A Different Childhood
4 hrs. 53 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Iris Johansson
Author
Iris Johansson
Narrator
Alexander Vetrov
Narrator
Alexander Vetrov
Description
In Iris Johansson’s book, the world of an autistic child is described from the inside, based on her own experience. But the uniqueness of Iris’s story does not end there. It is also the story of an extraordinary parental experience: Iris’s father, a Swedish farmer, understood his daughter’s problems without any professional help. Thanks to his love, attentiveness, and responsiveness, Iris, who had been a child with “severe communication impairments,” managed to overcome them. She became a psychologist who advises teachers and parents.
Additional information: The book is intended for a wide range of readers. It will be especially interesting to parents and specialists working with children with emotional and volitional disorders.
Additional information: The book is intended for a wide range of readers. It will be especially interesting to parents and specialists working with children with emotional and volitional disorders.
About the author:
Iris Johansson (Iris Johansson, 8.04.1945) is a Swedish psychologist. Her case is unique: Iris’s father, a simple Swedish farmer, brought his daughter out of the autistic world on his own. But most importantly, she remembered very well the reality in which she lived until the age of 12 and was able to describe it in the book “A Different Childhood.” Thanks to examples like Iris, it became clear that autistic people, with the right approach, can live in society quite normally. If a child’s autism is diagnosed in time and an attempt is made to teach them at least the basics of communication, the result can be unique — for example, a talented psychologist who understands the subject perfectly.
Iris did not know how to dress, wash herself, go to the toilet, or brush her teeth, and she did not see much sense in these procedures. The process of teaching his daughter the simple skills of eating took farmer Johansson many years: Iris ate her first sandwich by herself at the age of seven.
Her father made Iris constantly look him in the eyes so as not to lose contact, patiently explained that she should not sniff the objects around her, and that it was better simply to look at them or touch them with her hands.
Iris started regular school at the age of 9, but for the first six months she heard only many singing voices and saw colored words whirling around the room. The teacher tried to persuade her father to transfer the girl to a specialized institution. In the fifth grade Johansson found a teacher who, despite her autism-typical dyslexia and inability to answer questions, stood beside her and explained the lesson content to her in detail, then wrote down her thoughts.
When Iris entered the Stockholm Institute of Education, communication with teachers was built on the same principle: she spoke, they wrote it down.
By the age of 20, having become a blonde beauty, she learned from her parents that girls were supposed to have romances. Not really understanding how this was done, Iris approached kissing couples, studied them carefully, and then rehearsed in front of a mirror. Later she married and gave birth to a daughter, but felt no maternal feelings toward her. “Fortunately,” Iris writes, “I had a good husband and kind household members who took care of the girl.”
This story seems to show that love and friendship, like brushing one’s teeth, can be broken down into several simple actions and practiced until they become automatic. But Iris still, now in her sixties, does not know what “common sense” and “conscience” are.
In the mid-1990s, at the invitation of the Center for Curative Pedagogy, Iris Johansson came to Moscow; among those who met with Iris was the Center’s employee Nadezhda Morgun. “To a person who does not know that Johansson is autistic, she would seem completely normal,” Morgun says. “But in Moscow Iris absolutely wanted to buy a Pavlovo Posad shawl, and when she was taken to a shop and the saleswoman laid out a dozen shawls in front of her, she chose them not by color, but by smell.”
Iris did not know how to dress, wash herself, go to the toilet, or brush her teeth, and she did not see much sense in these procedures. The process of teaching his daughter the simple skills of eating took farmer Johansson many years: Iris ate her first sandwich by herself at the age of seven.
Her father made Iris constantly look him in the eyes so as not to lose contact, patiently explained that she should not sniff the objects around her, and that it was better simply to look at them or touch them with her hands.
Iris started regular school at the age of 9, but for the first six months she heard only many singing voices and saw colored words whirling around the room. The teacher tried to persuade her father to transfer the girl to a specialized institution. In the fifth grade Johansson found a teacher who, despite her autism-typical dyslexia and inability to answer questions, stood beside her and explained the lesson content to her in detail, then wrote down her thoughts.
When Iris entered the Stockholm Institute of Education, communication with teachers was built on the same principle: she spoke, they wrote it down.
By the age of 20, having become a blonde beauty, she learned from her parents that girls were supposed to have romances. Not really understanding how this was done, Iris approached kissing couples, studied them carefully, and then rehearsed in front of a mirror. Later she married and gave birth to a daughter, but felt no maternal feelings toward her. “Fortunately,” Iris writes, “I had a good husband and kind household members who took care of the girl.”
This story seems to show that love and friendship, like brushing one’s teeth, can be broken down into several simple actions and practiced until they become automatic. But Iris still, now in her sixties, does not know what “common sense” and “conscience” are.
In the mid-1990s, at the invitation of the Center for Curative Pedagogy, Iris Johansson came to Moscow; among those who met with Iris was the Center’s employee Nadezhda Morgun. “To a person who does not know that Johansson is autistic, she would seem completely normal,” Morgun says. “But in Moscow Iris absolutely wanted to buy a Pavlovo Posad shawl, and when she was taken to a shop and the saleswoman laid out a dozen shawls in front of her, she chose them not by color, but by smell.”
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