Estée KlarThe Joy of Autism

Watching me these days and I think you will find me deep in thought. I’m dreaming, thinking. Not the kind of dreaming where I’m floating (well, okay, sometimes), but the kind that I think is important for all parents of autistic children. Maybe this comes at the right time — right before Adam begins his new school.

Usually when we speak of the future, there is fear in our voices. We believe that there will be fewer services, aides and opportunities once our kids turn twenty-one. This is the case for many people. While we must work on the programs and services that autistic people may need throughout their lifetimes, I also want to think about all that is possible. I believe that the more we do this, the more likely we will achieve the kinds of supports and opportunities for our kids that we fear we will lose.

I dream about riding a bike with Adam. Kristina Chew’s stories about Charlie and her husband James has motivated me to teach Adam how to cycle better (he has a tendency to always be looking where he has been rather than where he is going…a rather ironic notion).

I think about taking Adam around the world, and if not entirely around it or entirely with me, I’d like to think he will see the world in any event. I think of Horseboy and recently the travels of Larry Bissonnette and Tracy Thresh as part of the film Wretches and Jabberers (great title). I think that if we’ve come this far, we can likely go farther both physically as well as mentally. I took Adam to Mexico last year, and lugged him deep down into Mayan caves, and there will be more. Sure, we’ll have to endure some discomfort along the way, some rude comments, leering eyes and possibly some meltdowns with delayed travel and other frustrations, but I consider when the time is right, it will be worth the try. I mean, Adam is already an explorer. He will find every nook, every cranny, every inviting pathway that I, in my perpetual goal-state-of-mind, will miss far too often. Even with the liklihood of some discomfort, I can’t help but wonder if moving around and seeing new things may be the best education of his life, and quite likely, of mine.

I dream about Adam in higher education — be in college or university, exploring what he loves and being assisted if he needs it. So many people delay their entrance also into higher education. So the timing just doesn’t matter. There are many stories of autistic adults in universities right now and thanks to them, it keeps my dream alive.

I dream of Adam having his friends and people he loves around him. He likes people. Although we are addicted to social networking (you can find me everyday twittering and FB’ing and blogging — I’m torn about the whole matter), I had written for the TAAP exhibition in 2007 how technology really assisted the social connections between autistic individuals. Adam also uses the computer (although not yet for that) and he has a friend he goes to school with. I see no reason, as he is helped along the way, why the wouldn’t have people he loves to have around him. The many autistic friends I’ve made along the my journey of learning how to support my autistic child has helped me keep this dream alive.

I was also thinking of the dreams I had for Adam when he was newly diagnosed and a toddler — how I had hoped he could go to a good school, become more independent and begin to communicate. Although he is still challenged on the latter, he communicates far better than he used to. The autistic teenagers and adults who use Assisted and Augmentative Communication have helped keep this dream alive.

I dream of Adam cooking his own food because he seems to enjoy helping me out in the kitchen. Although this is not always possible for all autistic people, for others, it is. Susan Senator and her family write a lot about cooking (or is it that I’m especially alert to Susan’s food postings?). She and her son Nat have helped me keep this dream alive.

I dream of Adam continuously enjoying self-expression. He has shown a particular fondness towards art. Those of you who know my passion for this subject will know that I have many autistic artists to thank and who have kept this dream for Adam’s happiness in self-expression, alive. It would be difficult for me to list everyone here.

I realize that since before I started writing The Joy of Autism blog, I have so many people to be thankful for in helping keeping dreams alive. There are many stories on the web now that weren’t when I began writing in 2005. The daily successes are worth reading every day.

Although Adam is still quite different, he has accomplished so much. As his parent, my dreams for him as well as myself are thriving. I think this is what we most fear as new parents — that the weight of unknown responsibilities will take these dreams and hopes away — not only for our children, but for ourselves. While I have not written the entire list of my dreams here today, I see that dreams, as we adjust our views and expectations of our autistic children, really do come true.

As for Adam, I’m quite certain he’ll have many of his own dreams to share one day.

What are yours?

