An ASD Birthday.

Every child always greatly anticipates celebrating their birthday. Understandably so, after all birthdays are usually fun, exciting and a time one can look forward to gifts and cake. It only happens once per year so it’s definitely worth celebrating the yearly milestones and also a great opportunity to socialize with family and friends. However, for a child on the autism spectrum it could be quite the opposite.

My son is twelve years old and still has no real concept of what a birthday is. Though he usually gets a cake with candles which he enjoys blowing out, he is by no means cognisant of the fact that the candles on the cake represents his age or is equivalent to the number of years he has been around since his birth. This of course is something a neurotypical 12 year old would be aware of. My son therefore does not look forward to birthdays since he has no concept of what a birthday is.

With every birthday new milestones are met and celebrated. For some children with autism some milestones take much longer to hit or are never met at all. Some children with autism remain the same age mentally for years in comparison to neurotypical children who mature mentally with age. While the parents of an eleven or twelve year old might be celebrating transitioning from Elementary to Junior High School, the parents of a severely autistic 11 or 12 year old could in contrast be celebrating their child being able to identify letters in the alphabet.

While birthday parties are usually fun for the celebrants, for a child with autism it could be easily overwhelming or in my son’s case something he is totally oblivious to. Though he may see and recognize familiar faces at his birthday party he is completely oblivious to the fact that all these people are there to celebrate 'his birthday' at ‘his party.’ He moves about the room hardly ever interacting with anyone because of his social awkwardness doing only what interests him. That could be playing with a toy or randomly poking his finger into the cake to lick the icing since in his twelve years of getting a birthday cake he has NEVER really cared about actually eating any of the cake itself.

So you’re probably wondering why bother buying a cake? Well for starters no one goes to a birthday party not expecting cake. So even if he doesn’t taste or eat any, his guests are looking forward to it. More importantly though is the look, the smile, the excitement on his face when he sees the candles being lit and the time comes for him to blow them out. This is the only part of his birthday he actually enjoys and takes the time to participate. In fact he enjoys blowing out candles to the point where he feels obliged to blow out the candles on other people’s cake when he’s at someone else's birthday party.