Archives for November 2011

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Autism Brothers

November 8, 2011 By

Sometimes, when you’re five years old and your big brother has autism, life just isn’t fair.

This weekend I spent a lot of time worrying about my son James. The worrying was prompted by reports from his before- and after-school program that he’s been acting up and is “always in trouble.” Initially, my husband and I put this down to James’ independent nature. He is a strong-willed child who is currently going through a phase of pressing other peoples’ buttons and seeing how far he can go.

But my gut instinct is telling me that I shouldn’t be giving James a hard time about his behaviour in the program – at least, not yet. Not until I have had a meeting with the program administrators to get a clearer picture. I have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there is something else going on here, something that might be making my baby unhappy.

About six weeks ago, we went through a decluttering blitz at my house. We got rid of toys and clothing that the boys had outgrown, and we threw out stuff of our own that has been lurking in boxes in our basement since Noah built the ark. One of the items we found was a calendar from a Chinese restaurant. It has the entire year on one long piece of fabricky-type stuff that rolls up like a mini-blind. James was fascinated with this thing and asked if he could have it. I said yes, and passed it over.

Last week while James was playing with the calendar, George kept grabbing at it and saying, “Mine!” James was getting upset because George was bugging him, and George was getting upset because he wasn’t getting the calendar. The situation escalated to the point of George having a meltdown and trying to headbutt James. And in order to stop George from going off the deep end, my husband took the calendar from James and gave it to George.

James was devastated. He sobbed his little heart out. It was bedtime anyway, so I carried him to his bed, lay down beside him, and held him tight. My own heart felt like it was breaking.

James didn’t see that my husband had been trying to stop a bad situation from going completely out of control. He just saw that we had taken away something that belonged to him, and given it to George.

There have been other times when George has gotten what James must perceive to be preferential treatment. We have to make allowances for George’s tolerances and levels of understanding. When James gets a timeout, he understands that he is being punished for something. This is completely lost on George: consequently, George never gets timeouts. We have different expectations of the two boys where it comes to sharing their toys with each other. Sometimes, family outings have to be cut short because George is not coping.

I cannot help asking myself: is it any wonder that James is trying too hard to assert himself in an environment other than home? Could it be that his perceived lack of control within his family is leading him to try and establish it elsewhere?

I try hard to make it up to James in other ways, but I wonder if I am doing enough. My mind keeps coming back to the idea that this poor kid probably doesn’t even have faith that his toys will remain his own. I worry about whether we are expecting James to have more coping ability than he is developmentally capable of.

It is clear to me and my husband that James loves his brother. He is always – with increasing success- trying to get George to play with him. When George is being reprimanded for something, James is standing up for him. And sometimes, when James wakes up from a bad dream in the middle of the night, he crawls into bed with his big brother and the two boys snuggle up to each other.

As much as they love each other, though, it seems to me that at times, the happiness of one has to be sacrificed for the needs of the other.

And that just isn’t fair.

(Photo credit to the author)

Filed Under: autism, Brothers, Children, Fairness, family, parenting Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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How To Get Rid Of Telemarketers

November 7, 2011 By

My son George has a new party-trick. He opens the living room door just so he can have the pleasure of slamming it. As he slams it, he yells out some random thing. Some days, that’s all I hear. Open. Yell. SLAM! Open. Yell. SLAM! Open. Yell. SLAM!

It does my head in.

Reprimanding George for it is a useless endeavour. It’s one of those autism things that he cannot really help. He’s getting some sensory satisfaction from it, and while we are going through the process of using rewards and reinforcements to stop the behaviour, we just have to grit our teeth and put up with it. I’ve been through this before with Cupboard Door War of 2010 and the Dishwasher War, which is ongoing, but on which I am finally starting to make progress.

It’s just my bad luck that my home office space is right beside the door that is the current object of George’s attention.

On Saturday, the phone rang right around the time George started another door-opening-yelling-slamming spree. With a shhhhhh! in George’s direction that I knew would be futile, I punched the speakerphone button and answered. It was a telemarketer, trying to sell windows and blinds. These people call us incessantly. They must think I have twenty-two gazillion windows and blinds on my house, all of which need replacing.

As I was preparing to politely tell the caller that I was not interested, George opened the door. I asked the caller to hold on for a moment, so that I could get the yelling and slamming out of the way before I spoke.

The words George chose to yell at that moment were so appropriate to the situation that I couldn’t help laughing.

“Not now,” yelled my son at the top of his lungs, “NEVER!!!!”

Surely the windows-and-blinds people would have gotten a clear message from that.

Filed Under: autism, Humour, Telemarketers Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Emergence Of A Rainbow Generation

November 3, 2011 By

On a hot day in February 1990, I stood still, waiting for history to happen. It was the middle of a South African summer; I had just started my final year at the University of Cape Town, and it seemed as if the entire student body – no, make that the entire population of the Western Cape – had turned out. I was going through a lot of difficulty in my life at that time, but wild horses couldn’t have kept me away from this.

