Asperger Syndrome In The Book House Rules By Jodi Picoult
House Rules
Book Review Draft
Asperger syndrome (AS) is a developmental disability that falls on the autism spectrum. Children with Asperger syndrome usually have trouble with social skills, common sense, and change (Williams, 1995.) Although AS is on the autism spectrum, children with AS are usually on the high functioning side of the spectrum. Williams (1995) describes the difference between low and high functioning kids with AS as, lower functioning children with autism live in a world of their own, but higher functioning children with autism live in our world but in their own way. I was able to better understand this by reading Jodi Picoult’s book House Rules. The main subject of the book is the boy Jacob, who has AS; however, the …show more content…
chapters are broken down into different people’s perspectives. Using the different characters, Picoult describes what is it like to be a child who has AS, what is it like raise a son who has AS (through the mom’s eyes), how it feels to be the younger brother of a boy with AS (through the son Theo’s eyes), and how the world sometimes views children with AS. Jacob is an 18 year old boy with Asperger syndrome and although AS does not affect Jacob physically, it affects him more socially, emotionally, mentally. Jacob has most difficulties with the social aspect of his life. He won’t make eye contact with anyone, so when having a conversation with someone; he will look at the ceiling, at his hands, or around the room. Later on in the book he says he doesn’t like looking people in the eye because he feels they can see all of your thoughts right through your eyes into your brain, and that freaks him out. He also can’t hold a conversation and doesn’t know what is appropriate to talk about and what is not appropriate. Instead of saying “hey, what’s up Johnny?” he’ll walk up to Johnny and start talking about something that interests him, instead of just making small talk. Jacob has a big interest in forensics, his conversations, daily activities, school reports, and much of his free time is spent learning about forensics; it’s almost as if it runs his life. This is common in kids with AS to become obsessed with a topic that interests them. An usual thing Jacob does is replace his thoughts with movie lines, so sometimes he’ll just randomly say something that is from a movie, he says that sometimes it’s hard to form his own thoughts and words, so when he can’t come up with something he uses someone else’s words. Another thing about children with AS is, they take everything literal and don’t understand sarcasm very well. This often gets Jacob into trouble because people think he’s being a wise ass when he answers their sarcastic comment with a literal answer. In the beginning of the story Jacob set up a fake crime scene, his mom, Emma, is puzzled as to why there’s a clock on the ground with blood on it. Jacob replies that he clocked his brother over the head, like in an episode of CrimeBusters he watched on TV. Emma tells Jacob that to clock someone doesn’t mean to physically hit them over the head with a clock, it’s another phrase for saying you punched them out. Jacob describes how he is starting to understand things more, like to take a seat doesn’t mean to literally pick up a seat like he did the first time someone told him to do so. Another problem with Jacob’s social skills is that just like he takes everything literal, he says everything literal, which sometimes means he will be blatantly honest. Jacob has a social tutor named Jess, who helps him with his social abilities. She gets him to try and look people in the eye, or start a conversation with a stranger; she tells him what is appropriate and what is downright rude. At one of their meetings Jess is explaining how he has to be civil and nice to someone he doesn’t like, and when he asks why she says because it’s rude to get up and walk away. Jacob’s mind doesn’t think that way though, so he responds very painfully honest “I think it’s rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you’d rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.” (Picoult 61.) Even though everyday people has those thoughts, most realize it is inappropriate and rude to do that to someone you’re talking to, just get up and walk away, but to Jacob it isn’t rude at all. Jacob’s social problems can also tie into his emotional problems, or lack of emotion. Jacob doesn’t have emotions, he doesn’t understand them. He says he doesn’t understand what love is, and he doesn’t know how to be upset. Emma talks about when her father died Jacob wanted to see inside the coffin, she thought it was so he could say goodbye, but he said it was because he wanted to know what dead felt like. Because of Jacob’s AS he doesn’t realize, think, or understand how what he’s doing could affect someone else, and therefore he can’t stop himself from doing something. However, he says “I may not understand emotion, but I can feel guilt about not understanding it” (Picoult 144). One part of his emotions that Jacob definitely can’t control is his freak outs. When something isn’t going as planned, something changes or something sets him off, he goes crazy. Jacob needs everything to be schedule and organized and if one little thing goes off schedule it will set him off. His freak out can consist of him just flapping his hands on his side, because it says it relaxes him, and go all the way to an extreme of him physically hurting himself by hitting his head against the wall, there’s no controlling it. In one part of the book Jacob completely “goes away”, meaning he’s alive, but he’s not there. Emma tries to talk to him but it looks like there’s no life in his eyes. Jacob later on describes this for us he says “This is where I go, when I go: it’s a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through. I’m there, but I’m not there. I am pounding to be let out, by nobody can hear me” (Picoult 100). The worst part is that nothing Emma or Theo did could bring him back; Jacob had to come back on his own. If Jacob feels a freak out coming on at school, or he’s getting an overload of stimuli there’s room called a “sensory room” where he can go to calm down. There are all sorts of things in there, such as weight blankets, balls, mats, and a swing that he can enclose himself in. Jacob explains that he doesn’t know why but AS children are very sensitive to touch, so putting a weighted blanket on can make him feel much better. Jacob isn’t the only one affected by AS, his mom and his brother feel the brunt of it too.
