Nuala - Interview 56  

Nuala - Interview 56

Age at Interview: 43
Sex: Female
Background: Nuala, a software engineer, and her husband have a daughter aged 11 and a son aged 9. Ethnic background/nationality: White British

Brief outline:Nuala’s son, Robert, was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when he was eight years old. He attends a mainstream primary school with support and is now much happier and settled.

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Robert

 



He’s… well I think he is lovely but he is my son. He’s he is as bright as a button. He is incredibly engaging. He is very… unusual. He has the most amazing imagination. But he is odd, there is no doubt. He is very… he gets on very well with adults, and most adults find him very endearing. He… he loves to talk. He will talk till the cows come home. And he can be very entertaining. He can be incomprehensible. He doesn’t, he doesn’t follow the normal rules of conversation. So he doesn’t, realise that other people have to follow what you are saying [laughs]. So he tends to leap into the conversation and just jump in and start telling you something. And if you are lucky you can stop him long enough to find out what it is he was talking about in the first place [laughs].
 
But being his mum, I have got the advantage, I can usually guess because I know much more about him that most. But an awful lot of people haven’t a clue [laugh]. We just have this voice going on. …And other children can sometimes get really fed up, I can tell you. But he is very I mean he is a very keen child, he loves things like history and he is always fascinated by stories. And he is very interested in his school studies. He comes back very excited to tell me all the things that have gone on. And I think he has more of a, a sort of a thrill for that sort of thing, than most other kids I have seen to be honest. He will, given enough encouragement really put everything he has got into studying or finding out about things. He is very keen.
 
So he is a real joy to be with when he is in a good mood. And I think that is what most people see now. I think he is a child who is very, very earnest and very, very talkative and very funny too. He clowns a lot and loves making jokes. So I think most people see that as he gets older. That is how I see him.

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