——–
There are so many autistic people and parents who have helped keep many of my dreams alive that I have not listed here today. I’ve been writing about many of them for a few years now.

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Adam and I are enjoying what Toronto has to offer. A lover of music, I’ve lugged him to the jazz festival and other performances in our great city. We play piano, sing a lot and I’ve been teaching Adam how to dance. He took it upon himself to dance on my feet. It’s something my dad had to teach me when I was a little girl. Adam just did that on his own. With all of this activity, one would imagine that child would sleep well.

Like many autistic folks, however, Adam doesn’t always need a lot of sleep. I, on the other hand, need my seven hours. He’s still so young, I am unable to teach him at this point to do work, go onto the computer and let me get what I need. In many ways, it can be like having an infant, still. If I left him to his own devices at this particular age, he would turn his room into a gymnasium, climbing all the furniture (which thankfully I bolted down).

It might have been the storm last night that woke him, I’ll grant him that. I heard him yelp. As Adam begins to talk more and find his “voice,” he is also becoming much LOUDER. In the middle of my daze at 2:38 this morning he came into my room and said, “Wake up! Let’s talk!”

My eyes groggy, I couldn’t help but smile, even though I wish this came at seven in the morning. “Adam quiet,” I said, not believing that I’d ask my previously non verbal child to be quiet! “It’s time to sleep,” I pleaded. To this he responded with laughter, like the gods.

I could have gotten really frustrated, the way I have in the past sometimes. I just told him to climb into my bed and I let him chatter away as I dozed beside him, knowing that at least a little rest is better than nothing at all. Occasionally I tried to persuade him with a “sleep,” word or two, and he would at least quiet down for a bit.

At six this morning I gave up trying. I turned on Nora Jones, made breakfast and dealt with my fatigue with a dance. Adam, still energetic and happy took his position.

Sleep or no sleep, I know I should not be complaining.

Our morning dance:

This morning’s song, Shoot the Moon, by Nora Jones:

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You have to hand it to kids. Just when I forget to laugh, Adam comes up with something to make me laugh about.

Like all boys his age, the proverbial fart joke is something hilarious. What makes the fart so darn funny? I remember my step-children, now all adults, in the backseat of our Durango farting and laughing. “Whoever smelt it, dealt it!” They would giggle, sounding like hyenas in the back seat between whines and squeals, between farts and trying to pinch and smack each other. Of course I laughed. The child’s giggle is infectious. The fart is eternally funny. It takes pretense back down to the level of human.

I was reminded of all this — what seems like eons ago now — when Adam farted this morning before school. “Oops you farted,” I commented and his giggle, the one he never wants to end, ensued.

I suppose I’m writing this not just because farts are funny, but because such toilet humour does not get lost on Adam — the autistic child who supposedly doesn’t get humour. It seems so incredible to me now these vast generalizations are so not applicable in the autistic people I meet.

While I’m not sure what this really says about me, tell me really if this doesn’t make you laugh. It makes Adam laugh!

Click for fart sounds here.

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This is the phrase that Adam begs of us when he wants to jump.

Here is a video of Adam that his dad taped which may just put a smile on your face as much as it does mine. This is the kind of exhilaration I think we all need at least once a day!

I haven’t put music to it yet. I was thinking of the song When You’re Smilin’ by Louis Armstrong. Then again, I sort of like it without any music at all.

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I have to admit that I’m adjusting to my new role, still, as single mother. There are lovely days, like yesterday, when I want to spend my time with Adam. We awaited a thunderstorm that never came, but watched Disney’s Mulan anyway — a movie Adam has not yet seen. Adam is more interested in watching movies from start to finish now that his attention is stronger, his awareness keen. In the “early days,” Adam could only sit still for about ten or so minutes and movies were simply not possible. These are rather nice days, like the time today we spent walking around the Scarborough Bluffs, listening to the waves gently swell upon the shore and watching the geese fly off as elegantly as immaculately set-up dominoes. Adam lead me to the shore-side restaurant and we ate together. I’ll admit that sometimes I miss having someone to share this with us, and then again I cherish every moment now because I have learned that life changes in a moment.

