The lady with the coffee scares me

For the past few days Emily has been saying "The lady with the coffee scares me". I had no idea what she was talking about. It could have been me since I'm never without a coffee cup in the mornings and I can be scary. I asked her if she saw it on a movie or on her iPad to which I got no response other than her repeating that the lady scared her. It was brought up several times a day and I could tell she was visualizing whatever it was and was truly anxious about it.

One of the very first indicators that Emily was not "typical" was when she was around 8 months old. The way she looked at books was odd. She looked at them with a puzzled look and very closely. I took her to a pediatric ophthalmologist who assured me everything was fine. At the age of two her anxiety was so severe that it was debilitating for her. She was scared of everything. Mostly people. It was also at that time when in a crowd of people she was say "Where's mommy?". I would be holding her but she would scan the crowd and ask. I took her back to the ophthalmologist who again told me her vision was fine other than being slightly nearsighted. He did however mention face blindness. She was able to differentiate between family members and those we knew so we brushed it off, but the idea was there that she was not processing faces correctly. It was almost 2 years later before she was diagnosed with Autism.

Individuals with Autism process information differently. I knew that Emily was affected visually more than anything else. I still didn't know how she saw things, only that it was different and often scary for her. Many studies have been done on individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders and the face processing anomaly. The brain perceives faces in a way that makes it difficult for her to recognize the full face. It also makes it difficult for her to read emotions in others. This has affected her life in so many ways. While I can teach her to control her anxiety in relation to her fears I can't change the way her brain views things. It is one of the more difficult challenges I face as a mama to a kid on the spectrum.

Thanks for reading~
Jessica

And if you are wondering who the "lady with the coffee" was...