Asperger Syndrome- My childhood Part 1- Copyright Robert Fullarton

I was born, the youngest of three children with a seven year gap between myself and my older brother John and a nearly a ten year gap between myself and my sister Gillian. At times it has felt like I were the one and only child in a second family started late by my parents. I was raised in the Protestant faith, brought up in the boring austerity of the Church of Ireland in Dublin, encouraged to socialise in the cliques and the congregations of the youth clubs and various associations involved with and connected with the church and its members. I immediately knew that I did not fit in and found, the cold, sober Angloholic atmosphere of these associations to be too much for me and great anxiety came upon me even in those early days.

These churches are the antipathy of spiritual integration and understanding, often when they hold themselves so conservatively to old traditions and rituals that have no room for questioning, no depth nor beauty to human philosophy and religion. The everyday world of experience can instead remove us from the earnestness of the church and see the preciousness of life, reality and our power to make beauty come alive in this religious world. God reveals himself to man in unknown ways beyond immediate recognition and there are no club members but all are participants, candidates and workers in a world that proposes the question and the answer all before us. 

But indeed only a choice before the answer can utilise the truth before us, to open a sacred portal, to affirm a response, which is sacrosanct, and all engulfing around us.

I was a chubby baby, had a crop of beautiful white blond hair, cried incessantly for attention and certainly made life difficult for my mother and father at times.

My mother had spend much of her days, in dedication to feeding, caring, nursing and educating her three children, her cathartic care and loving radiance made her the perfect mother for a child like me. I can only describe my earliest moments and memories with precision, but I will tell you that I first felt complacency in life, that was the first thing I felt. My complacency was a state of joyous exploration for life. I spent two thirds of my time day dreaming and playing with my toys. 

I remember my first day of school strangely enough. I remember that I had to be coaxed in through the door and that my father had to take hold of me in front of the teacher so to encourage me to face the unusual sight of others playing in a messy room scattered with play doh, Lego blocks, crayons and story books. I only now do I fully realise that I had a very minute awareness of what was going on, who I was and who these other creatures were indeed. I found the atmosphere to be tough at first but I think I adjusted despite my poor social skills that had been picked up on by several of the children. 

My energy was unmatched, my frequent forays into the imaginative world of childhood made me look like a scatterbrain and some of the teachers were receptive to my poor grades and my lagging ability to comprehend the school curriculum.