Archives for August 2012

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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)

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Not All Facebook Shares Are Funny

I have something to gripe about today. What can I say? I woke up feeling cranky this morning – it seems like the perfect time for me to vent about something that’s actually been bothering me for a few days now.

Unless you’ve been orbiting outer space along with that thing that just landed on Mars, you will know that on July 20th, a man walked into a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado and opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding 58. Although I know the name of the perpetrator (sorry, alleged perpetrator, to satisfy any legal-minded readers), he will forever remain nameless on my blog. Identifying him by name would feel too much like acknowledging him as a regular person, and I don’t feel inclined to give him that level of respect.

Yes, I know. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. But come on. The guy rigged his apartment with explosives with the intention of killing whoever happened to walk in. I keep hearing talk of possible mental illness, and stories about how everyone including the perpetrator had unrealistic expectations of him and made him snap. So what? Am I supposed to feel sorry for him? Let me just mention something to put that idea into perspective.

12 people dead. 58 people injured. God alone knows how many people who will struggle with heart-wrenching grief and/or PTSD for the rest of their lives.

Anyway. I find myself digressing from my original gripe before I’ve even gotten to it.

The media published pictures of the perpetrator making his first court appearance. We all remember the shot: a dazed-looking man with inexplicable hair seated beside his public defender.

That picture does not bother me. However, the knock-off picture that has started making its lightning-quick rounds on Facebook does. In this picture, the perpetrator is Photoshopped out, and a children’s character with standing-up red hair is Photoshopped in. As troublesome as the picture are all of the “LOL”-type comments that have been added to it.

I’m sorry, is this supposed to be funny?

It probably would be funny if this guy had shoplifted, or been involved in a protest, or been caught driving down the highway at 200 miles an hour.

But he didn’t. He killed people in cold blood.

Here’s the thing about Facebook: just about everyone is on it. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that most of the people who were in the theatre that night have seen that picture. So have friends and family of the deceased.

What goes through their minds when they see what amounts to a caricature of the person responsible for causing such devastation in their lives? How does it make them feel to know that people are seeing said caricature and having a giggle over it? Sure, it could be argued that the laughs are at the expense of the perpetrator, but I wonder if the people affected are capable of seeing it that way.

What do you think of all this? Am I right in thinking that this is all somewhat insensitive to people who have already lost so much? Or do I need to just lighten up a little?

(Photo credit: B.Frahm. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

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My Mojo Tripped And Fell

On Saturday evening I had a Very Bad Run. This is something that happens to all runners from time to time, and to be frank, my running has been going so well lately that I’ve been overdue for a bad one. But still, when it happens it leaves me feeling negative and slightly anxious about the prospect of lacing up my shoes and going out for my next run.

The fact that I went running at all on Saturday is somewhat unusual. Apart from a loosening-up jaunt on the treadmill right before my morning coffee, Saturdays are designated rest days. I go for my long runs on Sundays, when the pace of the day is leisurely and the husband does not have to go rushing off to work. In my household, Sunday mornings have been established as my time to run.

On this particular week, however, I decided that a Saturday evening long run would be a better idea, for several reasons. There were thunderstorms in the forecast for Sunday morning. I’m completely fine with running in the rain, but thunder and lightning do not make good running partners. On Saturday evening it was clear, and I was itching to go for run, having kept myself off the road for a few days due to an injured foot. In any case, the Olympic women’s marathon was being broadcast live on Sunday morning, and I really wanted to watch it.

Although it was evening, I knew it would still be quite hot, but I was not quite prepared for the hazy wall of heat that hit me when I walked out of the house. Having been glued to the Olympics for the better part of the day, I hadn’t really taken notice of the weather. I second-guessed this grand running plan for a moment, and then reasoned that if anything, conditions would get cooler as I went along. I was not planning on breaking any ground speed records, and I was well stocked up with water, so dehydration should not be a problem.

For the first eight or nine kilometres, I was fine. I was pacing myself well for a long run and keeping myself hydrated. It was brutally hot and I was melting all over the sidewalk, but I thought I was managing the conditions reasonably well. And then, with about nine kilometres still to go, I abruptly started to fade.

Fading during a long run is par for the course. Usually I start to feel dips in my energy during the second half of a run, and when that happens I simply adjust my pace, and then pick it up again when I feel recovered. This time it was completely different. My energy took a nosedive and I just couldn’t recover. I didn’t give up on the run, of course. I knew that if I saw it through to the end I would at least feel good about having completed the distance. But I felt like hell. I kept having to slow to a walk, and far from enjoying the running as much as I usually do, all I wanted to do was get home. I was drenched with sweat and getting a headache, my legs were screaming at me, and my sore foot was – well, sore.

I like to think that I have mastered the art of “running through the pain”, and usually I can do just that. Not this time. The pain just ran right along with me, preventing me from finding my rhythm. The only thing that kept me going through this run – the only thing – was my music. I kept stopping to pick out different songs that had a beat I could run to.

Finally, I found myself within shouting distance of my house, with about four minutes of running left. I wasn’t entirely sure that I had four minutes of running left in me, but I had a choice between running home and simply lying down and spending the night on the sidewalk, so I soldiered on. I stopped for one final time to select a different song and somehow managed to sprint home with the sound of Queen’s We Are The Champions in my ears.

In the end, I completed the distance I set out to do, and I’m sure the run benefited me somehow. But I did not feel good doing it.

All I can do now is put that run behind me and look ahead to the next one.

(Photo credit: Ryder Photography)