9 (THEME MUSIC) The real world is built for neurotypical people. It's built for a very specific way of wiring of a human being. I have very rarely seen a young person who is really into video games or fantasy that is not at the same time either living under some sort of disabled label or not accepted or bullied or` They're not accepted in real life, basically. A lot of people on the autism spectrum and the related ones, like dyslexia and dyspraxia and stuff, think visually or visually-conceptually or artistically or something like that. They need a higher reasoning for something, they need more engagement on something; they need room for the incredible intellect that they have stored in their little flesh sac to go nuts. I enjoy making wooden swords. If we wanna talk about feeling powerful, most of these kids are not physically active ` you know, they don't do sports, they don't do soccer ` but you put a sword in a kid's hand, and suddenly they feel powerful. I'm expecting this to go horribly wrong. (LAUGHS) It's ready to hand to a young boy who's just started at Mockingbird, and I'm gonna be one-on-one mentoring him as well. So this Thursday we'll start, and I'll teach him how to use this properly. It'll be good. (BIRDS SING) (KETTLE BOILS) Yeah, I'm 28, male, I'm originally from Canada. I'm married. I have two awesome children. How'd you sleep? Not too bad. (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Pretty good, actually. Mm! I love you. Big gamer, love fantasy and sci-fi. I do martial arts, I do medieval sword fighting, run my own business, so I'm an entrepreneur. Every meal you do this, don't you? I'm a mighty warrior here to shine light into darkness. (GENTLE MUSIC) When I was growing up, first, my parents were extremely happy. I was healthy, I was very intelligent. School's where that sort of thing started to go downhill. I didn't really like paying attention much, I didn't sit still. You couldn't really tell me what to do or change the plan because I got upset when that happened. And certainly, I can remember not fitting in or not getting along with people my age. So about 7 years old I sat in a room with a really nice lady and did, like, two or three hours' worth of these tests and assessments. And... (SNAPS FINGERS) that was it. Everything after that was different. (CRIES) What's goin' on? They were told that I was disabled, that I had an intellectual disability that affected concentration and focus. I was gonna have nearly an endless supply of challenges as I grew up. I was diagnosed with ADD with ADHD traits. Your sister's ready. She's circling us like a little shark. (LAUGHS) What are you doin'? Mwah! Here's your mum. Cuddles! Wow! I'll see you later. Boop! CHILD: Bye. Bye. See you later. (INTENSE, DRAMATIC MUSIC) 2015 I first got into re-enactment. Loved it from the first moment I did it, and it was like connecting to my history and being a part of something that's all this fantasy-related stuff, but then it was physical. Bjorn is a persona that I've created of a 10th-century Scandinavian warrior who, when he's not fighting, is a skald. And a skald is a mixture of a story-teller and a historian and an entertainer. He would definitely be autistic, if you were to assess and diagnose him. (SIMPLE FLUTE MUSIC) First time I met Jason I was, like, just, like, terrified. Cos I was like, 'What is he gonna be like? What is gonna happen? 'What if I say something wrong? What if he laughs at me?' (CHATS INDISTINCTLY) Well, you're going to try. (LAUGHS) Nah, poor Steve. It really started off like mentor-y, I guess, and then I think you just, you know, the more you're around someone, the more you get used to them and the more you open up to them. Ella is frickin' awesome, for a start. I have dyslexia, I have dyspraxia, I have mild Asperger's syndrome. I also have a little bit of OCD. Jason isn't just like a guy in a suit who's like, 'What's your problems?' He's like, 'I've been here and this is what I did. Don't do that. It's a bad idea. Stop.' Ready? Go. Go, the horde! Whoo-hoo! (LAUGHS, CHATS INDISTINCTLY) All right, ready? (LOW, INTENSE MUSIC) It's that whole thing with being able to escape what's going on and being a different person and not having to worry about whatever might be happening. It's that really self-confidence and self-empowering, which kids like me have a really tricky time coping with because we're told we're useless or we're dumb. So it's that thing of being able to escape whatever is going on. As a 7-year-old I felt horrible. Cos every 7-year-old just wants to fit in. No joints, no neck, and don't stab. 'It's something about our biology that we wanna be part of the pack, 'we wanna feel connected and valued as a community 'so that we can feel safe and then figure out who we are.' And I never really got that chance. And from that moment forward, I was the ADD kid or I was the disabled kid or I was the misfit or the outcast or whatever. Yeah, didn't feel great, actually, and I did not like being on medication. And I spent a lot of nights crying myself to sleep trying to figure out what it was. And in the end, I just` the only conclusion I could reach was that inherently I was a horrible person and that I was being punished for just who I was. Strike six. Flick. 'I was bullied basically every day of my life and often quite badly. 