Muddling Dreams and Reality?

1. Many people have dreams that seem real, or even in a few cases - more than real! Consider for instance nightmares, or the disappointment of waking up to reality. Although, "Life~is~but~a~dream" - is worthy of some consideration here.

2. Dreams are though in every case different levels of experience, and are as such real experiences, and this needs vey much to be respected and validated. Learning though to tell the difference between what is dreamt of and what is not - is a developmental process, and thus entirely natural.

3. But, a shared sense of reality is something that autistic people have great difficulty coping with. Most people for instance spend alot of time pretending socially to be other than they actually are, i.e. smiling politely when miseraable and so fourth, whilst autistic people tend to be themselves, and experience major difficulties attempting to be otherwise. So, in the social sense, a reality check can be nothing of the sort for autists, given that so many (autists and otherwise) have been consistently misled into believing that they are incompetant and negligent.

4. Hence it is, in the psycho-analytical sense, that dreams can be recognised as being compensations for societal conformity, or exclusion, and can give us clues or even clear indications of what may then or not be lacking in a person's life-experience.

5. Keeping diaries and dream diaries can be useful if the mistaking of abstract and concrete experiences becomes problematic. But, as stated before, this is a natural process of development, and each type of experience needs to be validated accordingly.

I hope this information proves helpful, and I wish you and your autistic eight year old all the very best - have a good one.

D.

1. Many people have dreams that seem real, or even in a few cases - more than real! Consider for instance nightmares, or the disappointment of waking up to reality. Although, "Life~is~but~a~dream" - is worthy of some consideration here.

2. Dreams are though in every case different levels of experience, and are as such real experiences, and this needs vey much to be respected and validated. Learning though to tell the difference between what is dreamt of and what is not - is a developmental process, and thus entirely natural.

3. But, a shared sense of reality is something that autistic people have great difficulty coping with. Most people for instance spend alot of time pretending socially to be other than they actually are, i.e. smiling politely when miseraable and so fourth, whilst autistic people tend to be themselves, and experience major difficulties attempting to be otherwise. So, in the social sense, a reality check can be nothing of the sort for autists, given that so many (autists and otherwise) have been consistently misled into believing that they are incompetant and negligent.

4. Hence it is, in the psycho-analytical sense, that dreams can be recognised as being compensations for societal conformity, or exclusion, and can give us clues or even clear indications of what may then or not be lacking in a person's life-experience.

5. Keeping diaries and dream diaries can be useful if the mistaking of abstract and concrete experiences becomes problematic. But, as stated before, this is a natural process of development, and each type of experience needs to be validated accordingly.

I hope this information proves helpful, and I wish you and your autistic eight year old all the very best - have a good one.

D.