Meaningful Communication

My boy is home sick for the third day. He's in good spirits, but his nose is so runny that it's not fair to him or to his classmates and teachers to send him to school. So we are at home together, just the two of us.

We do our own thing. He plays in the back yard. I scan endless papers into the computer hoping that I will eventually not feel overwhelmed by the number of trees lying about my house in 8 1/2 by 11 inch slivers.

We meet every ten minutes or so, fifteen if I can hear his happy sounds through the open door, and five if I can't hear him at all. It's a good arrangement. I wipe his nose, spray sunblock and offer to put on a show if he wants to lie on the couch. He lets me clean his face, and takes my hand when I invite him in for lunch.

He loves shumai, little dumplings. And after a little searching I have found him petite, one bite shrimp shumai at the intimidating, but cool, "all of Asia and other Ocean-y places and don't forget the half shelf of Mexico" store. I add chopped up pineapple, a banana, and lunch is served.

We alternate between me feeding him bites and him taking the loaded-fork to do it himself. He asked for more watered-down limeade by rolling his cup to me. I asked him if he liked the shumai.

He made a lot of higher-pitched "Ye-aa-AHH" sounds, and clapped his hands together and turned towards me and smiled.

"I'll take that as a "Yes?"

"Ye-aA-AAA!"

and so I know he likes them. Awesome. My kid has the mad eating skilz. And then I sat there next to him, and it flashed over me, as if I had never thought of it:

my son doesn't really talk.

Whoa. How is that even possible? I mean, how did my kid develop, and grow up to be this almost thirteen year-old who doesn't talk? It was, for a moment, the strangest thing I had ever heard of.

It must be similar to the feeling that other people, those who do not have contact with people like my son, react when I tell them not to expect him to communicate in words. It must be an odd concept to grasp if you do talk, and your whole family talks, and everyone in your family for generations back has used spoken language, and your circle of friends, well, they all speak too. Not speaking must seem like a really big, daunting, overwhelming, horrible thing.

I felt for the first time how foreign that might seem to people who don't live with a person who communicates differently.

and I didn't feel sad for Jack. or for myself.

I actually felt a little sad for all of those people who don't know my kid. Not only because he is a cool kid, because he is, but because communicating with Jack is, on a regular basis, so much more meaningful than communicating with an average person.

When he expresses what he needs, and I understand him, it is one of the best feelings I have, one of the best feelings I will ever have, until the next time it happens. The sense of accomplishment and relief I feel when I have understood his desires, when I have actually heard what he is 'saying', when I have met him where he is, instead of expecting him to come all the way to me... I feel amazing and successful, and he, most importantly, HE is so damn happy that I got it right.

Parenting win! Happy child!

Because that's what we all want, to be heard, to be understood. We want to have someone interact with us where we are, as we are.

And I'm not saying that it is not challenging, for me, or his dad, or his sister, or his grandparents, or for any of the people who try to educate him in classrooms, because it is. It is frustrating to want to know what he thinks: Does he want to go to the street fair or stay home? Does he know the names of the planets? Does he want to watch a movie or play in the backyard? What does he dream about? Does he really enjoy road trips? Does it bother him when I run the dishwasher after he goes to bed? Are his shoes comfortable? And to be honest, it's not always easy to consider an entire other being's paradigm, when I am not always sure of my own needs.

I imagine however, that it is much more frustrating to have all of the answers to those questions and more, and not be able to tell someone. To know exactly, precisely, what you want, and be unable to convey your opinion, on how much salt to put on the eggs, or where you would like to spend spring break.

Or to have all the questions-- what if he has all the questions: Why can't you take pictures of stars? What's the deal with Stonehenge? Who invented pizza? Will time travel ever be possible? What if you had all of the questions, and couldn't ask a single one of them?

And I'm just guessing, but it must be frustrating to be this close to conveying what you want to have happen next, but the person with whom you are interacting gave up listening too soon, didn't wait for your answer, or worse, assumed you didn't have a clue as to what was happening at all.

I worry that he is bored, and that is a terrible thought. I find myself really trying to tease out what is disability, from what is his disinterest.

This conundrum seems more real to me lately as Jack gets older; he is an age that I can distinctly remember. And I'm finding I spend a lot of time unraveling the emotional mess of wondering what are my hopes or my delusions and what are realistic expectations, and that is all tied up with the respectful presumption that my son understands the world around him.

But when it comes down to it, I believe he has a lot to say.

I don't get it right every time, probably most times. I guess wrong, I forget to ask, I don't explain something that's happening, even though I know it could probably be a teaching moment.

But I try. He lets me know when I am on the right track.  

My communication with my son is harder for me than the ease I have with other people. It takes more discipline for me to wait for his answer when I am used to buzzing around. I can't multi-task and still get the gist. It makes me think more. Yes, it makes me tired, sometimes exasperated, but I think it is making me more thoughtful in those other conversations with the rest of the world, and engaging with him is worth it every time.

