I’ve always refused to stay isolated and Adam doesn’t like to be, either. He likes people and outings and even though we’ve been through ups and downs of anxiety, we tend to overcome our obstacles — our own and the ones that seem outside of us. But as usual, I digress.

Adam was his usual attentive self to the play. There were a series of questions afterwards and the theatre writes them out in the program for parents to work on at home. I also sent the questions to school today. I always wonder why there are not more field trips and plays for autistic children. Thankfully, Adam is going to the library a couple of times a week.

Many people don’t think autistic people understand or “get it,” and that taking them to a play or an outing would be a useless endeavour– one that would require too much effort, or parental fortitude and heartbreak to withstand stares. I’ve never been to Young People’s Theatre when a young person doesn’t make a whoop or two. Adam’s not yet a whooper, he’s more of a giggler. Perhaps because I see some parents of typical children sternly turn their disturbed heads (yes, my perception and interpretation…my bias), I refuse to look around. It’s not that I don’t want to. I’m actually thinking to myself hey, who’s the cool kid having the really great time!

Adam’s eyes were glued. His grin was wide, his eyes beaming. It feels so good to watch him enjoying himself. Since he’s been young, even though he has real challenges with expressive communication, he’s given me fantastic glimpses into his perception and understanding. His very attention to the play was proof- positive. Today he wrote me an email (the school lets him email me). One of his teachers asked him what he did on the weekend, not knowing the play at all. Adam replied by typing “elephant sat egg.” Horton was the guardian of the egg. He would not leave the egg or abandon the Whos on that little speck of dust in this mix of Dr. Seuss stories, no matter how awful and skeptcial the Wickersham brothers and other townspeople are to him. He endures the abuse, the naysayers, the people who call him a chump.

I know I have to keep working with others to show how to get more typed communication out of Adam and not give up. At the same time, I’m also thrilled that people are trying and doing. I know I need more patience. I worry and wonder how many hours in the day autistic kids are working on labels, mands and putting together Mr. Potato Head. Even though practice is always essential, and the goals are about attention and things other than the label or putting together a head, the work it takes to collect the expressive communication is big and we need to focus more on exposing autistic kids to interesting material, even when we don’t get immediate reward of a child’s recognition. I think our kids should be asked more complicated questions and working on really interesting age appropriate material. Of course, there’s also the fact that the stuff autistic kids are interested in can seem boring or useless to the rest of us. We need to learn how to nurture these interests. Also beware of objects that autistic children become attached to. Clinginess to baby books doesn’t mean an autistic child doesn’t want to read chapter books. I am reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid to Adam (he giggles), and have no idea yet what he’s getting from it. Although I do know, as but one example, that when we get wild weather, he’ll reach and start reading a book for teens on weather systems. The baby books are a form of familiar for Adam. He uses them to comfort himself and to create order in a world that can often be overwhelming. They don’t indicate what he’s also interested in, or what he’s capable of.

Readiness is essential but there can also be many opinions on what makes an autistic person “ready.” Is it the ability to sit still, act normal, attend for long periods of time? If so, an autistic person may never be deemed totally “ready.” If these are some of the prerequisites to “readiness,” how far held back is the autistic person who’s otherwise sopping up so much in the environment? Adam got his musical notation, to his music teacher’s surprise, very quickly. Learning to “attend” is a social “norm” imposed to people who find that really challenging. It’s not that I don’t think Adam shouldn’t learn that, but it’s not the only thing he needs to learn. Adam needs to learn things that interest him, and like other children, we don’t know what interests our children unless they get exposed to things. His movement and activity is likely the way he learns best, and despite my repetition in life and here on the blog, he is often treated like that round peg being squeezed into a square hole, no matter what my beliefs.

Help, hello. Is anyone there? I’m trying to write with the greatest of care. As I convey ideas about Adam over and over, we need to settle him down safe, on a soft bed of clover.

I guess you can say I’m holding on to this egg.

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It’s an early winter evening and the sun has gone just set. As usual before dinner, he’s eating sliced green and red peppers or cucumbers. “Vinegar!” he implores with a firm voice. His other choice condiments that go with everything are mustard and Tabasco sauce. I stand on the opposite side of the counter because I like to see his face, as if we were sitting across from each other at the table after a typical day. Even though we don’t have deep conversations verbally yet, we do have meaningful exchanges. I’ll ask “Adam how was your day?” and he might say, “It was fun.” Unless I bring out the typing devices, that may be it for our verbal social exchanges. He still needs prompting to sit down at his device and “talk” to me. I talk to him nevertheless and I’m okay with not always getting a reply back most of the time. We can discuss what he wants for dinner without the devices and he has chosen spaghetti this night. I am unpacking what’s left over from his Toy Story lunch box. He left the raisins, I sigh, and ate only half a sandwich. I continue to mumble about the uneaten parts of lunch and look at him. He searches my face.

“Ffffff…” His eyes turn mischievous. “Ffffffffuck,” he says tentatively, looking straight at me with a wily grin.

“What did you just say?” I ask, trying to be stern, but the way he looks into my eyes is something a parent with an autistic child doesn’t take for granted. I know I should be scolding him, but I am surprised at what I think I heard.

“Fffffuk,” he says again ever so quietly, now showing his big front teeth.

“Adam, what did you say?” I ask again. “I hope you are not using a bad word.” He’s still smiling the oh-yes-I-am, smile. I’m not pulling off my proper parental serious-face and tone well. I try to hide my laughter. “Adam!”

“Fick,” he changes his word deliberately and giggles. Shit, I can’t help giggling too.

And there it was. My nine-year-old testing out a bad word on his mom to see what she was going to do about it. So much for teaching my nine-year-old socially appropriate language.

:)

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I haven’t written in a long time. Since we changed schools I decided to focus solely on Adam. I’m also very cautious of what I write about, because while it’s important for me to do this, it’s important to protect Adam’s dignity as he is maturing fast.

We made the official switch to an ABA school. Frankly, it was getting exhausting trying to find an inclusive school to support Adam’s needs. Adam needs understanding, lots of structure, lots of practice for the work that’s difficult for him, and people who greet him every day with a wide smile. I have been struggling on how to write this because I’ve been so critical of ABA. I have come to peace with this decision for now. We didn’t have good early experiences. I’ve learned that it’s not just some ABA therapists who didn’t accommodate or treat Adam with respect. Understanding autism, accommodating, accepting isn’t reserved for the non ABA teacher. Maybe times are changing.

Adam has Occupational Therapy equipment and goes to the gym every day at his school. He gets his sensory breaks. He uses a Vantage Lite and now the iPad — from the notebook, to text-to-speech for typing, which he is doing more independently. He also enjoys using the Vantage Lite. Adam also started using the Vital Links headphones which help him be able to calm his body and sit at a desk and do work. This works by choosing various MP3 music chips. He can sit and work and still hear and listen to his teachers. It’s a much better option than the Ritalin we once tried in his other school — a nightmarish experience.

After June, Adam went also to a new camp. We lost our aide worker of seven years. For the first time I had to let Adam “go.” I had to learn to trust that others would treat him well and I had to trust that Adam would rise to the occasion.

He did, although his new obsession with exploration and doors took over. He typed to me in the summer that “door is a question.” A question so powerful, in fact, that sometimes he seems to have little control over his insatiable curiousity.

We incorporated exploration time at the end of each day, with supervision. He was still adored at his new camp as he was at his older camp. Both camps are fully inclusive. He needed a bit more support after incidents at the end of his the year at his other school. I called the summer “operation calm down” as Adam was highly stressed and the door obsession began. As the summer unfolded, he calmed. By the end of it, his ability to speak reliably soared in ways we had not yet experienced. He was relaxed and happy and of course, we always try and type a little more each day at home since he got his iPad.

This was the biggest change in Adam’s communication — his verbal ability increased and between typed and verbal, I could trust that what he said, he meant. Instead of echoing or saying things he learned elsewhere, Adam began telling me real things and he still does — from how he is feeling, to what happened to him, and what he does and doesn’t like or want. Some days I will get an interesting full blown description of something I didn’t quite ask for, with language full of imagery that I have to interpret, which gives me clues into the way Adam sees things. I have asked the school to verify things I do not know, in order to test myself as Adam’s communication partner. I am always trying to ensure that I enable Adam by testing myself and watching for his cues. I am a work in progress.

Adam writes emails to me every day — something I still insist as part of reciprocal communication (and a safety necessity in my view). Yesterday, he independently wrote me that his tummy was sick. I had to call the school to verify and the senior therapist ran down to check on him. “Isn’t this a wonderful call?” I said. Sure, my son could have been barfing, but hell, he could tell me! Adam is assertive when he can speak. I can see more clearly now that he has a fighter spirit.