Finally, it happened: the event everyone had been waiting for. A well-known and much-loved figure appeared and waved at the crowd, which was going nuts with excitement. Tears of emotion flowed all around me and within me as this great man stood before us. It was official. Nelson Mandela, the icon of freedom in South Africa, was a free man.

During my childhood years in South Africa, I was a little afraid of black people. This is hardly surprising when you consider the draconian laws that were in effect at the time. Black people and white people were completely segregated. They were required by law to live in different neighbourhoods, they could not attend the same schools or churches, and they could not use the same public facilities. In many cases, they could not even enter stores through the same doors. When I was a child, my exposure to black people was limited to the gardener and the cleaning lady.

My parents, and the parents of my peers, did their best. They themselves had been raised to distrust people different from themselves. Fortunately for me and my contemporaries, common sense and basic human dignity had prevailed, so the generation above me had gone against their own upbringings and taught us to treat everyone with respect, no matter what colour their skin was.

And yet, it has to be remembered that our parents were trying to raise non-discriminatory kids in a society that legally mandated racism.  We couldn’t have playdates with black people. If you looked at the student body during school assemblies, you would have seen a sea of white faces. We never shared grocery store line-ups with black people; we didn’t even pass them on the street.

How could a generation of kids learn how to interact in a positive way with a group of people they were never exposed to? It is no wonder that despite the eventual dismantling of the Apartheid regime, race relations in South Africa remain troubled. People are still learning how to get along after generations of having been told that they were not allowed to.

My two kids are having a childhood that contrasts sharply with my own. They have never known an existence of discrimination. They interact freely with kids from all backgrounds, regardless of ethnic origin. To them, people are just people. A telling example of this happened almost two years ago, when my younger son’s Kindergarten teacher unexpectedly died and a new teacher was brought in. When I asked my son what the new teacher looked like, he said she was absolutely beautiful. She had long black hair, and a big smile, and big brown eyes. It is perhaps a damning indictment to my own upbringing that I was surprised, when I finally met the teacher, to see that she was black. My son had not once mentioned this in his lengthy description of her. He had not even noticed her skin colour.

My kids are growing up in a world that sadly still experiences some racism. But so far, they themselves have not shown any signs of discrimination. If that ever happens, it will be nipped in the bud immediately. My dream is for my kids to grow up respecting everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from.

As Scout says in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, “There’s only one kind of folks. Folks.”

Filed Under: Apartheid, Childhood, parenting, Race relations, Respect, South Africa Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Victor’s Wife

November 2, 2011 By

Victor looked at his watch and sighed impatiently. Last night, he had spoken to his wife about the importance of being on time tonight. This fancy shindig might be a party, but a lot of important people were here and he needed to make a good impression. The Directors would never trust him to lead an entire international division if he couldn’t even control his own wife. He had explained this to her in that special way he had that she always listened to, and yet she was late.

Someone clapped him jovially on the back, and he turned to see one of the Directors.

“The wife stood you up?” joked the Director. “She’s probably outside trying to decide which admirer to go home with.”

Victor laughed too loudly at the joke that wasn’t funny. He was seething inside. He prided himself on having the most beautiful wife of everyone in the firm, but now she was making him the butt of jokes. He promised himself that he would make her pay for this. He would make her pay so much that she wouldn’t be able leave the house for a month.

Finally, she arrived… dressed to kill.

And that’s exactly what she intended to do.

As she stood in the massive doorway to the grand hall, she felt his eyes cutting across the crowd at her. Anyone else would have looked at him and seen a handsome man lighting up at the sight of his wife. She saw the rage bristling beneath the smiles as he approached her with arms outstretched to embrace her as a normal husband would.

None of these people could possibly know that he was anything but a normal husband. They didn’t know that she was late because she had spent so much time applying her makeup, carefully covering up the effects of Victor’s “discussion” with her the previous evening. She was grateful for the dim lighting here tonight: there was only so much you could hide with makeup.

She didn’t think she could survive another one of Victor’s “discussions”. She wasn’t intending to find out.

At the bar, no-one noticed a tiny white pill slip from the palm of her hand into his wine. She excused herself to go to the restroom, and from the other side of the room she watched him drink from the glass. As he fell to the ground, she slipped out and disappeared into the night, to start a new life.

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Britania, who gave me this prompt: She showed up–dressed to kill.
I challenged  Mary Terrani with the prompt: It all started with a single scrap of paper.

Filed Under: Domestic Violence, fiction, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, relationships Tagged With: , , , ,
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Three Generations Of Runners

November 2, 2011 By

James preparing for his first run

One of the best races I ever ran was my first-ever 10K event starting at Mel Lastman Square, on the northern fringes of Toronto. This was back in 2001, before my long hiatus from the running scene. The run was called the Ismaeli Run For Charity, and although it was a small event with only 300 or so runners, it was festive and well-organized. This particular race stands out in my memory not because of the run itself (I actually remember it being a very hard run: race day coincided with the start of an intense heatwave in Toronto), but because my dad was there. It is the only time my dad got to send me off at a start line and cheer me on as I crossed the finish.