Emma’s husband left shortly after Jacob had been diagnosed because he couldn’t handle everything that was going on, leaving Emma to raise him alone. She talks about how it’s difficult and how she threw herself into doing everything she could to try and help him adapt to the world. She doesn’t have any friends because none of them could handle Jacob’s behaviors and tantrums. She’s dedicated her life to trying to help Jacob, she works from home, and is very active with fixing his IEP’s, she also acts as a guardian when they go out and someone gives them looks. She protects her son very …show more content…
much. Although she is very centered and protective over Jacob, this has left Theo feeling completely left out. He has been neglected most of his life and put on the back burner to Jacob’s needs. Theo hates himself for it, but at time he expresses his hate towards his brother and how he wishes he had a normal life. His mom often lets him down, most of the time in little ways. She told Theo one day they’d go get Chinese food, but later that night Jacob had a complete meltdown so she forgot all about it. That little sliver of hope had made Theo so happy, but his mom simply had forgotten about him and put him on the back burner yet again. This book will definitely impact my teaching when I am one in the future, I might even reread this book before I start teaching so I can remember some things to do and not to do. Williams (1995) talks about some strategies that are beneficial to students that have AS, and I see how they can be after I connect them towards Jacob. Important things such as keeping a schedule and maintaining events that you have planned out are big because I saw how easily Jacob would have a meltdown because of his schedule being thrown off. Discouraging bullying is also big, because AS children are often the bullied by students for being different. Williams (1995) also talks about making sure that the student knows the teacher is in charge, so if he/she doesn’t want to work on what the class is working on because he/she isn’t interested in it, he/she needs to know that I’m in charge and that he/she has to do what is asked of them. Children with AS sometimes have difficulty concentrating, so some tips I’ve seen are having them sit in the front of the classroom, patting them on the back when they need to check back into class if they haven’t been paying attention, and possibly using a buddy system where the buddy simply keeps the child with AS on track (Williams 1995). I have also learned some things through my own experiences on how to teach if I have a child with AS.
My best friend’s brother Aidan is in third grade and was born with Asperger syndrome. When I observed him in class last year I picked up some tips to help me in the future. I learned that it really is best to avoid sarcasm, I never really understood until I observed him how much children with AS don’t understand sarcasm. Aidan has asked the teacher if he could look for his pencil sharpener in his backpack but when he couldn’t find it after a few minutes the teacher said “Aidan! What’re you searching for gold in there?!” clearly joking around, but Aidan didn’t pick up on the sarcasm and had responded “No…I told you I was looking for my pencil sharpener.” His teacher also gave me some tips. She said that at the beginning of the year everyone knew Aidan was different and they left him out of activities because they thought he was weird. So one day when Aidan was out of the room she confronted the class and told them that she will not tolerate their behavior. She told them that although Aidan may be different in some ways he’s just like everybody else, and how would they feel if they got left out of activities, and she said after that little talk she had no more problems with everyone being mean to
him. I have learned a lot from this book and from researching tips and helpful strategies on how really take advantage of the needs of children with Asperger syndrome. I enjoyed this because it really has helped me grow as a person and as a future teaching. I definitely will use this in the future because chances are that I will most likely come across a student at least once who may have AS or another form of autism.
Works Cited
Williams, K. (1995). Understanding the Student with Asperger Syndrome: Guidelines for Teachers. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 10(2), 9-16. doi: . 10.1177/108835769501000202
Picoult, J. (2010). House rules: A novel. New York, NY: Atria Books.