Yesterday, Adam was unusually upset in his OT appointment and I had to intervene. I brought in the iPad and he typed “I want dinner!” As he typed, he said the sentence before he finished typing the word dinner. When Adam is anxious, like so many autistic individuals express, it can be harder for him to access language. Sometimes it’s not, so there are no clear cut “rules” here. Yet, as soon as he was able to have access to the device to type, he immediately calmed down.

The same thing happened this morning. He was quite upset. I brought out the iPad to type on the text to speech application, which he really likes. I asked him if he was feeling tired or sick. He wrote back, “No school because I tired.” He smiled because he obviously feels more empowered when he can tell me what he really wants to say.

I get asked a lot from parents on how I taught Adam how to type. Believe me, I was criticized by people who believed that supported, or facilitated communication, was a hoax. I simply kept it up (I started when Adam was around four years old). Now Adam can type unsupported most of the time. My priority with his school is following up with is literacy and unsupported typing. At home, we play poetry games and type in the nuanced ways that are difficult to explain without writing it out in a longer essay or post. It is always best to see Adam and I doing this a few times to see how varied it can be.

Today, I promised myself I would write again, and I’m enjoying writing about Adam’s writing, which is much more interesting than mine. Sometimes I feel that I am climbing a never-ending mountain when I say it is Adam’s neurology, not behaviour, that make it difficult for him to communicate and do tasks consistently. So I stopped writing and talking for a while and just lived our lives. This is one of the reasons I had to take a break. I needed to be with Adam, go through all the changes, and just be.

So far, I like what I see as Adam happily runs to the school door every morning. We went through some difficult days with certain ABA therapists when Adam was a baby. It is now, as he’s older, that I see that consistent practice is important and helpful to him, as well as a structured day that he can predict and have some control over. For Adam, I am still convinced that the early engagement was very important through a play-based method. He always had a combination of methods that are currently out there. Being with other children was wonderful. I wish he could still be with all kinds of children, of course, especially since he typed a couple of weeks ago, “I want friends.” But when schools do not fully understand and accept autistic kids, I had to pull back and ask myself where Adam might be treated better. In this case, he’s in a place where the staff seem open minded and we work together on planning Adam’s programs and various teaching methods. Adam’s extracurricular activities include now skiing, a Friendship Club, piano lessons, and an art class.

I am hopeful because I know that Adam will progress because of maturity and because of finding the environments, support and methods that best suit him, and these may or may not change. I am also hopeful for myself that be it good or bad, writing and talking about Adam in respectful ways is still very important to how I support myself as his mother. Both Adam and Estee find writing really important, and I know Adam would tell you so.

Every parent has a dream and an expectation for their children, and expectations never quite turn out how we envision. I always had a dream that Adam and I will tour around and he will be able to tell you many things on how he grew up and learned all by himself and I can talk about the journey I took to try and help him. I can imagine Adam and writing to each other, because that’s what we are doing! Maybe soon I’ll find the energy to show you. I believe Adam the fighter will want to show you for himself.

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So it was we had another one of those nights last night. It’s been a bit of a crazy week — I just returned from Costa Rica and am trying to pull myself back together. Adam also had some vacation time with me down south and then spent the rest of the time with his father. He returned to me on Monday and I was expecting him not to sleep on the first night of his return home — not the fourth.

Last night, we also played a game of I Spy. We used one of Adam’s books for this. For those of you who are not yet aware, Adam is not a fluent talker. I was quite surprised that we could play this game back and forth for about thirty minutes.

“I spy with my whittle eye something that dances,” he said in his tiny staccato voice, so soft like a whisper. While Adam has typed a few sophisticated sentences before, we’ve rarely had such interchanges, let alone ones where he’s asking me to guess the object by naming its attribute.

“Is it the ballerina?” I asked him, pointing to it.

“Ballerina, yes,” he replied.

Maybe his head was dancing for the rest of the night. Dreary eyed today, I’m still so very thrilled about the interchange.

A belated Happy New Year to everyone, by the way. I tried so hard not to blog while I was away.

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There are two therapists in that video, in front of him talking fast and loud. He is sitting in a chair and they insist that he stay there — he small enough that every time he tries to escape they physically replace him onto the chair. The video begins with Adam crying, squirming and trying to get away. He is so small, such a baby. He is saying many things, although they are hard to hear because the therapists are talking so loudly compared to his forming, warbled articulation. As one of the therapists replaces his tiny body in the chair, she tickles his stomach.

“Don’t,” I hear him say in a super tiny voice. I hear him say it now re-watching these, but I may not have heard it back then. I may have not heard it in the frantic effort to get Adam to do and say what the therapists wanted him to say. I would have not heard it over their loud voices.

I am watching these videos six years later, as Adam has developed and changed so much. I feel we have very much entered a new phase of life together, a new phase of understanding our lives as an autistic family.

Adam then went to his Vanguard device after telling me to shut off the TV. “I am uncomfortable,” he pressed. I suppose I can say, said. We call it his talk box. The Vanguard device, which is a series of pictures and words can be programmed to make sentences. Things like verbs, feelings, activities are all categorized on it so Adam can tell us many things. Sometimes Adam can type sentences on his computer, sometimes he uses the Vanguard and sometimes, especially this past weekend, Adam can talk. Adam talked more this past weekend than I can remember in his lifetime.

I have set out to watch those videos on my own without Adam present. As I watch them now, I am highly disturbed. We made him sit so young, and forced him to watch the therapists. Although this was NOT a strict ABA program, we did attempt to “programme” Adam in an ABA format. The therapists talked, they wanted him to answer, they dangled coloured circles over his head so he would repeat the colours, blew in his face, repositioned him on the chair — all at a roaring rate. I cannot imagine how completely overwhelming that experience was for Adam.

All I had in the beginning was ABA therapy. Then came along RDI (Relationship Development Intervention). I thought I kept helping Adam better each time I learned about something new because no one offered us any other solution. While I tried to follow my instinct, what was available to us wasn’t keeping pace with the values I was forming about Adam as an autistic person. Still, Adam was forced to “conform” no matter how much we said it was to “engage” him. Later, we became more adept at involving ourselves in his games. Later, we became quieter with him.

As Adam’s mother, I sometimes want to cry when I watch these videos. He was bombarded. In no way was he respected as an autistic person from the get-go. A couple years after that I definitely learned more and tried harder. Yet I wonder, since we are still talking about finding genes in autism and intervening earlier, what kind of life experience our autistic children will have and remember, when they are programmed to be typical.

I find it so ironic that Adam talked the most he had in his lifetime this weekend, and he told me to turn off one of those “early intervention” videos. I suspect he does not feel good about it at all. What makes me feel so guilty, because I love Adam so much, is that even though I searched for ways of assisting him while trying to respect him, he may have not been in those earlier years when he was so vulnerable. He couldn’t really communicate in words then. He has severe difficulties, even now, to do so consistently. As Adam becomes his own self-advocate, I just found it so striking to have this juxtaposition between the old videos against the Adam of today. Even back then, just because he wasn’t talking, he was still a person. I suppose I could say he was ignored like the moment when he said in a voice so quiet, “don’t.”

I think if someone had shown me this when we received the diagnosis, if autistic people could recount their stories and be available to all “new” autism parents, my life may have been calmer and Adam may have had better supports that accepted him as autistic. I write this with forboding, wondering what kinds of early interventions are being concocted for infant autistics. Certainly, I changed the approaches after those first two years, and he became happier for it. He has had many challenges, but he is also now talking. As he does so, while it is nice to know what our children are thinking, I can tell you it is not a solution. It is not the Holy Grail. We will have many years ahead of dealing with Adam’s unique way of functioning in the world, and I don’t always expect it to be easy. Communication is important. Acceptance is vital.

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I have no answers why. We’ve supported him, taught him, spent six years fine-tuning, changing and adapting things. By “things” I mean his therapies and education, devices, strategies, habits, you name it. We made sure he didn’t do things too soon, trying to be attune to Adam’s needs, which have been many. His needs keep changing. It’s a journey. It’s a dance where the steps keep changing, a jazz troupe with a new riff or musician every few weeks. We aim for consistency yet nothing stays the same. Adam never stays the same.

As I said in The Autism Acceptance Project video a few years ago, “when a children are happy, they can learn.” Sometimes I had doubts. Should I have pushed Adam harder?, I asked myself after he lay sound asleep after a difficult day, or a day when I was challenged by others who insinuated I was not doing enough for my child (while not really knowing us). I’m not here trying to give myself kudos or to dismiss the choices of others. Yet, there is a part of me tonight that is proud that I stuck to my guns by doing what I felt was right for Adam as well as my needs and values as his mother.

