People with autism spectrum disorder can present so differently that a common refrain is: “If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism.” Yet, there are often startling similarities.
For one thing, children with autism can perseverate, or focus asocially, on feats of mechanical engineering. I’m referring to stuff we all encounter every day without much thought.
A common example is subway systems, a phenomenon front-line transit workers are well familiar with. They see it when these kids are dragging their parents on joy rides to nowhere or asking them technical questions so complex that they are stumped. Those interactions and the conversations those kids have around trains are a part of their atypical but still useful early socialization; it’s how life skills and civic participation can be introduced into their different worlds.