'I can remember a particular six-month period where this one group of kids' beat me up before school, all three breaks ` so lunch and two other breaks ` ad if they could get me, after school as well. Every day. I don't think a lot of people can understand what it is honestly like to go from the moment you wake up to the moment you grudgingly fall asleep utterly despising who you are, honestly thinking that you don't deserve to eat, or when people are bullying you, actually feeling a really weird sense of relief that someone else sees how horrible you really are and is doing something about it. And so I was sitting there thinking, 'What did I need?' when I was 14, when I was having all these troubles and struggling with depression and school and the expectation that I needed to pick a career path for the next 30 years and all that crap, and I was like, 'I needed someone who'd been through it,' who could sit there and go, 'Yeah, you're right. This sucks. But what are we gonna do about it? 'Let's figure something out.' So, how you been? Um, good. Good. I had, like, friends and stuff, but instead of hanging out with them at school and stuff, I just go to the library and read books all lunchtime and morning tea. I didn't really get that close to people. I just hung out with myself. So, Felix is one of those young gentlemen who has allowed society to convince himself that he's no good. And at the age of 12 was just the most loving, biddable, compliant, geeky, academic kid you could imagine. And then puberty happened. (CHUCKLES) Drive one, two, three, four. He became depressed and he wasn't doing his homework. He started having shutdowns and meltdowns. I had to face the fact that there was something big going on. So we self-referred to CAMHS up at Tauranga Hospital, and virtually in the waiting room one of the nurses there came up to me and asked me if I'd ever heard of Asperger's. It doesn't change me as a person. Like, I'm still the same` I'm still the same dude, like, but I just have another label. He got to a very, very low point and was actually at risk. So we had to change everything that we were thinking and pulled him right out of school, and he really needed time to recover from that. It's been three years. Has it? Yes. Ori` Not Origins; Inquisition came out 2014. Oh, wow. Thoughts changed from all these high hopes that I had for a really academic kid to actually just wanting one that was alive. I think you got smashed by that big guy. I did get smashed by that big guy. I imagine that hurt. Well, I'm dead now, so... The main thing, I think, for Felix to have Jason in his life, is to have that friend and also that sense of tribe and belonging and for Felix not to be isolated is really important. When I first met Jason, I was, like, real down in the dumps. I was, like, in a really bad space mentally, and I didn't really know what I was doing with my life. Please give him the point. Give him the point. Jason, they're taking the point. Jason, they're taking the point. All right. All right, can I end this on a high? 'When I first met him, he wanted to die. 'Like, "What do you wanna do, Felix?" "I wanna die." '"What are you gonna do tomorrow?" "I'll probably be dead."' Like, really depressed, really out of it. Honestly could not see a future. It was real bad, and having someone to, kind of, force me to leave the house instead of just being depressed and miserable in my room all day, it really helped a lot. (ELECTRONIC MUSIC) Video games aren't real, but the feelings and emotions that we get from them are. The part I loved about video games and that really hooked me into them was they were all about some destined hero. They were important. They were the only person in the world that was important, and they had to save the world. And I couldn't do that in real life. You know? I wasn't very good at soccer, I wasn't very physically fit or good at sports, didn't get the highest grades in school, the teacher never singled me out because I was good. And that... wears on a kid. But come home, take the backpack off, have a snack, say hello to my mum, watch Pokemon, go downstairs, power up the Sega Genesis and suddenly I'm important. And can you blame me for wanting to get lost in it? And most kids, I think that's why they do it. - (COMPUTER GAME BLEEPS) - That is not going as well as hoped. And so with the video games combating my depression and the anxiety and stuff with school, you know, I could go home and save lives. And saving their lives ` digital though they may have been, fake though they may have been ` it gave me a reason to live, weirdly. (COMPUTER GAME BEEPS) So, are you doing it? Like, what's your speech thing at? Uh, it's the networking for inclusion seminar. Picture this ` 18 years old, tiny little bit of stubble on the upper lip, skinny as a bone, weird hair, can't look you in the eye. Funny kid into all sort of weird stuff, definitely a virgin. So, like, total weirdo. Like, let's be perfectly honest. So the opening bit, is that below...? We kinda met each other, and I was on my OE and I went to England. And at the time, MSN was the thing, so we talked on MSN while I was in England. And then, kind of, the relationship formed there. And then afterwards I got a working holiday visa in Canada and went to Canada. For some insane reason ` or I thought it was an insane reason at the time ` this girl actually liked me (CHUCKLES) and wanted to hang out with me. Whatever. I wasn't gonna argue at the time. I had a girlfriend. It was really cool. I ran out of money and getting a bit homesick, and I was like, 'I'm gonna go home. Do you wanna come with me?' And he's like, 'Yeah, sure.' That's old enough to leave the house, pretty much, isn't it? Oh, that's not much... I was a mama's boy. I was a wuss, really. But I said, 'Sure, I'll come with you to this place I can't even find on a map.' (CHUCKLES) 'I've never even heard before.' Um, and, yeah, I got on the plane, moved here, and I've lived here ever since. I really enjoyed going to Mavora Lakes, actually. Mm. That was a highlight for