Our lives, as that saying goes, are comprised of the choices we make. I’m quite certain I’ll continue to make mistakes like all parents, but overall I’ve always believed that being as sensitive to Adam as he is senstive to his environment and to others has been a necessity. By viewing it as such, I made the choices accordingly. For those of you who don’t know us, this started Adam was only 18-19 months old. By the way, I expect my ideas and parenting style to be continuously challenged. It seems to go along with the territory of being a parent. It is gratifying that once in a while we get some kind of affirmation about the choices we have made. That is what this blog post is, in part, about. But really, it’s more about the need to be sensitive and to be open to change as well as our ability to adapt. These are the “things” I have to continuously re-learn. I hope I’ll get better at it.

Adam has had quite a year, not to mention years of going through “people” in his life because of the education and support he has required. His life has been pretty consistent, mind you, but not without upset, as life is for everyone one way or another. This year, he began a new school and the change took a few weeks of getting used to. He lost his words and he engaged in more “OCD” or ritualistic behaviour, desperate to create order out of chaos.

Over the course of four weeks, this has abated. He still has some difficulty letting go of some of the rituals that he began as a result of the change.

“I can’t stop. I can’t stop,” he told me tonight after I silently redirected him towards my bed. Too many words from adults can be irritating not to mention too many “no’s.” He has taken to getting in and out of two bath-tubs in my home. He wasn’t that happy with me, but the crying was brief, about two minutes. I turned on the soft music, helped a rash that was bothering him to soothe Adam a little more, and we just hugged. “I can’t stop,” he said again calmly.

“I understand you are telling me you can’t stop,” I repeated so he would know that I was listening. His body relaxed and he lay deeper into my arms.

That was the only challenging part of the evening. The rest was a night of Adam telling me that he went to the zoo today, that he saw a Gorilla and a Lion, that his rash was “itchy…it is bothering me,” to what he wanted to eat, in full sentences — not the usual two or three word phrases. On his walk he said things like, “I want to go this way,” or “I don’t want to go there.” Perfectly. In the evening he asked for certain lights to be turned off. When I was getting it wrong several times over (there were a few lights on and it took a while to figure this one out), he pointed towards the hallway. “Turn the light off outside!” he said forcefully. Phew. Glad I finally got that one right!

He was asking for books unseen (therefore unprompted… all of this was not prompted in any way), and we read quite a few, of course ending with Dr. Seuss. Tonight was Horton Hears A Who …”a person’s a person no matter how small…”

Change is hard. Change can be good. We can’t stop change. Finding the right time to teach certain “things” has been a challenge because Adam is bright but very sensitive. Knowing when to push and when to back off is based on the uniqueness of Adam, not solely on Adam’s autism. I thank the team who keep sticking with us on this remarkable journey.

A remarkable, notable evening.

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There is one thing I’d like to point out to Ms. Grandin, if I may. It’s the assumption about the autism spectrum or “continuum” as she puts it. It is tricky because it has been an easy way to describe and try to understand autism. Yet like most things easy, they are not fully descriptive.

It is the point at which she, perhaps inadvertently in order to simplify the description, lowers the intelligence level of non verbal autistic people to the bottom of the “spectrum,” to the “verbal” autistics who are “brilliant.” For all the non verbal or partially verbal autistic people out there, many of who comment here and/or write their own blogs and even do their own presentations, I’d like to add that non verbal people can also be of “normal,” “bright,” or of “gifted” intelligence. Of course verbal and non verbal people can also be more cognitively challenged. There is no way we can use the “continuum,” really, to effectively describe autism and intelligence and I think we need to talk about this more.

Temple Grandin talks a lot about thinking in pictures and she can verbalize this well. For many autistic folks who cannot, like my son Adam among others, I can say that verbal ability does not equal intelligence. I hope that Temple Grandin can speak a little bit more on that in the future so as not to cast another stereotype that she perhaps does not intentionally mean to cast.

In this blog, I speak a lot about the visual — visual data and the potential for many autistic people to translate so much data into the visual so that we can better understand it. There could be many opportunities for our children if we look at this seriously and nuture the skills. As for her segment on visual perception, I once posted a drawing by Adam, who has motor planning issues, but clearly had an advanced perspective, demonstrated in some of his artwork, over his same-aged peers. I have always noted and recognized Adam’s visual abilities. It’s still incredibly difficult to find teachers who recognize and are able to nuture this ability. It’s incredibly frustrating, in fact.

I do thank Temple Grandin for being out there to discuss the need for mentors and the contributions our children can make to society, if given the chance and opportunities.

In keeping with this post, Tyler Cowen, author of Create Your Own Ecomony also writes another piece on autism, ability and autism diversity.

Watch her now on TED:

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I was very excited when Pascal Cheng told me that Larry Bissonnette and he, both of whom I brought to Toronto several years ago, and Tracy Thresher were traveling the world to change views about autism. They travel to Finland, Japan and Sri Lanka to change minds, attitudes and debunk myths which was documented in the film Wretches and Jabberers. We have learned from anthropologists like Roy Grinker in Unstrange Minds, among others, that the views about autism around the world can be less forgiving because of cultural differences.

 Adam was diagnosed at 19 months of age as a hyperlexic, “high-functioning” autistic boy. Over the years, however, he shows ability, is very bright and intelligent, but Adam has real communication difficulties and more “classic” aspects of autism…so dx is always precarious in the early years. I think of the very different experiences between Adam and Larry — how the world has changed so for autistic people and I am grateful for the generousity of autistic adults. 

As a parent in this for just over six years now, I have to say thank you to everyone who put forth this effort. I often dream of Adam traveling the world, talking to other people, helping other people. That’s my dream, I suppose, and not necessarily his, but that’s what parents tend to do. So even if Adam chooses another path,  I am thrilled that Larry and Tracy are forging a path for all the “Adams” who will grow up very soon.

“We are more like you than not,” says Larry in the following trailer.

That’s for certain.

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One of the most talked about issues in autism is the issue of verbal communication or “functional” speech. That is, speech that is reciprocal, social, conversational. For Adam, there have been major challenges in this area and he has had to use augmentative forms in order to communicate many things, yet for the person who understands his communication, he is communicating all the time. I do not find it too difficult to understand and the one shortcoming I may have is the tendency to feel frustrated when he is — when he cannot get a more complex message across.

Adam turned eight this year and much of this is beginning to change. Adam began to talk in sentences, began to show me things and started to become “the teacher,” in the sense that he would test me on the things he wanted to talk about in books. He learned certain concepts such as what something was NOT as opposed to what it was, among other concepts.

There are a couple of things I want to write with respect to progress in communication ability, quite unscientifically, in this post, for I have not yet found some good citations to support my theories about autism and development. So take it for what it’s worth and perhaps you may see some more of my posts deal with this — with citations.

I’ve been reading how to teach philosophy to children through children’s books: Big Ideas for Little Kids: Teaching Philosophy Through Children’s Literature, by Thomas E. Wartenberg. When we refer to teaching “critical thinking” to autistic children, it usually has to deal with teaching the more functional types like putting puzzles together or teaching Feature, Function and Class — for those familiar you know what I mean. These are the basic skills we believe are absent in autistic children because their very expression is difficult to manifest — be it for attentional reasons or motor planning issues, or both.

We do not address for the “profoundly autistic,” “severely autistic” or any autistic child, for that matter, often enough, how to read books, how to question and how to think abstractly because we have decided that autistic people learn literally. While this may be in part true, we miss an opportunity to help along the critical aspects to being human — the ability to question. I’ve read many a time how we wish to teach some flexibility in thinking in autism. To me, teaching through books and by taking a lead in creative ways to view things from different angles is not only an exercise for Adam, but also for myself. We would all stand to gain from working to think in ways that may not be familiar to us.

We are more often concerned with our children knowing how to read the words (certainly this is the first step to reading at all). We do not learn how to talk to an autistic child who has difficulty with that reciprocity, how to really push forward, even though their manifestation of understanding is not what we expect. In my view, I feel it is dangerous to assume that Adam does not understand as much as it is to take for granted that he can just learn the way a typical child does. Yet all those years of puzzles, functional skills and communication issues makes me worried that Adam is missing the most important component of life learning, that is, to ask questions about everything. I’m quite sure I will be writing more about my in-house experiments here.

That said, I have a short story to tell. With some severe weather hovering around Toronto, there was a downburst, or a tornado. Both Adam and I enjoy watching the weather reports. With bad weather, we are glued to the TV. I was talking about funnel clouds and how they are dangerous.

“Why?” Adam asked.

“Because they can rip down houses and trees,” I said.

“Why?” he asked again. I am thinking about a three-year-old I once knew when I was an older kid and how every answer to a question he had ended up with yet another “why?” Like that, the conversation went on a bit between Adam and I. He kept asking me “why?” until I ran out of answers!