Book Review Draft
Asperger syndrome (AS) is a developmental disability that falls on the autism spectrum. Children with Asperger syndrome usually have trouble with social skills, common sense, and change (Williams, 1995.) Although AS is on the autism spectrum, children with AS are usually on the high functioning side of the spectrum. Williams (1995) describes the difference between low and high functioning kids with AS as, lower functioning children with autism live in a world of their own, but higher functioning children with autism live in our world but in their own way. I was able to better understand this by reading Jodi Picoult’s book House Rules. The main subject of the book is the boy Jacob, who has AS; however, the …show more content…
chapters are broken down into different people’s perspectives. Using the different characters, Picoult describes what is it like to be a child who has AS, what is it like raise a son who has AS (through the mom’s eyes), how it feels to be the younger brother of a boy with AS (through the son Theo’s eyes), and how the world sometimes views children with AS. Jacob is an 18 year old boy with Asperger syndrome and although AS does not affect Jacob physically, it affects him more socially, emotionally, mentally. Jacob has most difficulties with the social aspect of his life. He won’t make eye contact with anyone, so when having a conversation with someone; he will look at the ceiling, at his hands, or around the room. Later on in the book he says he doesn’t like looking people in the eye because he feels they can see all of your thoughts right through your eyes into your brain, and that freaks him out. He also can’t hold a conversation and doesn’t know what is appropriate to talk about and what is not appropriate. Instead of saying “hey, what’s up Johnny?” he’ll walk up to Johnny and start talking about something that interests him, instead of just making small talk. Jacob has a big interest in forensics, his conversations, daily activities, school reports, and much of his free time is spent learning about forensics; it’s almost as if it runs his life. This is common in kids with AS to become obsessed with a topic that interests them. An usual thing Jacob does is replace his thoughts with movie lines, so sometimes he’ll just randomly say something that is from a movie, he says that sometimes it’s hard to form his own thoughts and words, so when he can’t come up with something he uses someone else’s words. Another thing about children with AS is, they take everything literal and don’t understand sarcasm very well. This often gets Jacob into trouble because people think he’s being a wise ass when he answers their sarcastic comment with a literal answer. In the beginning of the story Jacob set up a fake crime scene, his mom, Emma, is puzzled as to why there’s a clock on the ground with blood on it. Jacob replies that he clocked his brother over the head, like in an episode of CrimeBusters he watched on TV. Emma tells Jacob that to clock someone doesn’t mean to physically hit them over the head with a clock, it’s another phrase for saying you punched them out. Jacob describes how he is starting to understand things more, like to take a seat doesn’t mean to literally pick up a seat like he did the first time someone told him to do so. Another problem with Jacob’s social skills is that just like he takes everything literal, he says everything literal, which sometimes means he will be blatantly honest. Jacob has a social tutor named Jess, who helps him with his social abilities. She gets him to try and look people in the eye, or start a conversation with a stranger; she tells him what is appropriate and what is downright rude. At one of their meetings Jess is explaining how he has to be civil and nice to someone he doesn’t like, and when he asks why she says because it’s rude to get up and walk away. Jacob’s mind doesn’t think that way though, so he responds very painfully honest “I think it’s rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you’d rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.” (Picoult 61.) Even though everyday people has those thoughts, most realize it is inappropriate and rude to do that to someone you’re talking to, just get up and walk away, but to Jacob it isn’t rude at all. Jacob’s social problems can also tie into his emotional problems, or lack of emotion. Jacob doesn’t have emotions, he doesn’t understand them. He says he doesn’t understand what love is, and he doesn’t know how to be upset. Emma talks about when her father died Jacob wanted to see inside the coffin, she thought it was so he could say goodbye, but he said it was because he wanted to know what dead felt like. Because of Jacob’s AS he doesn’t realize, think, or understand how what he’s doing could affect someone else, and therefore he can’t stop himself from doing something. However, he says “I may not understand emotion, but I can feel guilt about not understanding it” (Picoult 144). One part of his emotions that Jacob definitely can’t control is his freak outs. When something isn’t going as planned, something changes or something sets him off, he goes crazy. Jacob needs everything to be schedule and organized and if one little thing goes off schedule it will set him off. His freak out can consist of him just flapping his hands on his side, because it says it relaxes him, and go all the way to an extreme of him physically hurting himself by hitting his head against the wall, there’s no controlling it. In one part of the book Jacob completely “goes away”, meaning he’s alive, but he’s not there. Emma tries to talk to him but it looks like there’s no life in his eyes. Jacob later on describes this for us he says “This is where I go, when I go: it’s a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through. I’m there, but I’m not there. I am pounding to be let out, by nobody can hear me” (Picoult 100). The worst part is that nothing Emma or Theo did could bring him back; Jacob had to come back on his own. If Jacob feels a freak out coming on at school, or he’s getting an overload of stimuli there’s room called a “sensory room” where he can go to calm down. There are all sorts of things in there, such as weight blankets, balls, mats, and a swing that he can enclose himself in. Jacob explains that he doesn’t know why but AS children are very sensitive to touch, so putting a weighted blanket on can make him feel much better. Jacob isn’t the only one affected by AS, his mom and his brother feel the brunt of it too.