me. That was our first wedding anniversary, wasn't it? Mm. Yeah. In 2014, I was working at a restaurant in Invercargill. We had, like, our busiest week of the year at the same time that the owner/operator and the manager were away in Dunedin. And I snapped. I put way too much pressure on myself, way too much stress, and I screamed at one of the employees in front of some customers, went into the back, had a shouting match with her again, put my fist through the wall and broke down crying in the back. So that was fun (!) A little legal thing later, I had to seek counselling. And we did some sort of questionnaire, whatever, and I was leaning more towards Asperger's than ADD. I was doing my nursing training and he was doing mental health stuff, and so I was learning a little about diagnosing and stuff, and when he had his outbreak, we thought, 'Oh, maybe it isn't ADD.' And so Lisa and I started doing a lot of research and looking into what Asperger's was. And we started looking at the traits, and it was like, high anxiety, difficulty sleeping, mood swings, resistance to change and adjustment, reliance on a schedule. It was all these things, and it was like, 'Holy (BLEEP), that's me.' Like, if you're gonna put a glove on, that one's gonna fit perfectly. And we started to be able to actually reassess the entire way I was living and changing the way my life was structured day to day and week to week so that the negative stuff didn't pop up as much. And over the years since that's happened, I've been able to drop the negative stuff enough that all this other stuff is starting to come out. And that's the cool stuff. That's the magic. I'm just separating out some wool to make it a bit thinner so it goes through the needle and threads easier. I'll use it to darn Jason's pants for his garb. One of the big misconceptions about autism is that autistic people are disconnected from their emotions or that they don't have them. Total bull(BLEEP). Somebody on the autism spectrum, we feel emotional changes more keenly. So if you get happy, we get super ecstatic. If you're sad, we're incredibly depressed. Like, it's this massive range of things. We're a lot more sensitive to it. When people say, 'I'm surprised that an autistic person can fall in love,' it's like, 'Well, why? Did you not think we're human?' It's layers. We feel love and compassion and kindness and sadness and anger and hatred. We're full human beings. If we wanna talk about saving lives, video games preserved my life. It kept me alive long enough so that I could meet Lisa. Because she saved my life. It's, I guess, the difference, again, with the medical view of putting somebody on life support and then actually curing whatever's wrong with them. She... She gave me a reason to live for so many years before I found one within me. (SWING SQUEAKS) Being a dad on the spectrum is interesting. Cos, like, in normal life, if the music's too loud I can turn the music off, which happens a lot. Or if I'm getting overwhelmed by sensory input, I can go into another room. With a baby, you can't really do that. You kinda have to be watching them all the time. Or at least aware of them and know where they are and make sure that they're safe. I don't know what it is. A counsellor I was seeing when Tay was born suggested because she's my offspring, that there's some sort of deep protective mechanism in my brain that counteracts the sensory overload and allows me to actually handle it. It's the same with, you know, the poop and the vomit and stuff. I don't really do poop. I don't even like it when I poop, to be perfectly honest. But when it's your own kid, it's weird, you just find ways of managing it. Ready, set, go! (CHATTERS) And the best thing ever is when I come home from work at the end of the day, and I hope the door and Taya will just run across the lounge screaming cos she's so happy to see me. She just has to launch herself at me and give me a hug, and there's nothing better than that. Nothing at all. (BABBLES) Hello, lucky. Go ahead. Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo! (LAUGHS) All right, you count Daddy. Say, 'One, two, three, go!' One, two, go. Whooo! (GROANS) (LAUGHS) (QUIRKY MUSIC) Creating a safe space for young people, a space where they can be themselves, where they can get what they need as far as community goes,... Morning, gentlemen. ...and then begin to build who they are. Not who society says they are, not who their parents wish they were, which, unfortunately, comes up often enough, not what would be ideal in a perfect world without disabilities, but who they are. And that community is essential for that. So that's why Mockingbird works so well, is it's because it's a safe, non-judgemental environment for the kids to be in where nobody's gonna make fun of them, nobody's gonna insult them, nobody's gonna, you know, hate them because they're the disabled kid. They can be them. The mask can come off, and they can just be them. It's neurodiversity. It's beautiful. Have you finished the modelling course? That's why I'm making this. (LAUGHS) Cool. Then I'm gonna do the animation bit, and then I'm gonna put the animation on to this. I'm guessing you're gonna animate that cylinder rolling down the... Hopefully. Cool. And you didn't reckon that it would look good. Well, it depends on the size of it. I usually do it way smaller because that's what I feel more comfortable with. Mm. He sees a future now. And maybe that doesn't sound big, but taking a kid from worse than what I was, and I was pretty bad, to... to even acknowledging one time out of five that his art is good and that he might actually be able to make a living selling it and that there is a future