For a typical child, asking “why?” is expected. For an eight-year-old developing autistic child, it was another one of our milestones.

With that “why?” also came a series of sentences and conversations this week. With those conversations came difficulty falling asleep and some body jerks. Also interesting that along with an increased in verbal expression came an improvement on his fine-motor skills at the dining table as well as gross motor skills I noticed while watching him outside climbing structures I’ve never seen him climb before. Could this be a reason for the sleeping issues? Could his body be a-buzz?

Again, I am making a possible correlation that needs to be tested because dad let him sleep in over the weekend (school was out) and this is reason enough for not being able to go to sleep the following day and, perhaps lack of sleep and other frustrations lead to more body jerks. Yet I also wonder, only because I’ve seen it before, if sleep issues and body jerks have to do with an increased output of communication and other “manifestions,” — overall “progress.” So often we view “issues” as a result of “delay” and “behaviours” and we label it as if it is something we have to get rid of or something that worries us. Yet, with this example, Adam is trying so hard to express himself and his body may be following him as it attempts to process the steps we have taken for granted. If we take a view that such preservations, behaviours, sleep problems might have to do with processing, progress and development, how might we address and teach autistic children differently?

It’s something to think about when we study autism and when we rethink the, perhaps, very “normal” path of autistic development.

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There is no new take these days on writing an autism and this in and of itself seems to me that either I’ve become over-saturated with the type of material, or I’ve simply reached a new parenting stage and where it takes me with writing here, I am not yet sure. I have tried to post a few interesting presentations on the blog the past couple of weeks. There are so many performances and exhibitions, and art is a segue to complex ideas often then used and analysed also by science as much as science can influence art. Of autistic performance and exhibition, please don’t label them as “miracles.”

I’m fatigued by references to miracles. Autistic achievement, as is discussed so often here on the blogs, is so often referenced as gifted or miraculous. There are no miracles. There is only what we wish to believe.

We’ve noted what a detriment to the autistic community such stereotyping can be. Even if it’s true that autistic thinking is different, and of benefit to our society in many ways, this is no reason to call it gifted or a “miracle.” When it comes to a play, or an autistic child typing, or a group of autistic children performing for an audience, I’m really taken aback at references to the achievements being “miracles.” However, if we are referring to all of us as being “miracles,” I sort of get that — I get that embrace of the miraculous state we call human. Miracles are a short-cut answer and resolution to that which is unresolvable. Try to tie it up with a convenient conclusion, and we will all fail.

Acceptance is as acceptance does, and in all likelihood, the name is too simple while embracing everything. “Simplicity embraces exactly the right details, the right difficulties, the right complexity,” but it also requires am effort in learning, observing, studying and yes, striving to argue well here in this contentious autism community. Acceptance is not simple. Autistic achievement is not a miracle, although it has been so unrecognized in human history that it is not surprising that we have labeled it as such. This is humanity we’re talking about. It’s messy, difficult, wonderful, full of frustration, anguish and yes, joyful.

And this may be the only miracle.

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It is also highly ironic that I write about art and that the art world seeks so many words to critique and analyze it. Yet, at the end of the day, we have a gut response to art before we have an intellectual one.

I was thinking about this as Adam has turned to art. This is not just peripheral observation…it goes deeper. Adam studies all the elements of things with ferocity and concentration. He will hold any object in his hand — even a part of an object, turn it around and study it, tap it and consider all of it’s physical properties. He may or may not label it, as he has done since he was eleven months of age (labeling, that is), but I consider that his sharing in this manner is simply his way of sharing with me because he has trouble with words. Yet, his understanding goes far beyond the label.

W.J.T. Mitchell, in his essay Visual Literacy or Literary Visualcy? (excerpted from Visual Literacy edited by James Elkins) asks how seeing is different from reading. “Even more interesting, what would happen if we reversed the positions of tenor and vehicle in the metaphor, and treated reading as ‘tenor’ — the thing to be explained — and vision as the vehicle that might help explain it? What would happen, in other words, if we thought of our task as one of research and teaching in reading, based in models drawn from seeing and the visual system?” (p.11).

It is in this vein that I believe we can begin to explain our words about autism and challenge our very basic assumptions. For instance, consider the two drawings below. Adam, at the age of 8 has fine motor planning difficulties. It is very hard for him to hold a pencil or crayon, but in the first drawing one can see it’s coming and that he is trying extremely hard to express himself.

The drawing beside it, also a Lion, was executed by a same-aged “typical” peer. By contrast, one can see the marks in this drawing made with strength and certainty whereby Adam’s drawing seems a little tentative and soft by virtue of his motor planning difficulty. Take another look. Adam took great care and time rendering that drawing. So much so, he even walked away, came back to reconsider it and lightly put the finishing touches carefully on the tail several minutes after it seemed finished. It was so lightly drawn that it was difficult to photograph. Look at the perspective and how he tries to implement it. It is not a flat drawing. He can see how the body has several dimensions. Compare it to the “same-aged typical peer” drawing — wonderful in its own rite but by contrast, there is, as of yet, no conception of perspective. In one drawing the earth is round, in the other, flat.

Adam's "Lion King"

A drawing of a lion from a same-aged "typical" peer

It is interesting to me to watch Adam’s “visualcy” manifest. It is interesting because he does not fit into any developmental mold. While his hand his light, he is ahead of the curve by way of his perception. One might mistake motor-planning difficulty with Adam’s “retardation,” as it was formerly labeled. Now how dangerous is this when we consider how to teach an autistic person? What assumptions about his intelligence are we making? When I think of schools I get extremely nervous about moving him too slow or too fast. One simply has to SEE.

——

Reference:

James Eklins, Visual Literacy, New York: Routledge, 2008.

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“Oh my God!” exclaimed Adam. “Oh my God,” he said again like a Valley Girl. It is something that I say when I’m COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FRUSTRATED WITH THIS NONSENSICAL TECHNOLOGY, and my boy is listening indeed. Coming out that cherub mouth, that voice that still sounds so very tiny let alone the mouth that says so little, I am of course ecstatic and laughing.

“You’re right Adam,” I affirmed by hugging him and scruffing up his dark blonde hair, “Mommy is really fed up with Rogers Cable. Just wait and I’ll see if I can fix it.” I attempted changing inputs, mumbling my frustrations to myself lest Adam learn some words I’d prefer he learn later on in life, checking cables and rebooting several times — all which seem smart and logical attempts at fixing the sound problem. Instead, Grandpa, who studied electrical engineering no less, jiggled the box and voila… the came sound back. If only I had thought of that. There is irony in this, I hope you see. Sometimes we try so hard to fix things when all it needs is a little jiggle.

I have to say that this Monday morning, the day after Adam’s 8th birthday and back to work and school, I am kinda floating on air. It was very apparent to me how much Adam needed me during this trip and how happy he was to see his mother happy again. Something has shifted during the heavy period of separation and we seem to be settling in. I think it started when I created my own space, made it mine and began to live in it. I knew that fixing a house was a process of also fixing me. I had thrown every effort and last bit of energy making it Adam’s and mine — a place where we could be happy again, and it saved me during this most difficult time. Yet by throwing myself into this, Adam was also needing me. While I was still living in the matrimonial home during the process of fixing up this house, the weight of it felt as heavy as being buried six feet under. The house I had built with my ex now came to represent loss. The foundation that had been faulty in that house and needed rebuilding, so symbolic. So how fortunate I was to have the time to create something new for Adam and I — something now that I have come to appreciate so much. So blessed do I feel today with spring upon us and having finally made that move so that we can move on with other things.

The house has a lot of light which was important to me when I found it. I wanted Adam to feel the light and the air as well. Moving was tough, as many of you already read in previous posts. For Adam, security is found in environments. It takes him time to adjust and this was extremely difficult beginning from late last fall. Every time I thought we were over a hump, we were right back where we started with really bad-looking spasms. I did not see Adam smile very much during this period, and it made my sadness and worry ever more pressing.

Despite having the house prepared, there is always more work once one moves in — things don’t work properly and living in the house day and night, I began to feel how it wanted to live. The house asked me to learn all of its idiosyncrasies. It asked me to support it and work with it. It has been a couple of months now since we moved in and I believe I am getting to know her well. I think the house is certainly feminine because she is beginning to support us.

In Florida I was relaxed and didn’t worry about the house or anything back home as I had in the past. I had completely relished in taking Adam many places, and swimming with him every day. I noticed his great huge smile returning, the way he listened and talked to me more than ever before. It seems every year and every trip and every new experience (even after hard ones) sends us forward again. Adam wanted to be with me so much as he grabbed my hand or told me what he wanted to do, looking up at me, smiling. All he wanted was his mother back and all to himself. Going through divorce I know I had tried even harder to be present for Adam, feeling so guilty about the breakup and upsetting his life. Such contrast in my states of being seem so stark now that time has passed and I am feeling relaxed again.

