The Small Outsider

While reading, I tried to put myself into the mother's position, David's mother. I felt numerous emotions came over me, but the main one was exhaustion. Every once in a while, David would just fight with his mother when she told tell him to sit or calm down. He would scream and scratch her, and it made her feel as if  there was no communication between a mother and her child. One day, they decided to go to the pool and Ellen, David's older sister, was so excited. She swam, kicked, and splashed and was far away from David.  I also learned that David didn't want to meet anyone else at the pool because when children came over, he began to get upset and splash at them. His mother tried her best to tell the children to leave David alone but they wouldn't listen. Then, one child splashed back at David. David screamed and began banging his head against the floor. His mother knew it was time to go home and called Ellen to come over. Ellen was upset, she didn't want to leave the pool, but she knew she had to. She was worried about her younger brother. David apparently didn't want to go home either. He began to scream and he clung onto the rungs of the pool as his mother and Ellen tried to pull him off so they could go home. People at the pool began to watch and stare in shock. Ellen felt even worse, because people were staring at her and they didn't understand the condition David was in. David's mother decided that people should know about autistic children so she and her friends decided to write a book about little David called, "The Small Outsider."