Sometimes we spend our afternoons by the pool and he is content in what I have called his nest (see picture) — I have this chair outside even though the rain is determined to wither the wicker away. He will curl up after a swim and stare at the maple leaves hanging above him in the sunlight, reluctant to depart at my declarations that he must be getting cold and it’s time for a hot shower. No, he prefers to cuddle up and listen to the birds. I don’t blame him — it was the same chair I healed in after surgeries a couple of years ago and I dragged it outside because it’s far better to heal outside than in.

As his treat, I purchased Adam a new nest for his room today so I could put it in the corner where he has come to read his books. I placed it under a canopy I also created for him with twinkling lights when I set up his room in his new house. Like all things these days, it was over-wrapped. We arrived home and I was determined to get this simple task done for him. He helped me lug a bag inside and I asked him to play on his own nearby. He wanted to eat, he wanted to do something else — he wanted my help.

“Adam, mommy doesn’t have any help so you have to be my helper today,” I said. New single-mother talk, I’m thinking. But I’m also thinking how frustrated I am over trying to do everything as quickly as possible, wishing right now, in this moment, that I had someone to do it for me so I can turn to Adam instead.

“Just wait, Adam,” I say with irritated breath, unraveling yards of ties and cardboard with an inappropriate pair of kiddie scissors that were handy. It’s me that I realize I’m telling to wait, though. Adam is doing just fine.

I struggle to carry the big hoop of the chair to the upstairs and set the chair up, going as fast as I can.

“Come see, Adam. Come upstairs,” I am now asking after I just told him to stay put. I imagine my son thinks I’m nuts. He obliges me and goes into the chair and curls into it contentedly reading his series of I Spy phonics books, reminding me that “it’s not a horse; it’s a duck.” His language skills have improved. He talks in more sentences, in particular to tell me everything he sees. I suck in some air and sit on the edge of his bed, enjoying him enjoying the chair. I like to watch Adam happy and calm. Heck, I like to experience myself happy and calm.

I know I have to prepare dinner. The grandparents are coming soon, Adam was searching hi and lo in my kitchen for something, as usual, to eat. It’s a wonder the boy is so slim with all he eats.

I am breathing more calmly thinking that I know I can’t do everything at every moment I want to. I know that something’s gotta give; of some things I must let go at certain moments, and maybe even for life. I am still in that growing phase of learning to be on my own as a parent. Although life isn’t bad, it isn’t the same when you have to do everything yourself. I am learning, still, after two years to be okay with this.

While I get a lot of snuggles from Adam and a lot of kisses too, I realized that I don’t get a lot of “how are you’s?” from anyone, really. I don’t get the “how are you really doing?” kind of caring-talk. I suddenly realize it when Adam pops out of his room and hollers from the top of the stairs, “I wub you!”

“What?” I ask loudly as I am in the kitchen preparing food.

“I wub you mum!” All his words were spoken with force but with the same intonation. Then, I hear him go back into the room and shut the door.

I am stunned. I think Adam is saying thank you for the chair, for his little nest. I think he totally knows how much I love him.

For what it’s worth, I needed that.

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It is said that one should write something that they would like to read. In those early autism years, as I was in that period of coalescing my arguments and thoughts about autism, I have enjoyed writing about Adam, motherhood, and our “journey.” There is a sense of therapy to writing and that can be beneficial for many people undergoing a similar situation. Writing can help us transcend the feeling that we are “all alone.” Yet I have the feeling after being a few years in this, that filtering autism down to miracles and gifts as well as horrors and tragedies has just become naïve. It’s time for all of us to up the ante (I am turning the finger towards myself here).

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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I had a very important job today. One that surpasses all administration, bills, and the like. My mandate for the day? Make Adam giggle… a LOT. I realized that he hasn’t been giggling as much as he used to. Adam, who is about to turn eight, is becoming a much more serious little boy, but he is also a little boy who is experiencing so many changes.

