Boy’s fascinating book offers insight into living with Asperger’s syndrome
BRIGHT Tyler Inman looks set to change the world. Like many ten-year-olds, he dreams of space, time travel and being a scientist.
The difference is that Tyler has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism which causes sensory processing difficulties.
It means he struggles with loud noises, bright colours, sarcasm and anything he can’t take literally.
He taught himself to read when he was just two years old and began to have complex conversations as a toddler. But life hasn’t been easy for Tyler. He spent most of Year Five working alone in a corridor rather than in a classroom with his peers.
That isolation led him ‘nervous breakdown’.
He stopped communicating, only making noises and rocking on the floor – it lasted for almost a year. But he could still write. So, Tyler wrote how he felt about the world, what was going on for him, his night terrors and the isolation he found so all-encompassing that it to have a had caused him to ‘power down’ due to depression.
Tyler’s story has now been published in a book called Invisible Me by Tyler Inman, age 10 and eleventwelfths.
It offers a rare insight into his remarkable mind and charts, with heartbreaking detail, what it feels like to be brilliant yet invisible at the same time.
“I think differently to other dren,” says Tyler, from Solihull.
“This should not mean I have to learn on my own in a corridor – how can you be punished for being you?
“I felt that I had failed, that there was no room for a child like me in this world.
“I stopped communicating and could only speak in a language I had invented myself, which was a series of unrecognisable syllables. It was my way of letting my mum know I was powering down.
“I was almost robot-like, as slowly, one by one, my abilities switched off and no longer worked.
“I felt like an odd key in a world where I would never be able to open any of the locks.
“Where would there be a place for me? Where do children like me chil- learn? Am I that different? I no longer desired a book the second I got out of bed, nor did I care about maths. The core of who I was and what drives me was gone. I didn’t function, simple tasks became arduous.
“I remember rocking on the floor; I remember shouting out sounds; I remember my mum sleeping on the floor next to me.”
Tyler’s mother Tracy felt like she had lost her son because he became so difficult to reach.
“For Tyler, education and learning is the most important thing and to not be able to do that was like not being able to function,” she says.
“He knew he saw the world differently to other people and so the more isolated he became.
“He went from being able to talk about string theory and gravitation to only making sounds and rocking.
“I can’t begin to say how difficult it was.
“For a while I thought son. I didn’t know how come back.
“He couldn’t read any more, and this was the boy who used to never put a book down. It was incredibly difficult to watch.”
In the midst of his anguish, Tyler lost his grandmother, who lived with him and his mother and brother Haydn, who is also autistic.
The family went for bereavement counselling with Marie Curie, and the counsellor began working with Tyler.
Additional support was put in place and, through writing down his feelings, Tyler began to return to his old self.
“Losing his grandma was his first real loss and this was a massive challenge for him,” says Tracy.
“The support we have received from Marie Curie has been amazing.
“Every penny raised goes to helping not only the person but also the whole family that comes in with them. I’d lost my he would
“They have worked as a team to restore Tyler’s self-esteem and help him see there’s a place for him in the world again.
“There didn’t seem to be any help like that available for Tyler on the NHS, or we would have been on a waiting list for ages to get it. “That thought is terrifying.” Tracy can remember clearly moment she realised her son coming back to his old self again.
It was when mPowr Publishing told him they wanted to publish his story, the words he’d written as a result of working with Marie Curie’s children and young people’s counsellor Ann Scanlon.
“Tyler spoke to me and said, ‘Mum, I’m actually really proud of this’,” she recalls. “I could see the expression on his face again.
“He’d been blank for so long and I thought ‘Yes, you can do this, he’s coming back!’
“And the more he wrote, the more he came back. It was very cathartic for him.
“As a mum you always believe in your child, you know they have a gift to give.
“Now, I feel Tyler will reach his full potential.” the was
He went from being able to talk about string theory and gravitation to only making sounds and rocking Mother Tracy