The Importance Of Look Me In The Eye By John Elder Robinson

Look me in the Eye is a touching account of one person’s life growing up with autism. The author, John Elder Robinson was born in the 1950s, a time when autism was not often diagnosed and was not understood. He remembers his childhood as being lonely and painful. John grew up without a diagnosis and in an era time when he was just viewed as disrespectful, odd, and uncaring. He did not even find comfort in his own parents, being that he grew up being told that he would amount to nothing and would probably end up in jail. The surprising part of his story was that his father was an educated man who was a professor at some esteemed universities including The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “Look me in the eye” is a fitting title for his book because John heard this phrase repetitively throughout his childhood from his parents, family, teachers, and others in the community. He described looking at the floor when he heard these words, only making the individual angrier. John described many incidents when he would feel so uncomfortable and unable to form the words. Unable to make eye contact, he would often run from his father because he knew that he would be beat with a belt for “being disrespectful”. He was told many times that his lack of eye

In John’s mind, when approaching someone you haven’t seen in a while, he saw no sense in asking such questions. John couldn’t figure out how people come up with these questions and which ones do you ask at what times? His inventory of questions are limited and it is hard to gauge which ones are socially acceptable. When John utters the first thoughts that come into his mind, he often gets himself in trouble. An example is when someone looks bigger, a comment such as “you seem fatter than the last time I saw you.” He describes the feeling of his mouth spitting out the words faster than his brain realizes that such a statement is