Am I Invisible?: Things I Wish Teachers Knew

By Murphy Lynne

"Am I Invisible?" is a book for many audiences! Educators who want to do better for all kids who walk a different path (aka. the spectrum road), kids who are on that path and their parents. "Am I Invisible?" takes you on a heartfelt and brutally honest journey of one child's view through school as a child on the autism spectrum. Being diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified), Depression and Anxiety. The author Murphy Lynne, knows all too well the obstacles, challenges, inspiration and celebrations that she encountered along the way. Take this journey with her and come out a better teacher, parent and student who knows they aren't alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jan 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662901775

Book preview

Don’t look away! Don’t ignore those kids that are harder to connect with. While these kids may not want to be in the spotlight, no one, and I mean NO ONE, truly wants to be invisible. A smile can take the right child through an entire day!

It is seventh grade, and I am walking into the cafeteria for the one hundred and seventh time this year. It is the one hundred and seventh time that I want to be anywhere but here. It is the one hundred and seventh time that my stomach is in a knot. It is the one hundred and seventh time that my heart is racing. It is the last place I want to be. It is the worst part of my day. I see all of the kids joking with each other, pushing each other, having fun, talking. How do they do that? I wish I could do that.

I stand in line, looking down at my feet, the back of the kid’s head in front of me, looking anywhere except in someone else’s eyes. I get my food and make my way through the line. I am good with this taking a long time. The longer it takes, the longer I have until the real terror of finding a place to sit. The actual worst part of the day.

I go through the line and put in my lunch number without a word to anyone, including the lunch ladies, and they don’t really say anything to me either. It is time. My heart is racing. I hate this more than I can say. I turn to see everyone at their tables. No one makes eye contact with me; it feels intentional, although it probably isn’t. I want to run, but I don’t. I want to leave, but I do not (I am not allowed). I want someone to give me a smile or wave me over, the way I see them do to others, but they don’t. Instead, I sit at the nearest empty table. It is quick. It is safe. No one will look at me, like, Why is she sitting here? I won’t have to make conversation. I can just be, even if it feels bad. I can get through this. Twenty more minutes. I can do this.

There are teachers in the room. Supervisors—do they notice me? Do they see me? Am I actually invisible?

Who are you? Are you a kid who wants to be invisible? Are you a kid who feels invisible but does not want to be? Are you a kid who feels trapped in the cycle and does not know how to escape to be seen and heard?

Are you a teacher? Have you ever noticed the students who look like they want to be invisible? I was one of those students. For a long time, I thought being invisible would make things easier. School was hard for me, socially and academically. Making myself invisible would make it better, right? Wrong, as it turns out. It took years to find out how wrong that assumption was.

When I figured out that being invisible wasn’t great, I didn’t know how to change it. As a student, I was incredibly vulnerable. I needed teachers—and good ones! Throughout my education, I had some great ones, some good ones, and some that truly failed me. I felt a sense of obligation to write this book, not only for teachers but for those students who have not yet found their voice. I remember I so badly wished that my teachers had this information, because maybe then my story would have turned out a little differently. This is what I wish teachers knew throughout my years spent in school as a kid who was high-functioning on the autism spectrum, introverted, and with the inevitable anxiety and depression that followed.

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess a tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate, hurt, or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

Haim Ginott – Author, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers, 1972

When I first saw this quote, the words were taped on the wall of a day-care center I worked at. It spoke to me with such force that I felt as if there was fire surging throughout my whole body. The little girl inside of me attempted to yell as loud as she could because those words were what she so fiercely ached to speak. Those words are what this book embodies. The truth that deserves to be spoken and which should be recognized as a catalyst for understanding. Most importantly, my hope is that this book leads to the change that could occur through these powerful words and my own truth. It provides me with an immeasurable amount of hope not only for teachers but for the students who I know are sitting alongside me.

I have always loved to write; it became an outlet in which I began to express the deepest parts of myself. Writing many blog posts, poetry, and just being the average journaler, I had a voice. A voice that I never could express in any other form besides pen and paper. Originally, I did not plan to explain the backstory of how and why teachers or school affected me as deeply as they did. I soon realized this is a story, whether it be mine or someone else’s, that I believe teachers and those who don’t quite fit in need to hear. My story is not sunshine and rainbows, nor is it all darkness. I have amazing parts that I am proud of, as well as dark parts that took me a long time to not be ashamed of.