Adam is on vacation and as usual, we head to his home away from home: Miami. I haven’t been away with Adam since December and we are both having a really good time. Adam looks up at me often and smiles, hugs me, grabs my leg and is a lot more verbal down here. He seems glad to be spending lots of one-on-one time with his mother who is not otherwise distracted getting our lives back on track. I realized, while walking along the edge of the ocean hand-in-hand with a contented little boy, that in between school and programs and the big move, we have been drifting through our days trying to survive all of the changes of separation and divorce. While it’s a part of living, may it only be temporary! Adam sure likes his mother happy (and so it goes, mother likes Adam happy too).

Sometimes we just keep doing things day-after-day and we forget about the sun, the ocean and the importance of doing very little in order to make room for all of the possibilities. In the sea of change, we try so hard to find the lifeboat forgetting that all of this too is what life is about. Change is the only thing certain — so goes the saying. With change, opportunities.

When the sun shines and Adam smiles, there seem to be so many more of them.

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I’m clicking my heels this morning. Adam is so happy in his new home that it seems he likes it better than his old one! So all that worry has turned into joy, joy, joy.

This isn’t much of a post except that I had this song in my head this morning and I dedicate it to my Adam:

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I am moonstruck in Miami. I kid you not that while this is an Internet image I’ve just found, it just about looks what I saw this evening rising at sunset. My dad, the photographer, got some real shots of it which I may post tomorrow.

It’s a quiet New Year’s for Adam and I, my parents having spent the last week with us here. Yet it’s been really lovely. A year of significant change has settled gently now in the warm arms of family. After we’ve run along the beach,had our haircuts with our favorite girl, swum endless hours in the pool and broken bread together, we have snuggled in our beds… contented.

Adam needed to end his year just like this after being so wrung before he left for Florida. He spent time here first with his dad, and now, of course with his mom. And while we have become a family of a different sort this past year, Adam, I believe, has still found it full of love.

It is well before midnight and Adam went to sleep about an hour ago simply exhausted from sun and sand. We will not watch the crystal ball drop but we have watched the rare Blue Moon rise in the sky tonight — the moon that will only come out in another 19 years. I can barely imagine what life will be like 19 years from now.

A year ago we were in a tougher place as I struggled with separation among Mayan temples during a trip to Mexico. But as I listen to the ocean one last evening before our flight home tomorrow with Adam sleeping beside me as I write this, and take one last peek at that magnificent moon, I can’t help but notice how much difference a year can make. The year 2010 is going to be a good year — I can feel it.

Thanks to everyone who made their comments, who sent me emails and those who stay in touch in all the other ways we can stay in touch these days. I’ve appreciated it. I wish everyone a happy and healthy new year!

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Barb and Tim Farlow and Justice for Annie. She has been interviewed in Bloom, Bloorview Kid’s Rehab’s magazine in For The Love of Annie. I’ve known Barb for a few years now and the work she has done attests to her love of Annie, her daughter, born with Trisomy 13. Reading her story reminds me why I do what I do for Adam and even the prices I may have paid for it — any parent with disabled child may attest to those prices paid, and most parents would say that they would pay them again. Me too. There is not I price I wouldn’t pay for getting Adam the acceptance, access and rights that belong to him.

In two days I will be reunited with my son Adam for Christmas. As I have been without him for a week, I am starkly reminded of how closely connected we are and how I understand Barb and her decisions because of it.

Tis the season. May we all find our joy, our happiness and remember the importance of this most valuable thing of all. This little thing called love.

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I always knew Adam was a tough little egg. As I had written earlier today, he defied the sleep aid in the hospital that would knock, likely, a typical kid on their back. Not my Adam; he was fighting this sleep. Maybe he was determined to defy any hospital hand after the weekend. No electrode would be placed on his adorable little autie head this morning.

I have to admit, this single mom is pooped. A couple of canceled events — of course I was going to cancel them and do everything and anything for the little man — all the worry, sleepless nights and all that social deprivation! We met with unknowledgable Emergency Room staff (Did I say that? I really wanted to use the word graceless), I slept beside him in the pediatric ward for the first time since he was born, I orchestrated (felt more like moving mountains) to get this EEG this week, instead of in February. And NADA. Anyone have a Grey Goose on ice?

