Melissa WildeSPED 334110/28/2014

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TimeBy Mark Haddon, published in 2003

The book centers around a boy named Christopher, who is 15 years old. He is a British

boy who is living with Asperger’s Syndrome. He grows up in a house with his mother and father,

until he is led to believe his mother has died (even though she has simply left her husband for

another man because she is frustrated with her life and dealing with Christopher) approximately

2 years before the story takes place. Although he struggles to connect socially or empathize with

anyone, his closest relationships seem to be with his teacher at his specialized school, Siobhan,

and his father who has worked very hard to accommodate their lifestyle to Christopher’s needs.

The key behaviors that this book displays are Christopher’s inability to make sense of

feelings, emotions, and figures of speech. This often results in him saying off-putting or strange

things to his neighbors or classmates. He also has some extreme sensory issues, being

overwhelmed by new locations and large groups of people, though he finds comfort in figures of

authority such as teachers and policemen. The final major thing we see he cannot fathom is the

concept of lying. Since he cannot understand why a person would lie to save another’s feelings

from being hurt, Christopher tells it like it is all of the time—and is beyond upset when others do

not do the same. Christopher does exhibit extraordinary calculative skills and other math

abilities, allowing for him to make sense of the world in a highly factual and logical manner.

Some of the necessary accommodations in Christopher’s life include not having to touch

or hug people; he and his father come up with a hand signal to substitute hugging each other.

Christopher has different levels of good and bad days that he self-monitors before he gets to

school, and once he gets there what he does throughout the day is based on this self-assessment

Melissa WildeSPED 334110/28/2014on his mood. For example, when he is having a “black day”, he sits in the corner of the

classroom and reviews math, which gives him comfort, whereas on a good day he will

participate in class activities and talk to others in the school. In general throughout the book,

those who are closest to him know not to fight him on the little things if it will make for a

generally smoother day. Still, those who are unfamiliar to Christopher will provoke him in

certain ways that have the capability to make any day instantly bad.

Because of Christopher’s complete disregard for human emotion (besides the facts about

emotions he has been taught in school), those around him are frequently exasperated by the way

he ignores pleasantries and gets to the heart of the truth right away. His father, who is seen

earlier in the book and the person most patient with Christopher, becomes very upset with

Christopher when he exposes that his father had lied about his mother’s death. The even bigger

frustration for the father is his inability to get across to Christopher why a parent would lie about

something like this. Those who aren’t aware of Christopher’s disability are off-put, but can also

be frightened or angry simply because they don’t understand where his behavior is coming from.

As a reader, we sympathize with Christopher as we see how he struggles to understand

why people smile, cry, or express other feelings that he has to learn to recognize through a chart;

however, we also can find it very hard to connect to this first person narrative when emotion is

such an intrinsic part to how the majority of us live.

The impact on Christopher’s family is significant. Christopher’s mother leaves her

husband for another man simply because the promise of a new life that would be easier—

meaning without the everyday struggle of Christopher—was too good to pass up. Christopher

even recognizes that his mother had less patience for him when she was around the house.

Melissa WildeSPED 334110/28/2014However, we see this relationship begin to grown and heal when Christopher travels on his own

to see her in London. She acknowledges that she was not doing her best job before, but chooses

to move back to their original town and be part of Christopher’s life again, even if her marriage

was irreparable. The other major reaction we see to Christopher’s disability is Mr. Shears

(Christopher’s mother’s lover), who gets drunkenly violent with Christopher (arguable the most

severe response to frustration with his disability), inspiring Christopher’s mother to leave him.

What I took away from this book is how complex and different the mind of someone on

the autism spectrum can be, and how many things that come second nature to many have to be

explicitly taught to these children. I also felt that self-assessment was a useful tool to help decide

what the best course of action will be for that day in the classroom. Finally, knowing the triggers

of a student and what calms them down best can make or break how you treat a student with any

disability, particularly those on the autism spectrum.