Parenting in Curious Incident

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When I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I found myself getting very frustrated and upset with Christopher’s parents in the novel.  Parenting in itself is certainly not easy, and having a neuroatypical child with special needs adds further emotional and practical difficulties, however, Christopher’s parents were often cruel and insensitive.  I was shocked at the treatment of Christopher by his parents over the course of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  

I volunteer every week at HALTER, a therapeutic equestrian center in Spartanburg.  Through this program, I’ve had the opportunity to work one on one with handicapped and neuroatypical children, many of whom are on the autistic spectrum.  Although it is definitely challenging at times to work with young individuals who may get intensely focused on inappropriate things during a session or can get very overwhelmed, it never helps to get frustrated and tense with a child with a disability.  One of the autistic little boys I work with gets stressed and overwhelmed very often during the sessions.  I’ve worked with him for two years, so I know him very well and can help calm him down, but newer volunteers get frustrated and snap at him, which only upsets him more.  If you’re patient and speak calmly, he settles down rather quickly.  In Curious Incident, Christopher’s father fails to react calmly and rationally when dealing with his son’s disability.  He frequently yells and curses at Christopher, and Christopher says that, “I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen.”  If an autistic individual is scared, yelling at them does more harm than good.


Of course, Christopher’s father didn’t exactly have an easy life, and it’s obvious how a person could grow frustrated in such circumstances.  However, I was still very  upset with the father’s lashing out and cursing at Christopher.  There were instances in which it was very clear that Christopher’s father loved, that isn’t a question.  His father, for instance, knows to respect Christopher’s boundaries, with Christopher saying that they touched fingers, “Because sometimes Father wants to give me a hug, but I do not like hugging people, so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me.”  Christopher’s father truly does what he thinks is best for Christopher, despite how cruel and misguided his actions end up being.  While Christopher’s father of course loves him, he has very little patience for Christopher and ends up verbally abusing him.  This intolerance of neuroatypical children is prevalent in our society, and is very clearly reflected in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  It’s an overarching issue in our world that we must take steps to address.

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