This is the reality that happens to students like me. I believe teachers need to be more aware of the effects their words and actions have and the domino effect that follows. My goal is to talk about some of the stereotypes surrounding students like me and destigmatize them. Let’s talk frankly. This book is also for me to feel a sense of peace, confronting my difficult time in school while hiding behind a pen.

After graduating high school, I spent a lot of time reflecting. Reflecting on everything that I have gone through, inside and outside school doors. Graduating was more than receiving a diploma or passing all of my required classes; it symbolized a journey that I fought like hell to get through. During that time of reflection, I got an overwhelming urge to write. I felt as though I could not keep everything that I had learned inside; I had to let it out for others to hear. This is my way of expressing my voice, the best way I know how.

Teachers can change a child’s story.

This starts with INTENTIONAL CONVERSATIONS. Have them frequently, with eye contact and genuine tone. Keep up this consistent effort—it is worth it—even if you are uncomfortable at first because students don’t respond in the typical way. Teachers truly seeing students makes it more possible for other students to accept one another!

As early as when I was in the womb, I have always been somewhat of an experiment. I started in a petri dish, an odd thing to envision, but it is, in fact, true. My mom still has the dish that I started in when she went through in vitro fertilization. I grew in this dish—eight cells to twelve cells to thirty-two cells. Three embryos were worthy of being placed in my mom’s uterus for a real chance at life. Not saying the other two weren’t tough enough, but let’s just say I am not a triplet. Thank God I’m not a triplet, for my parents’ sake.

I was the embryo that survived—a sole survivor, you could say. This seems to be true for the first part of my life—alone but surviving. I am and have always been a puzzle that no one can seem to find the correct pieces to. After all it took to conceive me, I was born three months premature, at twenty-six weeks’ gestation. My mother had preeclampsia, a condition causing dangerously high blood pressure, and the only cure was to deliver.

I was born on August 13, 1998, weighing one pound, eight ounces, and equivalent to the length of a ruler. I spent the next three months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), fighting to make a statement that I was here to stay. From birth, I was very strong-willed and determined, from graduating out of the NICU to finally learning how to walk and talk, to fighting my way through my teenage years. I was fighting to make a statement that I was enough exactly as I am. Something that I doubted very deeply along the way, many times.

I had some level of services from birth, such as occupational, physical, and speech therapy, helping me learn how to suck from a bottle, with speech, and with fine and gross motor skills. I began preschool at the age of three and stayed in that classroom for three years. The last two years, I grew a relationship with my teacher, Miss Julia, and was very close to her, as close as a three-year-old gets. My parents treated me like a normal child because, for all they knew, I was. They knew there were some unique qualities, such as my weird obsession with lining up my Disney Bear in the Big Blue House figurines on repeat for hours and completely losing my mind if one got out of place.

I had a strong aversion to textures. For example, I loved my family pet kitty but only pretended to pet him because the feel of the fur would send me into shivers and chills, breaking out into what my parents called straight arming. Straight arming was something I involuntarily did to show that I was unhappy when things didn’t go my way.

I also had sensory issues that caused a need for my parents to brush my hands and arms to desensitize me. Picture brushing a dog to tame its shedding. My parents did this with a surgical scrub brush. Eventually, a question was posed to them that stuck in the back of my parents’ minds until I was officially diagnosed. My preschool teacher asked my mom after she picked me up one day if they had ever considered testing me for Asperger’s Syndrome. Miss Julia believed it was more than the developmental delays often seen from my premature birth.

My mom was familiar with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome, as she was an elementary school principal. She respectfully took the feedback but told me years later that they didn’t proceed with testing because there was nothing that she would do differently with me, whether I was diagnosed on the autism spectrum or not. They would make accommodations but did not think they needed a diagnosis to do so. I do not blame my mom for this, because no parent wants to believe there is something wrong with their child, but part of me does wonder if having that diagnosis earlier in my childhood would have made a positive impact in the school environment. My mom, in hindsight, has since shared with me that not getting the diagnosis earlier remains one of her biggest regrets. A diagnosis makes a difference in a teacher’s ability to understand the challenges a child may face and therefore address them in the correct way.

Until fourth grade, I attended the same elementary school where my mom worked. My mom became the head leader in school and at home. Those couple of years were the best experiences I have ever had in school, and I still remember them fondly. I had a handful of good friends and had a really good connection with my teachers, which may only have been because I was the principal’s daughter, but nonetheless, I felt special. I felt as if they actually cared about what I had to say.

Looking back, I