Yet, just as it always goes when life seems to feel a little dark (it is December after all), I decide tonight that Adam, who has of late not been sitting very still or sleeping very much, will watch E.T. with me this evening. Movie watching can be a little precarious with Adam. He has been known to leave dark, hushed theatres mid-performance. I think the movies he has sat through from start-to-finish, so far, have been Happy Feet, WALL-E, surprisingly, Charlotte’s Web and that silly one with the hamsters playing 007 in 3-D, whatever that was. At home where he is allowed to roam freely to the kitchen, get his toys, his books, movie-watching can be next to impossible. So sleep deprived? Too bad. There is usually no rest in this house even when we are weary.

I am happy to report that tonight, I managed to keep him with me on the couch — many a wriggle and a wrestle, a salty cracker or two. Okay, maybe three. When he saw E.T. and that typing device, I told him to look. He was, even though he would also wriggle, look at a book, eat a cracker, a banana, a glass of water, and peek often in between. “Look at Elliot,” I would urge, pointing my finger hoping for that good old joint attention. “Look, look at E.T.! Isn’t he cute,” Adam looked at me with a smile, which, if you really had seen Adam’s pain the past few days was lovely, relieving and made me appreciate every moment like this we’ve EVER had. His cheeks seemed fuller, maybe because his colour came back. As he rubbed his soft head into my face, I could still detect the whiff of medicinal smell from the gel they had placed on his scalp. He rubbed his cheeks back and forth against mine for the feel of it, like Eskimo kisses and I laughed. It felt like a bucket of soft feathers pouring over me, but really, it was love. He seemed to enjoy my antics more than the movie, or maybe he just liked it when mom sat there with him on the couch, eating crackers, drinking water, and fun-wrestling in my arms.

“Home, home, home,” he said at that point in the movie when the music billows, the volume rises, and the story ends. Home indeed. There’s no place like it.

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“Barely awake at the breakfast table, I let precious time go by…”

Hovering over the small stainless frying pan I cook his eggs, sunny side up. He always likes them sunny side up. I think it started when I started making them into “Baby Einstein Eggs,” I would call them where I would place his favorite vegetables and transform two eggs into eyes, then glasses then thinly sliced peppers into cow-licked hair.

“Baby Einstein Eggs,” he said back deliberately, his voice still sweet and squeaky with staccato rhythmn as the words were hard to say. I watched him look at the eggs with such delight, moving his head closer and then back again like the humming bird I always call him, his hands flapping just as fast. I remember now because the eggs have lost their appeal. When did it happen?

He goes to the door now on his own in the morning. He gets his shoes and puts them on before I ask him to. He has even taken to putting on his coat, ready to start his day. Ready to go outside before I am ready. Ready to leave. His assistant arrives to take him to school. He grabs his lunch bag on his own, no need to remind this day. He trots out the door.

“Good-bye, Adam,” I say, hoping the desperation is hidden behind my eyes. “Have a nice day. I love you!” He turns and smiles at me.

“Bye-bye, yes.” The yes is the punctuation mark. It’s the you want me to say good-bye to you so here it is, kind of yes that has become his signature. It’s the way I know he acknowledges that he must say the same thing back, or that he’s heard me. He doesn’t use the yes when it’s a sentence all of his own making. Those sentences are few, but so precious.

When I pick him up or when he arrives home by another, he is so happy to see me and it makes me want to sing. I am relieved to see him. He grabs me and hugs me hard. When he leaves — now to school, to his dad — or later to his life or maybe even his wife, it will be exactly the same.  He grows differently but also like any other. They change, they become independent or maybe even quasi-so, but things do change. Every morning seems the same. I wake. I’m tired. Barely awake every morning, I try to remember never to forget. For the moments, as they should, are slipping through my fingers all the time.