Emma’s husband left shortly after Jacob had been diagnosed because he couldn’t handle everything that was going on, leaving Emma to raise him alone. She talks about how it’s difficult and how she threw herself into doing everything she could to try and help him adapt to the world. She doesn’t have any friends because none of them could handle Jacob’s behaviors and tantrums. She’s dedicated her life to trying to help Jacob, she works from home, and is very active with fixing his IEP’s, she also acts as a guardian when they go out and someone gives them looks. She protects her son very …show more content…
much. Although she is very centered and protective over Jacob, this has left Theo feeling completely left out. He has been neglected most of his life and put on the back burner to Jacob’s needs. Theo hates himself for it, but at time he expresses his hate towards his brother and how he wishes he had a normal life. His mom often lets him down, most of the time in little ways. She told Theo one day they’d go get Chinese food, but later that night Jacob had a complete meltdown so she forgot all about it. That little sliver of hope had made Theo so happy, but his mom simply had forgotten about him and put him on the back burner yet again. This book will definitely impact my teaching when I am one in the future, I might even reread this book before I start teaching so I can remember some things to do and not to do. Williams (1995) talks about some strategies that are beneficial to students that have AS, and I see how they can be after I connect them towards Jacob. Important things such as keeping a schedule and maintaining events that you have planned out are big because I saw how easily Jacob would have a meltdown because of his schedule being thrown off. Discouraging bullying is also big, because AS children are often the bullied by students for being different. Williams (1995) also talks about making sure that the student knows the teacher is in charge, so if he/she doesn’t want to work on what the class is working on because he/she isn’t interested in it, he/she needs to know that I’m in charge and that he/she has to do what is asked of them. Children with AS sometimes have difficulty concentrating, so some tips I’ve seen are having them sit in the front of the classroom, patting them on the back when they need to check back into class if they haven’t been paying attention, and possibly using a buddy system where the buddy simply keeps the child with AS on track (Williams 1995). I have also learned some things through my own experiences on how to teach if I have a child with AS.
My best friend’s brother Aidan is in third grade and was born with Asperger syndrome. When I observed him in class last year I picked up some tips to help me in the future. I learned that it really is best to avoid sarcasm, I never really understood until I observed him how much children with AS don’t understand sarcasm. Aidan has asked the teacher if he could look for his pencil sharpener in his backpack but when he couldn’t find it after a few minutes the teacher said “Aidan! What’re you searching for gold in there?!” clearly joking around, but Aidan didn’t pick up on the sarcasm and had responded “No…I told you I was looking for my pencil sharpener.” His teacher also gave me some tips. She said that at the beginning of the year everyone knew Aidan was different and they left him out of activities because they thought he was weird. So one day when Aidan was out of the room she confronted the class and told them that she will not tolerate their behavior. She told them that although Aidan may be different in some ways he’s just like everybody else, and how would they feel if they got left out of activities, and she said after that little talk she had no more problems with everyone being mean to
him. I have learned a lot from this book and from researching tips and helpful strategies on how really take advantage of the needs of children with Asperger syndrome. I enjoyed this because it really has helped me grow as a person and as a future teaching. I definitely will use this in the future because chances are that I will most likely come across a student at least once who may have AS or another form of autism.
Works Cited
Williams, K. (1995). Understanding the Student with Asperger Syndrome: Guidelines for Teachers. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 10(2), 9-16. doi: . 10.1177/108835769501000202
Picoult, J. (2010). House rules: A novel. New York, NY: Atria Books.