He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother

When I tell people that I have a child with autism, their immediate focus tends to be on what that must be like for me as a parent. Very few people have expressed any kind of compassion for my younger son – the neurotypical sibling. It’s not that people don’t care, they just don’t think about the challenges of the autism sibling until I bring up the subject. The truth is that the siblings can so easily be overlooked when, in a sense, they are special needs children themselves because of the roles they find themselves in.

I am calling this “James Week” on my blog. All of the posts that I publish here for the next seven days are dedicated to James, in honour of how utterly fantastic he is. I am so proud to be his mom.

Yesterday afternoon, George was crying. He was crying because he’d gotten into trouble – actual, real trouble that involved serious consequences. This is a big deal because it happens so rarely. We scold him, of course, and we don’t let him get away with stuff like headbutting his little brother. But thereal trouble – the kind that results in timeouts and the removal of computer privileges – we save for times when he has done something that could seriously compromise his safety or someone else’s.

Like the time he climbed a ladder onto the roof a few weeks ago. Or the time he hit his brother on the head with the business end of a garden hoe.

Yesterday’s transgression happened after we had all been sitting on the front steps of the house, drinking tea and enjoying the lovely weather. James was kicking a soccer ball around on the driveway, and George was tossing plastic ball into the air and then hitting it with a baseball bat, in a surprisingly coordinated way. When it was time to go in and start thinking about dinner, George got upset because he wanted to continue playing. We know that transitions can be rough for him, so we patiently spoke to him and tried to get him to yield the baseball bat.

In the end, he yelled, “FINE!”, threw the baseball bat down on the ground, stormed into the house and slammed the front door. In other words, he acted like a typical almost-nine-year-old bratty kid who wasn’t getting his own way.

Which is great, and normally something that would have me jumping for joy.

The problem was that he flipped the lock on the front door, so none of the rest of us could get in.

Oh dear. My autistic son – my upset autistic son – was unattended in a locked house. That is a frightening prospect: we were more worried about his safety than anything else. We did eventually talk George into unlocking the door, and then, to use common parenting parlance, we read him the riot act. He was given a timeout, which he hates, and then he had to wait for an hour before he was allowed to use his computer.

He cried as if the world was about to end. Tears of absolute desolation flowed from him as he lay on the couch. He looked utterly heartbroken.

Well, this was no good. We had wanted to discipline him, not make him miserable. I lay down on the couch beside him and told him I loved him. I tried to comfort him, but he would not be comforted. I started thinking that this might be one of those times where you just have to let the kid cry it out of his system.  But it turned out that he simply needed something else.

He got off the couch and ran into James’ room, where James was lying quietly on his bed waiting for the storm to pass. George got onto the bed beside James and gently tugged at James’ arm. James responded by looping his arm over George, and the boys lay there hugging each other.

And just like that, George was calm, as if someone had flicked a switch. Which in some way, James clearly had.

I instinctively knew that I needed to back away and let the brothers have some time alone.

As I quietly left the room, I heard James softly say to George, “I would do anything for you, George.”

(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)