What Eli's Friends Say

Liam, Hayley, Aimee, Joshua, Jamie, Liam & Eli -

We're 13, 14, 15, and 16,  We’re Eli’s friends.

I see Eli as like my best mate, my best friend, like real good, I don’t know how to explain it.  I feel like I know him really good, and he knows me.  I just sort of get what he means .  .  . like when he’s pointing to stuff, just listening.  I think that’s from spending lots of time together.  I just picked it up.  Just seeing what he likes ‘cause I sort of looked after him at school.  That’s where I learnt about him. I just did it.

There’s not really any issue with him not speaking.  You just learn how to talk to him, his expressions, his signs . . . get to know him . . . and it doesn’t really take that long to learn it.

I’m confident I can work it out . . . like if he’s upset he’ll make a sad noise, or if he’s angry he’ll pull your hair . . .  he lets you know.

Fourteen years I’ve known Eli – seven years through a friend and seven years from school.  I feel like I know him.

Well, I find that like all the other friends you might have, he’s probably the best friend you could ever have because he won’t hate you for anything you do.

If you’re upset, he’ll be there for you.  Say you’ve done something to someone else, they might not like always get over it.  With Eli he’ll be happy with you, no matter what.

Like he’ll choose who he likes . . . but Eli forgives you.

It does depend on what mood he’s in,

Like a mood when he just wants to sit down and do nothing

or a mood when he just wants to listen to music

or a whole lot of those that you can’t really explain.

He can have like a grumpy one, like he just doesn’t want you to be around

And when he gets into those he starts pulling hair and kicking people

We hold his hand, move him away and stuff

You usually know when he’s gonna like grab your hair, like he pats your hair when he wants to give you love as well . . . but you can tell.

He gets cranky when his friends leave

He likes all his friends being around him

He’d rather have more people that he knows and trusts that he could play around with, more than just having his own time and space, he’d rather have more people around

If there are five people at the house and one leaves, he gets cranky

At school he’s more like tired and bored and he gets cranky, but out of school he’s happy . . . so we see a different side of him.

I’ve known Eli for three and a bit years now.  I’d heard of Angelman’s Syndrome before I met him so I knew a bit about it, but I don’t know much about anything else.  I know him as a person . . .sort of, I know him pretty well, not as good as some people though.

We get . . . a good friend, happiness, yeh happiness, laughter,

someone there for you when you’re upset

He’s always there to make you happy

When you’re upset he sees it, he’ll do something

And if you weren’t happy he’d keep trying to make you happy.

Or sometimes when you’re angry he’ll come sit next to you,

try and get your attention, make your laugh, to be happy

do the signs for clown, pig and point to people.

Some people think that because he’s got . . . I can’t remember what he’s got  . . . what like . . . ‘cause his . . dis . . .  that he can’t do it, like he doesn’t know as much, but when you actually get to know him, he knows quite a lot, lot more that you would think when you first look at him.

Get to know him and he’s just like a normal person, that’s Eli!

Sometimes he can know more than you can.

He knows how to rip radios and tvs and stuff apart.  He just uses his hands.

He knows lots of things I don’t know.

If you’re in a desert call Eli, he’ll find food, no matter where you are.

It’s two way, he’s no different from any other friend.

He brings us together as friends.

Like we fight when we’re at school, but when we’re here, we’re usually better.

Like we don’t hang around together at school, we hang around in different groups.

And when we’re here we’re just like one big group that all hang around together, when we’re around Eli, he brings everyone together no matter what you do. 

He’ll make you talk to them no matter what.

I prefer to be here on my own with Eli, helping him pull stuff apart, watch DVDs. 

He doesn’t hang out with the young kids at school, he doesn’t really like them.

Young kids annoy him, he’ll pull their hair

He gets jealous (of babies)

So you just need to talk to him, not just leave him out, like not in a corner.  

You have to talk to him and make him feel that he’s appreciated instead of that he’s all alone.

Today, these two boys at school weren’t talking to him, so he came and sat next to me . . . he’ll do that.

He’s comfortable with me, but he’s a bit wary with other people ‘cause he doesn’t know them as well.  When he’s comfortable he relaxes a bit, sits down and doesn’t move around all the time.

It’s really hard to leave Eli out, because he’s always there, no matter what you do he’s always trying to get into the conversation, like he’ll come and sit next to you

He’ll even listen to what you’re talking about.  You can talk to him about stuff and he’ll just make a face or a noise that you’ll understand.  If he’s doesn’t like anything, either he’ll just move himself or he’ll just make a whine, but it’s not, it’s like ‘Somebody come and talk to me.  These people aren’t really talking to me.’

Communication – it’s both ways.  You can understand him as much as he can understand you.  Sometimes it’s hard to understand him but he thinks that as well for us.

He’ll use facial expression or he’ll do a sound and you know what that means cause his facial expression will just put out everything, like if he’s sad, if he’s happy he’s just all jumpy, if he’s in pain . . .

He comes to my place sometimes.  We have a barbie sometimes, his folks and my folks.

Only Eli and one other person at school I have really strong friendships with.  Outside of school I have two other friends that I see now.  

No matter what Eli does, you just always want to be around Eli because he’s happy.  You can get angry at him and then in the next five seconds he’ll try and apologise or something, but sometimes he’s just not that fun to be around because he’s just cranky.  You’ll walk off and he’ll be like ‘Oh I’ve done something wrong’.

Maybe he just wants to be on his own.

That’s what I think he needs when he’s pulling hair. ‘Leave me alone, I just wanna relax’.  Or he’s frustrated.

He doesn’t like sitting in the one spot, listening to the teachers talking.  He’d rather talk to his friends.

If he doesn’t like a song when you’re in the car, he’ll tap you and that means ‘Change the song, I don’t want to listen to it’

And he loves pirates

I want to start a business with Eli – testing stuff.  It will really be his business but I’ll just be helping him out.  His mum’s looking at getting a house for us both.  I’d like to give that a go, living with Eli.

I know about parents who are so frightened to involve you cause they might make friends and then all of a sudden something might go wrong.  I just think they feel really bad that something’s got really wrong and their son or daughter has got no one to talk to, so they don’t want your involvement.

Getting to know him is just like someone else at school.  You go up to them and say ‘Hi’; just hang around with Eli, that’s how you get to be friends.