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You must have known this was coming. My post-Halloween cooing over the love of my life. Every year is just a great big new point at which we can re-evaluate with awe how far we’ve come. We are all so interested in measurements of all sorts and I suppose we all take some comfort in it while we can. At the same time many of us despise measures that lead to exclusion and prejudiced acts by others towards us or those we love. But if my photo albums of Adam since birth aren’t some kind of measure, I don’t know what they are. They are the delightful kind.

Holidays like Halloween, New Year’s, birthdays and Xmas are all markation points. When it comes to our kids, we remember Halloweens-gone-past, and we all keep photos of each year’s costumes. Adam is still young enough that I remember his first hand-made bunny costume sewn meticulously by his grandmother. I remember the successful “Alphabet Boy” costume I made him two years ago. I had not-so-meticulously sewn Adam’s favorite letters onto old clothes. Last year, Adam had requested that he be a Cowboy. This year, I was an impatient mother and chose Adam’s costume for him as he likes the word Jack ‘o Latern, so I assumed that my rushed act of choosing his costume would be okay.

At 5:45 p.m. the dressing started. I called Adam into the kitchen and held a mirror so he could see the eyeliner pencil I hurriedly used on his face which he tolerated, but didn’t love — he squeezed his eyes and curled his lips as the pencil ran around them. Yet, he seemed intrigued enough to let me finish by watching his face transform in the mirror. Then, I found an orange pair of track pants, asked him to put them on and then proceeded to squeeze him into the plump orange sphere. He received an orange hat to match with a cute little green stem to top it all off. I took him to the closet mirror where he studied himself a little grumpily. He cinched his face a few times, watching the makeup move with his face and then suddenly turned to me:

“I want to be a cowboy,” he said.

One full-out clear sentence. Remember, my little guy is not fully verbal. He really struggles with communication. Not only was this sentence perfectly articulated, he was also a little pissed off. He clearly did not like his pumpkin costume that I had arrogantly chose for him. And yet, in Adam’s own seven-year-old gracious way, he accepted it. Mama was in a hurry and he was not about to argue much more than shoot towards me a few angry Adam-style eyes (which means even Adam’s anger is sweet).

“Let’s go, let’s go Adam,” I said with a dressed-up enthusiasm. It was exactly six o’clock and the sun had just set. Did I say I had to leave in order go to the Giller Prize finalist readings by 7:15?? You see, I wasn’t expecting what was to come. I thought that our trick and treating would last about two homes based on past Halloweens. When Adam was first out a few years ago, he assumed that he could enter every home we approached. And when he could not, he became upset. By his second “active” Halloween as “Alphabet Boy” he really enjoyed staying home and handing out the candies to the other kids. In the Year of the Cowboy he was not so enthused and didn’t want to go to any homes save for an entertaining one up the street — that ONE home in every neighbourhood that’s totally over-the-top awesome.

This year was a different matter. We went out. I taught him how to ring the bell on his own as I slowly stepped a little further and further back each time because Adam didn’t show any resistance at all to approaching the homes in our neighbourhood. I showed him how to hold out his Jack-O-Lantern bucket and say “trick or treat” and “thank you.” I told him to pick the homes with only the pumpkins and decorations at the front. And then he didn’t want to stop. From house to house we went and while I was ecstatic (which begs the question why we parents are so bloody obsessed with our kids enjoying this silly holiday) that he was enjoying himself (ah, that’s why), I kept looking at my watch! Why oh why did I have to go to some event on Halloween!?? Not this Halloween!

But that’s how it always works, doesn’t it? It usually happens when we are simply not expecting it to happen. And thankfully, Adam’s bucket was full by 7:15. Mine, as always because of him, was overflowing.

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Many of us have read Oliver Sack’s Musicophilia and I attended his lecture here in Toronto a couple of years ago when the book was released. Neuroscientists study the innate rhythm of our brains, citing that no other species possess this capability. Apes cannot synchronize if one ape taps a stick. The other apes cannot keep up the rhythm. So this is innate to human beings and perhaps a way we have evolved. Our ability to socialize, to gather as communities have been largely facilitated by this ability.