 ***

Lunch is over. I ask him a few more questions trying to determine what should happen next on this stay-at-home day. I finally understand, "play outside." He is out the door in a flash, his smiling face thankful that I guessed right. He claps his hands, and lets out a whoop.

I'm smiling too, because really, how often do any of us get that kind of recognition for anything we do?

We Do Not Cross the Line

Just after the recent murder of Alex Spourdalakis, yet another parent has attempted to murder her autistic child.

Services to help families are not available to the degree they are needed, often leaving parents of children with intense needs feeling abandoned, depressed, suicidal and, in some cases, homicidal.

I just sincerely wish these conversations could be separate. They must remain separate.

I know how it happens, how the conversations seem like they should go together. As parents of kids with intense needs, medical, mental or physical, we are each slogging through life, with easy days and hard days and harder days, until something really bad happens, then we are triggered to say to the world, "See, look how hard this is. Why doesn't anyone care?" But the problem is that caregivers say this at the very same same time that someone was trying to kill their child. The minute you tie those ideas together the conversation changes into, "See, look how hard this is. We told you. Have empathy. The poor mom was really struggling. You can't blame her."

But you can. You must blame her. We must unitedly and unequivocally say that we can blame her because she tried to murder her child, and those other caretakers, they actually killed their children. We can't "cut her slack" because she was having a hard time. We can't even cut her slack because she had been injured by her child, badly. We cannot say, "We understand why she did it. You know her life was so hard because of her daughter,  because she didn't have enough help, because she was burned out, because..." Because what? So what do you mean exactly? So it's understandable when there are days or weeks, when life is hard...

Like when my son didn't rest...for years?

He didn't sleep, he screamed. He bit himself until he bled. He bit us and we bled. He lashed out. He threw himself to the ground. He broke my nose. He gave black eyes to me and one to his grandmother. We went to doctor after doctor, and therapy after therapy to no avail. We had no medical insurance for him because he had pre-existing conditions. We paid the bills with credit cards. Our life fell apart a little bit, a lot of the time, for several years. There are parts, emotional parts, that are still raw. It was very hard. I was very sad, and hope was hard to find on most days. So because it was hard, because almost every hard thing led back to my precious boy who was beside himself writhing in some kind of anguish that no one could identify, unable to speak to us and tell us what was wrong, so it would have been okay to kill him? Of course not.

NEVER OKAY.

...and I know some of you know her, that mother, and maybe I'd feel differently if I did, but I don't. I can tell you this, if my best friend tried to kill her son, you can bet your ass I'd want her in jail. I would feel horrible. I would be certain that I had failed her as a friend. I would mourn the loss of my friendship, but those things are about me, and it would not change the fact that we cannot even intimate that there are excuses as to why we can kill our kids. I would want her in jail, held accountable without question. We can add in all of the complexities of our weak family support systems, and lack of services, and all of those complexities may be real and truly horrific, but they do not, ever, explain away the fact that this woman tried to kill her child.

We can't cross that line if we want everyone to value our kids and give them an equal place in society, because in every other way that's what we ask people to do. We want our children to have a place in a proper educational setting, and we want them to be able to go to the movie theater and grow to have meaningful work, and a safe place to live, and all sorts of basic rights. Then when it comes to the most important right, the right to live, that's where you cross the line?

I thought we had all decided that we don't want our children to be  marginalized and put to death because they do not contribute enough to society. Don't we want our children to be treated as deserving to be called wholly-human? A human who has every right not to be murdered because of their neurological makeup? When we tie the two conversations together it glares at me, and I am not autistic, so I cannot imagine what it would feel like to be autistic and read that a parent could, "see how that could happen." I don't think most parents think that's what they are saying when they offer empathy, but even said eloquently, this is all I hear...my autistic child is not as valuable.

but there can be no excuses. 

We Do Not Cross the Line.

When I am Undone

When it is too much.
When I am overwhelmed, or tired and sad. 
When I am unable, unstable, and undone. 

I go, because it will only take a moment to be okay again. 
I go, and I am:

 

Lying on my back
on a yellow catamaran.

I am in Mexico,
and responsible for only myself, 

(and perhaps for my fellow travelers in practical ways, but I am not holding on to their passports.)

 

I am staring up the mast
to the mainsail
and the clearest blue sky I can ever remember,
as we race the sun to the tip of Baja.

or

My knuckles are white from gripping my husband's
life vest,
as we skim across the waters of Lake Tahoe on a wave rider,
and I am laughing and laughing. And laughing.
 

I am thrown off and flying, and laughing
even as I go under the chilly blue of the lake. 

When I emerge,
he is smiling and circling back for me.