Returning from the airport was a little strange as this was the first time we would return from Florida to our new home and I realized it when we took the new route. I was concerned that the house would feel foreign again after nearly two years of hard labour and emotional work. Yet, when Adam ran up the stairs towards the front door, threw off his shoes and ran into the kitchen with a great big smile, that was it.

I did it, I thought. I made this house a home. Adam’s smile and getting right back into his routines was testament to this and his being here with me upon a return was one of those markers in my life that I will never forget. It was as if he gave me further permission to relax as he stuck in his metaphorical flag in our family-room floor. We belong here and we belong together.

The following day I set out hurriedly to prepare a birthday party for Adam that was suitable for him — the chocolate birthday cake, the sparkler, his favorite friend and cousin, and some family. Presents came next. The boy who never understood that there were presents underneath that paper several years ago (the paper had been entertainment enough back then) has learned to open them with greater anticipation. He was happily answering questions and hanging out with people, and took his favourite friend by the hand to show him his room. When we parents checked in on them, they shut the door on us, not wanting us to disturb their playing.

Adam’s happiness clearly has a direct effect on mine, and mine seems to have an effect on his. His happiness over the past twelve days has helped me and his feeling at home in his new house makes me feel as if I’ve earned, and learned, something important. Both the house and Adam pulled me out of my head during one of the toughest times of my life. Adam needed me every day and it was every morning that he got me out of bed during the first six months of my separation. Then, it was the house and a vision of Adam and I being happy together again that became a necessary obsession. Working on the house was the promise of hope.

While I have not written about my situation, and my deadline for finishing my manuscript is the end of this year, I’ve come to realize that even writing about writing here is a little difficult because I’ve been so close to intense emotions. I’m not so certain that no matter how a divorce happens, that the details matter in the end, although they make for my truth and the story itself. A marriage is so utterly complex that it is difficult to pinpoint one exact reason for it not working, and it is simply too easy to cast blame on people. For now, that’s all I say about the subject, except that like I always talk about in autism, life is supposed to be filled with challenges and joys. We so often want to avoid the things that are difficult but we forget that all of life’s events are unavoidable so we might as well live them well and let them build us. For that reason that I must be an optimist by nature and I will always be a risk-taker. I will always believe in love, partnership, marriage — whatever works. I believe in it even when I have tripped and fallen on marriage before.

I am still on a path on my own and with Adam. I am finding out where and who I am again. These are two separate things — this healing from divorce as well as raising a son with autism, yet I cannot avoid intertwining the experiences as Adam and I grow together. I do find it difficult to relate to other people who are divorced, for they do not have autistic children, and going online to talk about parenting children with autism is a little difficult when the parents are not divorced. Like my house, our lives are unique and we are growing into them every day. While I’d love to find easy answers on some days, or support networks on others, they never quite hit the mark and then I realize that I am truly on my own, no matter how supportive and uplifting friends are.

After all the guests left after chocolate cake on a sunny spring day, I remembered the day Adam was born and showed him a picture that sits at the entry of his bedroom with his birth announcement. His dad was equally excited the moment Adam was born and it felt a little odd that he was not with us yesterday, but I plugged on knowing that this absence is now permanent, at least for me, and our relationship as co-parents is also evolving and growing — all another step in accepting what is and what makes Adam and I a complete family. I let the moment pass through me thinking back to those eight years and quietly asked Adam to the wall where I could measure how tall he was. I miss the old measures in our old house where I marked the wall there beside his bathroom. I no longer have the measures when he turned two, three-years-old and so forth and something about that makes me feel a more profound loss, as simple as markings on a wall beside a bathroom may seem.

So at twilight I asked Adam to stand next to the rocket-ship measure I placed on the wall beside his new bathroom. He stood against the wall and I put a book on his head to mark it right, saying very little, feeling hushed by this moment:

47 inches
Adam, 8 years old
April 11, 2010.

Right there, on the wall of his bedroom. Like the flag being put into the ground.

Home.

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The kind of transitions that have been happening such as moving into a new home during a divorced situation is not fun for any child. Adam had his moments of extreme anxiety. In fact, it went on from the late fall until late February. A long stretch like that made me wonder if I’d ever see him smile again. Even though I knew it deep down in my heart, I did experience those moments of absolute panic.

Being in the south with Adam reminds me how anchored he is to me; how much he needs and wants me, not to mention how much he wants to see his mother smile. Watching how much he reciprocates, plays with me, wants to go everywhere with me, and talks (yes talks — he is very verbal down here this trip), is testament to the need for quality time spent with mom doing easy things. It’s also proof to me that I have to work on my own happiness and spend time doing the things I need to do to nurture it because I am not just doing it for myself. It has taken me two years to begin to realize this.

During that transition from fall to late February, there were days when he was so stressed that Adam didn’t even seem like Adam anymore. If I were a parent who would use this kind of lingo (which of course many of you know I am not), it may have seemed like “he wasn’t even in the room,” (which we know that of course autistic people are aware despite what others think of their behaviour, but this seemed like the appearance of a what Kristina Chew has coined the “neurological storm,” and I like that expression very much in terms of describing what these moments are like). For others who distill autism into that robot-type of cold person, Adam may have appeared “distant” — that we were “losing” him. He had lost all of his words, even. For Adam in particular, who is very affable and connected to people he knows well, this was a stark contrast. Yet, maybe mom was similar. Maybe it seemed like mom wasn’t really in the room anymore as I was trying to find the ground beneath my feet again after separation. I wonder how I may have appeared to my son.

Here, happy, relaxed and spending all of our time together, Adam has spoken the following:

Scenario 1: Browsing through a Payless Shoe Store looking straight at us: “Are you done yet?” Now for a parent with a more verbal child, this might seem like a nagging comment. For a parent with a child with few phrases, we were so happy, laughing hysterically!

Scenario 2: Getting ready to go but mom is trying to find her keys: “Let’s go, let’s go! Time to go, mom!!!”

Scenario 3: As he is doing something contentedly and I am trying to rush him out the front door: “Be patient with me.”

Scenario 4: After swimming and tugging on a wet bathing suit: “It hurts me.”

There are many more phrases coming out of his mouth down here in South Florida. He is not speaking in paragraphs, but such sentences are really nice surprises that this mom obviously doesn’t take for granted. Of course, Adam also has lots of physical activity down here. For a child like Adam who always needs to move around, a full day of swimming, running on the beach, climbing and swinging at the park, and going for long walks all seem to be another key to organizing that precious neurological system of his. Mind you, I’m not sure how to replicate the extent of this — the sheer quantity of exercise back in Toronto. Yet it’s another clue into how Adam needs to organize his neurology and attests to the things that make him feel happy and calm.

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It takes time to teach the child HOW to use the device and I have to admit that having Adam use the Qwerty board in preparation for receiving this device, it does help with the navigation. One can begin with low-tech options to prepare a child for such communication including PECS (Picture Exchange System) as well as using computers. Adam does most of his school work on a MAC computer to-date, and he has used the Alphasmart Neo to type because it is easy and lightweight. As Adam improves his reading/comprehension skills (expressive output I’m referring to as we never know the extent to what Adam knows), he answers his multiple choice questions one-hundred percent correctly. However, if Adam would be asked a comprehension question in an open-ended manner, he may not always answer correctly.

I encourage people to look at AAC and our institutions to take it VERY seriously in providing this opportunity for our non-verbal autistic children. It is one step closer to enabling their “voice.”

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It’s not all that easy to read in this day and age of watching our words regarding “struggle” and “fight,” so overused and sensationalized in the media to the detriment of autistic individuals. She uses these words more often although the tone of acceptance runs throughout, and this is a point I like to make often about autism acceptance: it doesn’t come without facing our inner doubts. If it were, it would lack real meaning and substance. Acceptance is something we must earn by facing them.

Adam spends some weekends with his father. This particular weekend, I caught the the stomach flu. Alone and sick (thus feeling particularly so…it always happens when we’re not feeling well), I yearned to speak Adam more often and to ask how his day went.  I was yearning for connection and I was also feeling guilty of not being able to take Adam back on Sunday night, when I would typically after a full weekend with his dad.  I wished to explain this to him, but Adam does not love sticking the telephone to his ear. In fact, he is exceptionally averse to it. My mother says Adam lives in the right era with all the technology that can help him. I’m not certain it is as good as we yet want it to be, but one thing’s for sure — thank goodness for Skype.

Skype is a recent life-saver. Adam’s dad and I have begun using it often and Adam holds his attention longer than using a telephone, as the visual is easier for him to understand. I can see him and he can see me and I feel a sense of huge relief. Then I wondered if Adam did too as he had to stay two extra nights with his dad because I did not want him to catch this outrageous flu. He loves his dad, but I wondered if he had natural questions about what was happening to his routine, and his mommy.