Young babies can understand musical structure before they understand language. Alzheimer’s patients can remember emotions and early memories, as well as right/wrong notation and words of music even if every other faculty is gone. In other words, music is the last thing, the only thing and neuroscientists are looking at this aspect of our humanity.

For Sting who had an MRI done in order to study aspects of this, when finally looking at images of his brain after it had been evaluated post-testing, he became a bit undone. He said he didn’t want to know the inner workings of what is otherwise a mystical, spiritual experience for him. While interesting, dissecting his musical brain was unnerving.

It is also said that by learning a musical instrument, we may be able to ward off Alzheimers. Similarly, a child will increase their I.Q. by 7% by learning a musical instrument.

Adam is learning to play piano, and like all people, my autistic little boy loves music. He can sing better than he can talk. He tries, although motorically challenged, to keep a dance rhythm with his body, but is otherwise a wonderful drummer. Rhythm, be it through music or rhyme has composed a major aspect of our lives in just basic communication in our home, and I’m lucky because it also comes naturally to me as I have been a singer, have learned many musical instruments in my life (violin, guitar, flute, piano, recorders…). But use it or lose it. I’ve forgotten how to play what used to come so easily, although I can pick up tunes by ear very easily using the piano. We sing “home-made” opera in our house — sort of a daily dialogue in a Bugs Bunny/ Wagnerian way.

Use of music and rhythm is extremely important for any of us to use language, and it is highly effective with non verbal people. It makes me wonder why we don’t discuss and utilize this so much more. We love to make utter fools of ourselves singing our home-made opera in our house — from asking for the juice to brushing our teeth, there is no shortage of home-made songs for every occasion. And even though it is I who makes the major fool of myself the most by doing it, I think Adam enjoys it as he tweets back my silly tunes in his smaller, more cherub voice. I also think if we all did a little more of it, we all might be a bit happier as well. Music does ignite the pleasure centre of our brains.

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Adam had a more verbal day today. I guess that’s normal lingo for a family with an autistic child who has real trouble with verbal communication. One his “more verbal” days, he can get out phrases and sometimes full sentences. He can take his teacher to the closet, grab his lunch bag, put on his velcro shoes and proclaim “go home!” twenty minutes before dismissal. He can come home and reach for his toy alligator from the shelf and then find a smooth concave shell and say to me “crown it.” When I acknowledge that he’s pretending it’s the Alligator King from Sesame Street (yes he can watch the video about 500 times a day if we let him), Adam is very pleased. He crowns his pretend alligator a few times and moves its mouth as if he’s trying to help the toy talk. I pause to wonder what Adam thinks as he manipulates the mouth with no sound.

I imagine all the things he wants to say to me on tougher communication days, and how frustrating it must feel. I imagine all the questions he has to ask his parents regarding their recent separation that cannot yet ask, though I am clever enough to know that he thinks them and I have to behave as if to answer them all for my behaviour sets the tone for everything. I have seen and known enough to witness that he can follow every instruction and he understands more than he can express. In the movie Awakenings, Dr. Sayer asks the mother how she knows what her catatonic son is saying. She replies, “You’re not a mother. A mother knows.” It is true in my home as well. For seven years every sound, every move, every expression and I just know. Sometimes I have to be careful to listen because I actually may be paying more attention to all those other subtle behaviours instead of that speech he tries so hard to get out. I suppose my actions also speak louder than words as they model for Adam and they may have become just as important as facund explanations. Perhaps if we were observed carefully as a unit, others would see this daily orchestration that we have come to take for granted as much as those who speak take what they say for granted. In our house, the saying “actions speak louder than words,” cannot more more true.

Adam also has many abilities in helping out mom and dad, for he loves us both so much. I think it’s just one of his very precious gifts to us, and that he gives to others (although mom and dad are in that exclusive category). I know that Adam is a wonderful, loving boy who will give this gift to many during his life and I know he will bestow the new people in his life with that blessing. I guess, in a very special way, he is a lot like the king’s seventh son. In my opinion, he deserves my crown, and I hope he won’t mind the dents.

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