Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant Read Online Free Page A

and clear. But come the service I cried and cried, drowning out the words spoken during the ceremony. My parents were deeply embarrassed.
    My mother’s parents visited us and wondered why it was that I was such a difficult baby. They suggested that my mother not pick me up when I began crying. ‘He’ll soon wear himself out,’ they said. But when my mother followed this advice my crying just became louder and louder.
    My parents called the doctor out on many occasions, but each time he would say I was suffering from colic and that I would get better soon. Colic is often referred to as ‘unexplained crying’, where the baby cries longer and louder than average and is harder to console. About one in five babies cry enough to meet the definition of colic. Doctors and scientists have been trying for decades to find the cause behind these babies’ excessive crying. The most recent idea is that most forms of colic are developmental and neurological, arising from the brain, rather than – as many parents assume – the baby’s digestive system. For instance, colicky babies tend to be unusually sensitive to stimulation and are likely to be vulnerable to sensory overload.
    The duration of my excessive crying – lasting well into my first year – is unusual, even for colicky babies. Recently, researchers studying the development of children with a history of prolonged crying in babyhood found that it may be a sign of future behavioural problems. Compared to children who cried normally as babies, at age five, children who had cried excessively were found to have poorer hand-eye coordination and to be prone to hyperactivity or present discipline problems.
    Fortunately, my development was fine in other areas: I was walking and saying my first words not long after my first birthday. One of the criteria for a diagnosis of Asperger’s is the absence of any significant delay in language (as opposed to more severe forms of autism where language can be considerably delayed or even non-existent).
    There followed a series of recurring ear infections, for which I was given antibiotics. Because of the pain caused by the infections, I remained a cranky, sickly and crying child well into my second year. Throughout all this time my parents, though frequently exhausted by me, continued to swing me in the blanket and rock me in their arms every day.
    And then, amidst the constant crying and illness, my mother discovered she was pregnant. My parents applied to the local council for a larger home and we subsequently moved to a flat close by. Lee, my brother, was born on a Sunday in May and he was the complete opposite to me: happy, calm and quiet. It must have been an immense relief to my parents.
    My behaviour, however, did not improve. At age two I began to walkup to a particular wall in the living room and bang my head against it. I would rock my body backwards and forwards, striking my forehead hard, repeatedly and rhythmically, against the wall. Sometimes I would bang my head with such force that I got bruises. My father would pull me away from the wall whenever he heard the familiar banging sound, but I’d run back and start all over again. At other times I went into violent tantrums, slapping my head over and over with my hand and screaming at the top of my voice.
    My parents called in the health visitor. She reassured them that head banging was a child’s way of soothing himself when he feels some kind of distress. She suggested that I was frustrated and under-stimulated and promised to help find a place for me at the local nursery. I was two and a half at the time. My parents were relieved when they received a phone call a few weeks later telling them that I had been accepted at the children’s nursery centre.
    With the new arrival, my parents had to reshape the daily routines that they had worked out together over the previous two years or so. Nursery became a big part of that change. Their days no longer revolved almost entirely