for him, like, that's all I can ever ask for from someone, to make that shift. Most of the time when I actually draw something that I actually tried to draw, I don't really draw anything of a particular subject. I just draw whatever my fingers make, and it just happens. Tell me about the troubles of being a young girl. Cos as you may have noticed, I have never been a young girl. That's very perceptive of you. Yeah, don't really understand what that's like. (LAUGHS) So, I think` I got my first cell phone when I was 16, so` And a lot of girls in my class, they were purposely trying to put themselves out like that. No idea why. Anyway. And I think that when you add in having all the dyslexia and ADHD and dyspraxia and dyscalculia and ADHD and all these things, it just kinda adds to the mountain. When I left college, I left cos of bullying and I wasn't being supported for my learning differences. And I was really, really sick. I was off for, like, seven and a half months, just not doing anything. She's another excellent example of why bullying and negative social interaction is really bad for people. She went through a number of schools when she was younger being bullied and bullied again and further bullied, often by the same girl. There was a lot of stuff going on that the school wasn't dealing with. ...dimension where there's, like, another world... Yeah. ...above the world to destroy. To get to the fantasy heaven, we went through another fantasy heaven, which I managed to make some eladrin mad. You upset that thing so fast. That's priceless. CARLEEN: I think this is why Felix isn't depressed, why he's so much happier and, yeah, it's been a really big deal. And not being pushed, not being forced into a place where he didn't belong and was really uncomfortable. You know, mainstream education and mainstream schooling just wasn't for him. And if I'd kept pushing him, it would've been a pretty grim result, yeah. Of that I'm really sure. Do you guys each wanna say who your character is, introduce them, your ideal date, whether or not you like walks on the beach or not. My character is Zilmon Beldeth. He is a half-drow rogue. He is 23 years old. His ideal date would probably be, like, a nice` like, the sun's setting, it's in a nice cafe. Well, he introduced me to D&D, which is really cool, and it's one of my favourite things, and it's really fun. I kind of enjoy that fantasy stuff cos, I don't know, it feels like another world. and especially with D&D, you can just do whatever you want and be whoever you wanna be. And just, I don't know, not deal with the pressures of modern society and instead deal with orcs or whatever, or evil wizards. Or vampires. Lots of vampires. Too many vampires. As everybody knows, I shall be your Dungeon Master for the day, so I will control everything that isn't you, except for the land-based kraken, which, as we all know, belongs to Cesar. Roll it again, come on. Let's see what you would get as a different one. (OVERLAPPING CONVERSATIONS) With Dungeons & Dragons, a lot of people will say, you know, games and stuff are a waste of time. But the kids that come to me, often they've been through counselling, they've been through CAMHS or CYFS, who have all done their best, but they haven't really made much of a shift in the kids. They're not listening, they're not engaged. I've had a couple come to me who were suicidal. They're not attacking us out of their own will. Like, if we kill the ants, it'll most likely stop` I was gonna say, it would break the` Yeah, probably. First Dungeons & Dragons session we ever did, they couldn't look at each other, they couldn't look at me, their heads were on the tables, they were mumbling, they were stupidly shy. And then now (CHUCKLES) they're bubbly and happy, they're laughing and engaging, they're completely different children. And I can't take credit for all of that. I'll take some of the credit. But creating that safe space and bringing this game into their awareness and letting them play it their way has allowed them to connect to who they are and has allowed them to come out of those shell that they've built. And it's amazing. It's absolutely breathtaking. You've rolled three nat 20s today. Yes, and I chose it, which means` So he can't do anything at the moment. CARLEEN: I don't know why. I knew that they would click, and they did. They're just like mates that hang out, and I love the rapid fire that goes on between them. They instantly know what the other one's thinking, they get each other. And that sense of community that I was talking about, what I really love is them joking about their own quirks. That's, um, another 14. It's probably changed my life quite a bit, having someone to talk to and stuff. He's basically being rebuilt. He's under construction, yeah. So it's exciting to see, and we don't really know what he's gonna turn out like. (LAUGHTER) 42. So you shoot a lightning bolt out of the rod of wonder. Oh! Oh, that's good. Please don't splice damage, please don't splice damage. OK, the lightning bolt strikes the ant thing straight in the chest. It explodes. 'Every one of them is brilliant, every one of them is amazing, 'and every one of them, I look forward to seeing the adults they'll become 'and the amazing human beings that they will grow into.' And every person is like that ` every single person. (HAUNTING, ECHOEY MUSIC) There's four things we need in life. We need to eat so that our body has energy; we need to drink, cos we're 75% water; and we need shelter from the elements. The one that most people overlook is the need for love and companionship. (MUSIC CONTINUES) Captions by Tracey Dawson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017