Lars and the Real Girl is my favorite movie. I’ve actually witnessed a similar situation play out in real life. A friend’s autistic son had zero engagement with other children until he got a bird plushy he considered real and his son. People would address the bird as if it were a real child and my friend’s son would speak for the bird. “Birdie says hi back.” Birdie was his entrance to lower stakes engagement with others. Twenty five years later, he still believes Birdie is a real person, people still engage with the father/son days, AND he also engages with and has direct relationships with others; he’s not merely a mouthpiece for Birdie. It’s a beautiful way our community accepted a child for who he was, engaged with him on terms that made him feel safe, and gave him the social space to grow at his own pace. I live that a film captures Stine of the magic that can happen when a community embraces and values people as they are.
![Are HSP Just Autistic People? [CC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7alXDsksmik/mqdefault.jpg)
Lars and the Real Girl is my favorite movie. I’ve actually witnessed a similar situation play out in real life. A friend’s autistic son had zero engagement with other children until he got a bird plushy he considered real and his son. People would address the bird as if it were a real child and my friend’s son would speak for the bird. “Birdie says hi back.” Birdie was his entrance to lower stakes engagement with others. Twenty five years later, he still believes Birdie is a real person, people still engage with the father/son days, AND he also engages with and has direct relationships with others; he’s not merely a mouthpiece for Birdie.
It’s a beautiful way our community accepted a child for who he was, engaged with him on terms that made him feel safe, and gave him the social space to grow at his own pace. I live that a film captures Stine of the magic that can happen when a community embraces and values people as they are.