It was in Eustacia’s introduction that I tried to seek solace from this weekend. She said, “I’ve learned how the parents of autistic children suffer from a loss of their own sense of self. We all know that a baby needs a mother to know she’s a baby, but, equally true, a mother needs a baby to know she’s a mother.”

My friends and family, even my ex, all assure me that Adam knows I’m his mother during my more vulnerable moments, like this past weekend. I asked his aide today to help him understand that Adam would have to wait one more day to see mommy  — as I was hoping he could come home, but I am still too ill (do you understand how worried I was about this yet?). Adam texted me the following, I’m fairly sure, with a few reminders from his aide:

hi mommy

i like mommy

i like dinosaurs

mommy feeling sick. Feel happy. Feel better

i had chocolate after lunch

bye mommy

love you

Adam

I’ll take it. Yet I wondered today if Adam really missed me. It’s a natural wonder, I think. Even parents of neurotypical children might wonder the same when their children are with another parent, or with friends. We too need to receive love. We need these expressions of love that we have become so used to.

Later on Skype this afternoon and evening, I had a virtual “dinner” with Adam, thanks to his dad who put the camera straight on him.  After he became upset later in the evening, his dad put him in front of the camera. When he saw me, he calmed right down and smiled again. I spoke to him softly in my mother-voice, reminding him that I will see him again tomorrow. Again another smile; crying abated. That is the mother’s reward — her ability to calm her child. I completely understand the angst mothers feel when they do not feel they can appease their child’s pain or distress because I too have been through that.

So I am elated for it’s what I get — not yet the long drawn out conversations about what is happening, what may be confusing him, what he is excited about. Yet I think I can decipher it enough. We are communicating. Indeed, I need to remind myself of this in such times when I think of Adam as a person and his future, and my future as Adam’s mother.

“Think of me as your future,” says Eustacia. “I am where you will be many years from now, when you know how it all played out, when ‘what will be’ has turned into ‘what was,’ and you will have to come to terms with it.

Perhaps not in the way you thought you would, but you’ll no longer feel trapped in a morass of angst and guilt. You will have resolved your child’s future and your own. You’ll know you’ve given full measure, and the measure you’re given has never been pointless.

I offer you my story as a promise of that: an overall insight to carry with you as a talisman. And I promise that, in the future, to your surprise, your dreams will have changed and changed you.

I know that’s not what you want.

What you want is a real talisman, a magic something you think I conjured up to coax Temple into joining life, as you hope your child will. There was no magic; there was just doing the best I could. That’s the point; that’s the talisman.”

I’ve understood my son. Maybe he understands me better than I can know in the obvious, typical way. For certain, love goes deeper.

And it is louder than words.

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A new study by researchers from the University of Miami shows that maternal sensitivity may influence language development among children who go on to develop autism. Although parenting styles are not considered as a cause for autism, this report examines how early parenting can promote resiliency in this population. The study entitled, “A Pilot Study of Maternal Sensitivity in the Context of Emergent Autism,” is published online this month and will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

I am not commenting on how the study was conducted nor the value of “resiliency.” I am commenting on the inference. I am a sensitive mother. Some say I’m pretty good at mothering. I’m extremely sensitive to my son, and he is non verbal. He can manage a word or phrase now and again, but at nearly eight years of age, it’s pretty difficult. I engaged Adam. I did everything (and still do everything) I can think of. He is a wonderful child who is anxious and has some sleep issues. I’m not sure I could have been even more sensitive than I was to make him more resilient. While he’s pretty good at moving around the community, going to school (with an aide), traveling, he does have extremely difficult days too and we are going through some of them RIGHT NOW during a major transition in our lives. Because of Adam I continue to grow and learn how to work with him, and there is always something new for me to learn.

With this study, I fail to see an acknowledgment (in the links I could find tonight, I have to qualify this) that for many autistic individuals the inability to speak fluently, or at all, is neurological, not just dependent on the sensitive mother. The term “re-wiring” is used a lot for individuals with brain injury and just as often by gurus selling therapies for curing autism. I will never argue that, as parents, we all want to try and help our children in a world that is often confusing and frustrating for them. Yet, I also wonder if teaching autistic children how to communicate is something very different than re-wiring, for that implies that we are fixing something to make it better. Adam communicates all the time. Like the two-year-old who may have warbled speech indecipherable to many but the parent, some of us close to Adam know what he is communicating — and quite boldly. Perhaps we might consider that working with autistic children is like figuring out the intricate wiring that already exists. Like the ill-suited American plug to the European outlet, maybe we aren’t meant to re-wire the autistic brain into a neurotypical one.

“In this study, maternal sensitivity (and primarily, sensitive structuring) was more predictive of language growth among toddlers developing autism than among children who did not go on to an autism diagnosis. One possible explanation is that children with autism may be more dependent on their environment to learn certain skills that seem to come more naturally to other children.”

I would agree that our children need our support, and this does take extra effort on our part.

“Parenting may matter even more for children with developmental problems such as autism because certain things that tend to develop easily in children with typical neurological development, like social communication, don’t come as naturally for kids with autism, so these skills need to be taught,” says Jason K. Baker, a postdoctoral fellow at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, who conducted the study with Messinger while at UM.”

I don’t disagree with the idea that autistic children require more support and accommodation in a confusing environment, and that “being sensitive” is especially important. Many of this know this. I tend to see this as part of the autism and NT (neurotypical) equation, for the key is that we as parents learn how our children learn and how they see the world. I don’t see it as a tugging into “our world,” but a sharing. It’s the manner in which we, as parents, figure out how to be with the child who is already with us, with challenges in a world that has such difficulty understanding autism, but also with many strengths and attributes. Acceptance is a daily exercise and the idea will challenge us day in and day out — some days (and nights) more than others. Every day Adam works so hard to accept me, to accept this world and the people around him, and I wonder if that’s all we seem to ask him to do. The least we can do is to accommodate him and what he needs and wants from this world.

This article ends with a shallow disclaimer: “We know that parenting doesn’t cause autism. The message here is that parents can make a difference in helping their children fight against autism.” Okay, it doesn’t cause autism, but the implication is that the sensitive mother can improve language acquisition and resiliency skills. The results may have been one hundred percent true according to the study design, but the key piece of accepting autism is missing.

While it is certainly advantageous to have a sensitive parent to ANY child, I would hate to think that one might judge me as being an insensitive one if my son is not able to speak. Further, the focus on mothers specifically has reminded me of times I thought had long gone by. Maybe the Refrigerator Mother still lurks in the dark recesses of some minds. To conclude from my peripheral read and no reading of scientific critique on how the study was conducted, I sniff not only an omission or two, but a little bias.

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But there’s another problem.

It could be me.

I need to re-learn my ABC’s. Remember those: Antecedent, Behaviour, Consequence? We put an autistic child under our neurotypical microscope (as if that doesn’t cause distress), and evaluate the antecedent (or cause) of a behaviour so that we can seek to change (or eliminate) it. The Consequence in behavioural-speak is what happens after the behaviour. I’m not saying that these tools are not useful to us. They can be if we learn how to assist autistic children cope. I’m not a fan of eliminating behaviour. But there’s another side to this story.

When I worry I am studying Adam. I watch for every little sign. Then I realize that I’m not watching myself. How am I feeling? How has my anxiety triggered a course of events? Adam just wants to explore, and yes, he cannot sleep like most autistic people who, as they become adults, learn to cope on very little. In his new home, Adam is very “disorganized” in his body (for those unfamiliar with this language, it means that Adam is moving his body in unfamiliar ways or hyperactive ways and it can appear distressing), and I still do not know for sure if it’s medical.

Yet, I also am thinking he is learning about every nook and cranny of the house as he used to memorize routes on road trips from school to home or from his old house to the park. While he didn’t get upset if we changed the route, he certainly memorized it. I’m thinking of Dawn Prince Hughes, author (and new friend of mine since I met her in Toronto a couple of years ago — little did she know that I was a HUGE fan of her book beforehand) of Songs of A Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism and the excerpt on herself as a child running around in the same circle in her house. Experiencing this first hand, it’s exhausting for a parent who wants their child to “behave” or settle. Then I have to think again.

“The way I said ‘siiiilllverrr doooollllaaarrr’ was only the start of a profound pattern I had throughout childhood saying words and phrases in peculiar, experimental ways and having a complete fascination for words. When I was young, my parents and I often stayed at my mother’s new house, and my favorite uncle lived there also. A hallway ran around the perimeter of the house, past the dining room, the bedrooms, the bathroom, the front door, and through the living room back to the dining room, in a big circle. My favorite game (to the exclusion of all others) was to wait in the dining room for the adults to come up with a word — the more difficult the better — and then I would speed off down the hallway, in the same direction every time, either on my tricycle or on foot, repeating the word over and over.” (pp. 17-18).

