Ladybugs: Autism, Empathy and Processing Grief

As a parent of a child on the Autism spectrum and as a teacher I have a difficulty when others report that students with autism/Autistic children lack empathy. I try to correct this faulty judgment when I have the opportunity to do so, by explaining that there really is not lack of empathy, nor any absence of the ability to feel this. There may however be a different way of processing or expressing the feeling, and also a challenge with understanding the perspective and therefore the experience of others. This is fundamentally different from the judgment that an individual lacks the capacity for empathy.

My son H has recently begun to process grief (in a way that is observable to me). It hit him hard at age 10 when his Tutor and Caregiver Roberta’s dog was sick and dying. It hit…