Hidden Gem of a Movie

I just got finished watching a great movie called Mozart and the Whale. I highly recommend it.

My daughter works with a young man who loaned her this DVD that I just finished watching. It is one of the most touching movies I have seen this year, especially as I have two high functioning autistic children.

Actually they are young adults; our son is 22 and learning to make his way in the world. He has a job and drives a car (a truck his grandfather gave him). He interacts with people much more easily on-line than he does in person, but this movie gives me hope that some day there may be a woman out there that will be able to see him for the wonderful person that he is.

Our daughter is 18 and will graduate from High School this year. She is creative in many ways. She has an amazingly inventive thought process which leads to beautiful essays, everyone says so. She made such an impact on her freshman special education teacher that now that teacher has a new baby daughter with the very same name as our daughter, how cool is that?

Our daughter will probably be able to go on to college in a structured and supportive environment, and we have found such a program, but we have decided that she needs a year off to get ready, so next year she will be staying home, working part time somewhere and learning how to balance a checkbook and manage the transit system and live in the world a bit. Besides that, the College with the best support for autistic young adults is five hours away from here, I need a year before I am ready to have her move that far away. I don't want to suffer from separation anxiety.

So, if you can find this movie at your local video store or library I highly recommend it. It is the closest approximation to the world of High Functioning Autism that I have ever seen. You may realize after you see this movie that you know someone who is high functioning autistic.

Pax