Dad played a pivotal role in my running. Having been a top-class marathoner in his youth, he became my mentor when I first took up running, way back in 1996.  He gave me advice on everything from race-day strategy to the importance of having the right socks. He showed me how to tackle hills and demonstrated how incorrectly laced shoes can make your feet hurt. He advised me not to rely too much on technology in my training, pointing that in his youth, the only tool a runner really had was his own body. He told countless stories of the races he had run and the people he had encountered on the way.

He was immensely proud when I started running. Passing on his stories and his wisdom to me meant a lot to him, and the day he stood waiting for me at the finish line was absolutely momentous.

Now, I get to pass on the legacy as a third generation is added to the line of runners. My son James, who is all of five years old, has been taking an interest in my running for the last year or so. He wishes me well as I set out for my long runs, and stretches with me when I get back. He fussily makes sure I have enough water to drink, and for some time, he has been talking about going running with me “one day”.

Recently, when I registered for the upcoming 10K event at the Whitby Waterfront Races, James asked if he could be in the race too. Deciding that he was ready, I registered him for the 1K kiddies event. And this weekend, his dream of going running with me came true as I took him out for his first real run.

I did not have any real expectation for the run. I just wanted to see how James would do over a full kilometre, and more importantly, I wanted to get a sense of whether he would really enjoy it. I made it clear to him that he could stop anytime he wanted, and that he didn’t have to do it in the first place unless he was sure. This earned me an eye-roll so intense that I thought his eyes would fall out of his head, and he said impatiently, “Mom-meeeee! Can we please go now?”

I needn’t have worried. Although he briefly slowed to a walk three or four times, he ran the kilometre I had measured out with no trouble. I marvelled at his natural form as his body just fell into the posture and rhythm that articles in running magazines are always saying we should adopt.

I also needn’t have worried about whether he would enjoy it. He loved it. He wants to go again, and as the day of his first race approaches, he is getting more and more excited.

I realize that anything could happen: the kid is only five and he could lose interest tomorrow. But by all appearances, he is really interested in running being a part of his life, and what I do as a parent could either cement that or dissipate it. I feel that I am witnessing the emergence of a new runner: a runner who I get the privilege of nurturing and mentoring, just as my dad did for me.

I feel that in guiding my son, I am a part of something big, something special, and something that I consider to be a great honour.

I only wish my dad could see this. Who knows? Maybe he can.

Welcome, James to the world of running. I hope you choose to stay here, and if you do, I hope we get to run many miles together.

(Photo credit to the author)

Filed Under: Children, dad, generations, legacy, parenting, running Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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Embracing Autism

November 1, 2011 By

If there was a cure for autism, would you use it for your child?

This question was posed to me recently by a non-autism parent, and it really made me think. Before I was an autism mom – indeed, before I was any kind of mom – my immediate instinct would have been to say “Yes! Absolutely! What kind of parent would choose for their child to have a disability?”

Now that I can speak with the voice of experience, my answer to that question is very different. There are some aspects of autism that I would get rid of in a heartbeat. When my son, now eight, has his meltdowns, the expression of anguish in his eyes breaks my heart. If I could wave a magic wand, I would give him the ability to communicate the pain that he feels during those outbursts. I would make the changes of seasons easier for him, I would make Christmas less overwhelming, and I would give him the skills to play with his little brother.

On the other hand, there are things that I would not change in a million years. Someone once told me that my son is very smart “in spite of his autism.” I gently corrected this person by telling her that my son is very smart because of his autism. His mind works in a very unique way. Thanks to his out-of-the-box thinking, this kid can problem-solve rings around the rest of us. He can do multiplication in his head, and this is something that no-one has ever taught him. He just figured it out himself. He sees patterns that are lost on everyone around him: once, when he was putting coloured pegs into a board, I literally had to squint at the board from a number of angles before the pattern he was creating suddenly jumped out at me. If he was given a cure for autism, that incredible way of thinking would disappear.

In the eyes of society, my son has a disability. The education system regards him as having special needs, autism is classified by the medical community as a disability, and the government has granted us a disability tax credit for him. And rightly so: my son definitely needs special accommodations. There is no way he can function in a neurotypical world without assistance. Although I believe he will be capable of great things as an adult, I see the possibility of him being unable to live completely independently. But as much as there are things that he cannot do as well as other people, there are things that he does better. He may frequently take the scenic route from a problem to the solution, but his route can cover a lot more ground, solve problems that no-one else even knew existed, and frankly, the scenic route often has a better view than the highway.

When this amazing boy with his sweet, sweet disposition curls up on the couch with me, wraps his little arms around me, and allows me the privilege of being in his world with him, I feel a love for him that is too big to put into words.

Would I ever want my son to be “cured” of autism? No. Because the challenges just make us stronger, and his autism is a part of the beautiful person he is.

Filed Under: Acceptance, autism, Challenges, Intelligence, life, Love, parenting Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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