Hughes describes then running to each of the rooms saying the word “where the word would absorb the comfort of my grandparent’s bed, their clothing, the beauty of the vanity table, and the smell of cedar drawers…” (p. 18)

Not only have I found Adam enclosed in drawers, but under the bed, and in the deep dark crawl space in our new basement. It takes a lot of effort for me to stay awake and keep an eye on him, as his safety always comes first. His body jerks, he lays on his back and holds his legs. He opens every cupboard, closet and drawer and is still absorbing them — and maybe he can do this better when he can enter them.  Save for the things that he knows — books, his computer that still has the same “Alligator King” from Sesame Street on it, and a cupboard full of crackers and goodies he now knows is his own, he is still disorganized here but is working so hard himself on trying to get organized and calm. Indeed, my boy is making gargantuan efforts.

To this Hughes writes, “I also wanted to keep as many of my own accoutrements as possible the same. This meant that I did not want a new toothbrush, new clothes, new shoes…When I went shopping for clothes with my mother [Hughes describes being afraid of mannequins]…My strategy for survival was to hide inside the clothing racks…the lack of light would calm me down. Hiding was yet another thing that later connected me to my gorilla family — when they went behind the hills to sit or seek out the little caves in the underbrush or rock to be by themselves, I would understand.” (p.21). Similarly, Adam has gone to the books that were the same from his old house. He is not interested yet in new things.

Adam’s grandparents have been around a lot to support him. I believe his grandparents are two of his favorite people (and most consistent). Again this relates so closely to Hughes: “When I was young I stayed with my grandparents on the weekends, and those were among my favorite times. I did feel safe there.” (pp. 21-22). Ask my parents and they’ll likely say that their condo is his “turf.” They have been helpful to Adam and I during this time.

Adam craves lemons during this year of transition. To this, Hughes writes, “I craved salt and would eat it straight from the shaker. I craved burnt matchheads and would suck on them whenever I could find them. I craved Alka Seltzer for its taste and feel….A sound like the thrum of a tumbler full of milkshake when is was tapped [Adam does this all the time] by a spoon or the Westminster chime of the clock would fill me with rapture.”

So I give Adam his lemons. Right now, I’ll buy him a bucketfull, although other people will tell him to “stop eating lemons,” or, “stop doing that.” Sure, I worry about his teeth, or of Adam’s safety in potentially dangerous situations. I’m not saying that we have to allow our kids to do everything, but I have to let him do more than usual and I have to change my behaviour to accommodate it right now, for this is an exceptional situation. I’m always trying to stay one step ahead of Adam to figure out how he can explore safely.

“Most autistic people need order and ritual and will find ways to make order where they feel chaos. So much stimulation streams in, rushing into one’s body without ever being processed: the filters that other people have simply aren’t there. Swimming through the din of the fractured and the unexpected, one feels as if one were drowning in an ocean without predictability, without markers, without a shore. It is like being blinded in the brightness of a keener sight. Autistic people will instinctively reach for order and symmetry; they arrange the spoons on the table, they line up matchsticks, or they rock back and forth, cutting a deluge of stimulation into smaller bits with repetition of their bodies’ movements.” (p. 25).

This is quite an overwhelming statement for me on how Adam may be experiencing his new life situation. It is quite a disability and a sensory overload.

My point is, Adam is adapting as naturally as he can in a home that is entirely new to him. He will thrust his body upside down, will spin, will seek those dark tight spaces and not be able to sleep in his new bed precisely because he has not yet created his order. But he is doing what he needs to do. I, on the other hand, despite knowing this, am having difficulties of my own in managing it. Watching my son in distress distresses me. While this may be natural for Adam, it was re-reading some of Dawn’s excerpts this morning that helped me realize what I’ve learned in the past, but am now experiencing first-hand in a larger way.

I realize that I too am adjusting to my new surroundings as I listen to the house and figure out how I’m supposed to live in it. Things break down and I get frustrated because I am not yet calm and oriented, and this is difficult on both Adam and I.  While I feel guilty much of the time that my own anxiety is not helping Adam, I know too that we are not in control of everything that happens to us. Life happens. We are dealing with it. Like Adam, I am human.

So I was thinking about going back to the ABC’s and I thought of using it as a pun on behavioural-speak because what most of us want to try and do is “fix” the situation or behaviour. Today, I am reminding myself that this needs exploration and time — we’ve only been in our new house for a week! Not only does the alphabet, which Adam loves, stay constant in a world that is always changing, but re-reading Dawn’s book has helped me realize what tumultuous change feels like to an autistic child. It may require more effort on my part now to help him adapt by creating safe ways for him to do so. Adam will reach for his ABC books that always stay the same and he’s doing his part, and I am having this feeling he will eventually make lemonade out of lemons.

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Certainly the idea of giftedness, which happens in non autistic and autistic persons, can be yet another stereotype in assessing autistic people. Perception, on the other hand, is something to think about deeply.

When Adam was very young, we had these water blocks that were dyed different colours. Adam was mesmerized by these blocks watching the water swish and swoosh. Then all of a sudden, my wobbly toddler took them up to the window and peered through them. Ah, I thought. If only we could all stare at the world through coloured water blocks. How beautiful it would be. I know was also in part a cooing mother of a young autistic boy, so anything he did like this made me hyper-aware. But still.

When he got his “legs” and we began walking around the neighbourhood, Adam memorized his routes. To this day, if we take him to his old house and walk from there or the park nearby, he will remember how to get to that park or get back through the old “secret pathway” to the old house — which has even since been torn down and rebuilt! Remember, that was his two-three year old brain. In April, he will be eight-years-old.

Coming out soon will be a new version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton. Many people suspect that Carrol was himself autistic with his different perceptual abilities. He is often cited as a person who “suffered” from micropsia and macropsia, which is a neurological condition that changes the way the brain perceives the size of objects. When Alice falls down that rabbit hole, we get a look into Carroll’s mind.

Scientific American Mind published Extraordinary Perception by Wray Herbert this month. It discusses how psychologists at University College London “think that it might be a mistake to consider [autistic] distractability as simply a deficit. To the contrary, Anna Remington and John Swettenham and their colleagues speculate that people with ASD might have greater than normal capacity for perception, so that what appears as irrelevant distraction is really a cognitive bonus.” I added autistic to distractability as many therapies for autism as well as medications are geared at lessening it.

The test, the article shows, was for subjects to “rapidly determine if the letters N or X were present in the ring” on a computer screen. Participants had to then “hit the corresponding key on the keyboard. Some of the circles — those with more letters — were more difficult to process than others. There were also other letters floating outside the circle, but the subjects were specifically instructed to ignore those letters. Those floating letters were the laboratory equivalent of an irrelevant distraction in the real world.” In measuring perceptual capacity, researchers saw that “everyone was slower at the task when the ring contained more letters. The researchers were also measuring distractibility. When a letter outside the ring was one of the target letters (N or X), the subjects often took a longer time finding the N or X in the ring — indicating they were distracted by the presence of a target letter in the location that they were supposed to ignore.”

The researchers reasoned “that as long as the subjects’ total perceptual capacity was not exhausted, they would also process the irrelevant, distracting letters within their visual field. Once they had surpassed their perceptual capacity — once the ring of letters was sufficiently complex — irrelevant processing would stop [bold mine]. So if ASD subjects in fact have greater processing capacity, then they should process more distracting information even as the main task becomes increasingly complex.”

In conclusion, “although there was no difference among subjects in either reaction time or accuracy on the main task, those with ASD processed the irrelevant letters while solving much more complex problems...Put another way, they weren’t ignoring the main task, nor were they distracted away from it. Instead they were completing their work and moving on, using their untapped capacity” [bold mine].

This article also concludes that while this is a benefit, it also does have “real-life consequences.” They begin and end the article citing Tim Page, an author with Aspergers from his book, Parallel Play: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Asperger’s. Page recounts his time in school who failed an essay about his field trip which was quite detailed in terms of his way of perceiving it, and how he was scolded for writing in that particular way. “I had noticed the wrong things,” he writes.

