How the book house rules reflects upon how a boy in a family lives Essay

How the book house rules reflects upon how a boy in a family lives with asburgers and itellectual challanges - Essay Example In her all absorbing efforts to normalize the elder child, the younger one is thoroughly neglected and he grows up to be a rebel and a thief. The various Asperger syndromes have been clearly shown. The mother’s anguish is visible through her own words. She wants to be a good mother and neutralize her kid’s life as much as possible; still she grieves at each moment when she fails in her attempts. The brother of the AS kid also draws our sympathy in spite of the negative image created by him. He is very miserable in life with an absentee father, an abnormal brother, a busy mother and no money to fund his amusements. His soul cries out for love and happiness and to find out happiness he peaks into happy families. With the passage of time, he becomes bolder in his endeavors and starts house breaking in the absence of the owners and stealing stuff that his mother can’t afford. He feels burdened with having to look after his brother and irritated at having his needs me t before his own. While, the AS child is given all the facilities and care, the normal child is left to his devices. Thus, we find different people reacting in different manner towards Asperger Syndrome that starts from fear and shirking of responsibility (father), over protective attitude (mother), to a feeling of resentment and burdened (brother). House Rules also reflects on the inefficiency of the legal system when dealing with people facing some physical or psychological disability. The legal system is created on the basis of normal citizens and when an abnormal individual falls in its periphery then it become increasingly difficult to save his soul. The judiciary system has been inadequately created to mistrust all abnormal people. There is no word such as â€Å"abnormality† in their dictionary. They would deal with an AS person in the same way as an ordinary individual showing no empathy whatsoever. Thus, over and above the House Rules deals with the trauma of a suffer ing family that has a child with Asperger Syndrome and the inadequate justice system reigning in the country. Asperger syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder where the patient has difficulty in social interaction. The sufferer also show restricted and repetitive pattern of interest and behavior. This disorder is difficult to diagnose as the cognitive and linguistic development are preserved and are almost equal to a normal person. Hence, most of the time this disorder goes unnoticed. In fact, not many people are aware of this disorder and this is the reason that the sufferers do not get the empathy and treatment that they deserve. Jacob Hunt, the central character of the book suffers from this order and has to face several difficulties (besides the obvious ones) because of it. Jacob Hunt is an eighteen years old boy who lives with his mother, Emma Hunt and brother, Theo Hunt. His father had run away soon after Theo’s birth when he had been made aware of his first childâ€⠄¢s condition. Jacob is an intelligent individual with a very sharp mind but his drawback is that he is suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome and is hopeless at expressing himself and reading social cues. Jacob’s highly intelligent mind is revealed by his mother’s words in the first chapter itself: I’ve met so many parents of kids who are on the low end of the autism spectrum, kids who are diametrically opposed to Jacob,