How My Brother With Autism Impacted My Life
Growing up with my brother, I had no idea what Autism was till I reached junior high. Looking back at my younger self, I realize how dumb I was for not being educated even at the slightest of my own brother. In the elementary school I went to, I’ve never seen at least one other student with autism or down syndrome. Perhaps they went to a specific school in the district or they were just in rooms isolated from everyone. Though it is a really young age to learn, but my elementary school never spoke a word about these types of disorders.
My parents telling me the story on how they found out my brother had autism was definitely the hardest to hear, it still hurts to hear today. My older sister was around seven years old, I was five years old, and my brother was three. At three years old or maybe even before, a baby starts to develop basic words or short sentences, my brother never talked or cried when something was wrong as a baby. When my brother started crawling, my parents would call my brothers named but would notice that my brother would never respond or ever even notice that someone had called his name. This is when they decided to go to the doctors to see if it was normal for my brother to be like that at age three, but they were only to be told that my brother has autism. Of course at age five I couldn’t know how my parents felt about learning that, but now at age fifteen I can understand how heartbreaking it is.
My brother happens to be only a grade behind me, so when I was in seventh grade, he was in sixth. In seventh grade I always saw my brother in the hallway with his class who had students just like him, male and female, which always made me extremely happy because his teachers were amazing teachers. Most of my friends never would of known that I was related to him if I have never said that he was my brother. I never really told my friends about my brother’s disorder until eighth or this year because I was scared that they start making fun of me. But today I know that if a friend doesn’t accept what my brother has, then I shouldn’t be friends with them.
In seventh grade was when I really started to educate my self on autism, I started to read articles online about children with autism, a bit of books, started wearing blue shirts for autism awareness month and I even temporarily dyed my hair blue! I realized that no one had a problem with me supporting children with disorder like those. After I started supporting autism, was when my middle school and high school softball team started to play games and fundraise for autism.
The things children with autism say are quite amazing! I’m fifteen and I still can’t spell elephant but my brother can (yes, he just helped me with that). The amount of intelligence they have is absolutely great and not many people see it. There is a stigma associated with children with autism that they are considered “weird” or “annoying”, I believe this is happening because of the lack of the uneducated people or maybe even lack of social skills. Meeting people with autism or any disorder is actually a great thing to do and they just so happen to be the nicest people. Personally, I have three friends with autism and they are the sweetest people I know! They’re just like us and deserve to be treated like any other human, they just have differences but we all do!
Today my brother is thirteen years old and oh how I love him to death. Though I’m in a different school because I’m in my freshmen year of high school and he’s in his final year of junior high, I still have my eye on him! I’m happy to have the type of my parents, an older sibling, and myself who carefully take care of him and treat him like he was a gift and not a curse, which is what any child with autism should feel like. No parent should feel like giving birth to a child like my brother is they’re fault, because it wasn’t, having this type of child is truly beautiful, and I’m glad my parents never gave up on my brother because it would of drastically changed me and my older sisters goals and future career. Without him, my sister wouldn’t be going to college and major in a special education, and I possibly wouldn’t want to major in art to create animated films for children around the whole world, disability or not.
Frank Jr Uglialoro (right), Julianna "Jules" Uglialoro (middle), Jenny Uglialoro (left), Parents (top)