As a parent of an autistic child who has difficulties with verbal communication, I have to ask the question: “whose problem is this anyway?” Certainly I have been dealing with issues, at least issues for me as Adam cannot comment here yet, so I am fully aware that I need to be fair. He has very real sensory and perceptual differences, so I set up a basement full of equipment for him to self-soothe. He has even learned to “self-regulate” by going to read his own books, and I never had to teach him that. His body will completely quiet as he flips through pages of encyclopedias, dictionaries, cookbooks, among many other subjects. He may even appear to layperson as not really paying attention and just flipping pages, but I know it’s more than that. His body-jerking almost always stops, which is how I conclude that he is soothed by his books. I am imagining him looking at those books over and over again, and what he may be gleaning from them. Still, when it comes to getting the responses WE need, he using a “special” reading program at school. Indeed it is really helping with his expressive reading ability, and maybe even with his vocabulary. So I need to let him do both. He needs to learn to respond in a world that doesn’t yet understand the way he learns. He also needs to flip through pages and pages on his own. I can sit beside him sometimes also and talk about the books he is reading. We can type about what he is reading, we can draw stories and make more conclusions or assumptions about what he is reading. When we do things together calmly, we are having lots of fun.

When we teach him a new communication device, it may appear to the person who is teaching that Adam is not focused enough — indeed he appears to be “highly distracted.” On an AAC device (we are still awaiting one from a service-provider here in Toronto) his finger will go to the right picture, letter, or answer, and then he will quickly go to another one to check out what it will do. A keyguard helps him direct his finger more quickly to the correct response. He may have trouble finishing sentences (when he types) and then be reminded to “stay on task.” This is in large part what Facilitated Communication attempts to assist with if done correctly — to remind and assist with the focus. To a person who cannot detect that Adam was about to give the “right” answer (or rather the answer that was requested of him), he would receive a failing grade. Adam is very young and I believe he is not given the benefit of the doubt enough, although his team members are good with this.

It is only fair to say that we do not KNOW everything he knows. We do not fully understand how he takes all this knowledge in and we are the ones that deem his versions of knowledge as irrelevant. We have not developed sufficient ways to measure his responses or his way of learning and seeing, except for the ways we measure responses and knowledge from people who are not autistic. This brings me back to the old ABA adage, “if we can measure it, we can deal with it.” Unfortunately, the way we have historically dealt with autism is by eliminating the behaviours and learning patterns that are essential to an autistic person’s existence. Perhaps continuing to fund this research more heavily is important because as we understand how autistic people learn, we can not only develop better learning tools, but come to better appreciate our children.

Trying to understand this is a first step. As Adam’s parent, I see many of the so-called “issues” being mine, and yes, I become just as frustrated as many other parents out there. It’s really hard to see Adam in distress and it’s even harder to always be guessing what may be causing anxiety or body-jerking (Lack of calcium? Trouble at school? New self-awareness of difference? Trouble with transitioning from task to task? Lack of sleep? Seizures? A very long winter? Lack of exercise? Another neurological issue?…The guess work list is too long). Since Adam appears to be in discomfort since late last fall, I am really working hard at figuring this out (wait-lists are long here in Toronto). Sleep issues, anxiety issues — I know when I have a level head, there is more that I can do for him to ease the situation. We need science now to figure out many of our questions.

Sometimes it feels that makeshift solutions only lead to more issues. Sure, we all want things to be a little easier, but Adam requires more consideration in order to achieve that balance between helping him through discomfort as well as accommodating his needs. As I have been through a difficult year, like many of you out there, I completely understand the reasoning, but I have to keep a level head and look at what Adam has also gone through with a “broken” family. I have needed my sleep, but if Adam cannot, I have to find safe ways of letting him stay up until his body will sleep naturally. I know what I’m saying isn’t easy and there are still days I will resort to the Melatonin, even though, because of the guesswork involved, it pains me to do so. Yet I also know it’s important to stop and slow down and think about how Adam feels and perceives. When I do, everything seems a little easier. As a parent, I can even become proud of myself (it’s important) that I’ve not only managed well, but have helped Adam out too. We are still on that path to finding out if we can help Adam, but I am always wondering excessively about how I perceive the “problem.”

I’m interested in what people in science think about this Perception study. I think we have to spend a lot more time imagining what it feels like to be in Wonderland.

——-

Excerpts from:

“Extraordinary Perception” by Wray Herbert in March/April 2010 issue of Scientific American Mind, pp. 68-69.

Further Reading:

Selective Attention and Perceptual Load in Autism Spectrum Disorder, Anna Remington, John Swettenham, Ruth Campbell and Mike Coleman in Psychological Science (in press). Published online October 14, 2009. www3.interscience.wiley.com

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The past two days when I’ve picked Adam up from school he has been running into my arms with a huge grin on his face. I have to admit that his hugs and grins are like Valium — the moment he does that my entire body relaxes. As his mother, I am happy when Adam is happy. Adam is happy when I am happy.

One thing is for sure as I watched his face searching mine this morning and on his way out the door to school is that for Adam, I am home. This is home because I am here. For all the worrying I’ve been doing, it dawns that I am the most important person in Adam’s life. I am the most constant, the most present, although, of course he has many people who also love and support him.

Below is a little snapshot of Adam when he came home from school as I let him relax. It doesn’t show the exuberance that came afterward — and the searching for mommy in order that he could snuggle in the crook of my arm for me to read him his favorite books (Little Ms. Shy and Mr. Quiet, no less). As I watch what Adam does and how he does it; as I pay attention to the books he brings me, he is telling me a whole lot. I say this as I am also skeptically reading about a cuddle drug for autism (Adam is the best cuddler and most affectionate child). It can be frustrating when I am worried about Adam and he cannot communicate everything that’s on his mind. Considering all the issues with autism and communication, it is those moments when I step back and pay attention that I can really appreciate Adam and the many things he has to say. Thank goodness for autistic behaviours for they are telling me so much! Adam is telling me how much he needs me and my support. He is telling me how much he loves me!

We are home.

Here’s the little after-school video:

VID 00039

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Adam is changing and I reminisce from the early days — when he was diagnosed at 19 months of age, how I started this blog back in 2005. He is becoming more curious, more adept, stronger. He is always learning. He gets frustrated. He still cannot communicate with words very well. He must use a device. He does not understand, I believe, inherent dangers as he explores his new exciting world. Laundry chutes, small dark corners are inviting spaces for all little children. I teach as best I can with a firm “no,” a new rule that he can easily comprehend, and a stop sign posted to various areas of the house. It may not be “designer” but style makes no sense where safety is concerned.

Adam is also heading out into the world. Yes, he has his aides. But as a newly separated person who now must share time with Adam’s father with regards to Adam, I find myself during lonely nights thinking about how life is always about letting go: of fear, of things, of little children growing into bigger independent children (or quasi independent in our case). As Adam grows, I must learn to let him out into the world with others so he can learn more. It is a great challenge for any parent, and perhaps even more punctuated when one is a single parent. And as all things with our children as we watch them grow, it’s (delightfully) bittersweet. Adam would grow up resenting me if I held him back and did not let him explore. I have to let him do it in safe ways, in stages. When he grabs that sharp knife to cut a piece of fruit, I have to teach him with a dull knife (and with supervision of course). I have to let him explore dark spaces by creating safer dark spaces. I have to let him jump around the house, not on furniture where he may hurt his head, but on equipment set up for the task of jumping. In the case of Adam and his neurological needs, I also have to LET him be who he is and get the feedback he needs.

He needs to run, he needs to jump, explore, and yes, eat lemons. I would never be able to hold him back to change these activities because they don’t look like typical play. I need to provide him safe avenues to explore these things. Instead of viewing these things as “overwhelming” because they are not what all typical children necessarily do, I must learn new ways of helping him explore. While there are not as many programs and “how-to” books out there, common sense, time, and a deep breath help me figure it out.

It’s the same at school and we are lucky right now to have a school that allows Adam to explore safely, that allows aides, that allows us to bring in adaptive technologies and programs that help Adam learn in the way he can. But when people first meet him, I am starkly aware of how they will measure him — what “competency tests” to assess what he does and does not know that are delivered in a way that we take for granted, and perhaps that Adam would not be able to respond to. Far less effort (and money) is paid to adapting those tests so that he could respond — like visual options for answers, multiple choice. Adam is extremely visual and “performs” well when given this option. And I write this because I saw the movie NELL last night with Jodie Foster. I have been calling Adam — among many nicknames like boo boo bear, moo moo, Adiboo, Adamame… and Chickabee — the nickname Nell uses in the film. I must have picked it up a few years ago when I first saw it. I love the movie Nell because it reminds us that humans can create languages that perhaps not everyone understand easily and in the way we are used to, but how we create meaning.

And Adam communicates, indeed. He has a language that I’ve learned to, believe it or not, take for granted! But as he goes out into the world not everyone will know his language. He would be given those “competency tests,” and maybe even fail because they don’t measure in a way that addresses how he can express what he knows. So yes, my Adam now goes out further into the world. And yes, we have to teach him to communicate within it and learn the more common way of communicating. But I still believe he will and should always keep his mother tongue.

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