To all the girls he’s loved before…

     C loves the ladies. And they love him back. From his early days of charming grandmotherly types at the post office and calling every woman he saw a “pretty lady,” it’s always been about the girls. There’s a few he’s left behind; most notably the “it” girl of elementary school, if there is such a thing. He adored her from afar, and from not so afar, as he asked her every day the first few months of school if he could sit with her at lunch. Given that she said “no, thank you” every single time (at least she was polite, I suppose), I’m hoping he finally realized that some things just aren’t worth it. Silly girl – she doesn’t know what she missed.

     Yet there’s one girl C has left behind that tugs at my heartstrings. A non-verbal, special needs girl who was in his class last year. C worshipped her. Every day he would rush to school so he could play with her in the sand while waiting for the morning bell to ring. Hours upon hours added up of their sitting in the sand together at recess and before school. She never spoke save a few words in sign language, but I believe her love of him was as deep as his for her. They hugged each other dearly every morning when they first arrived.

     This year, however, she’s not in C’s class, and one member of his team suggested that it was good for him as he needed to move on from her. “He needs to grow beyond her instead of ‘hiding’ with her,” the team member said, and I knew she was right. But I also know why C loved her so; she was safe. Aside from being completely sweet and lovable herself, she never turned him down when he wanted to play with her, never said an unkind word, and always welcomed him with open arms. Who wouldn’t love that?

     C cried when he found out she wouldn’t be in his class this year as his little heart broke into a thousand pieces. He got over it as he settled into his new class and started making friends. Yet every morning when we walk onto the playground before school, she turns his way, her little face lighting up in the tiniest of ways. And unless I point her out, C just doesn’t see her anymore. He has moved on, which makes me both happy and sad at the same time.

Be careful what you wish for

     C has a friend. A best friend. A boy who shares his fanatical interests in silly noises and Mario. They talk on the phone endlessly, trade houses for playdates, and send each other notes home in their school folders. I’m so happy I could cry. It’s wonderful, really, that C finally has a real friend, and when he talks, it’s all “T” all the time.

     Yet with this grand first friendship unfortunately comes a grand drawback. Before C came along, T was inseparable with “R” for many years. Now R is on the outs. Worse, R has an autism diagnosis. Worst, C has never excluded anyone from anything. Until now.

     C and T are doing the usual when three’s a crowd; they are ganging up against the third. Yes, you heard right, my own sweet special needs boy is participating in the unhappiness of another special needs child. It’s not all the time as there are times at school when the three interact nicely together, but R has clearly been replaced in T’s world. C doesn’t know R has autism, and C doesn’t know he himself has autism. What C knows, I believe, is that for the first time ever, he has a best friend, and it feels good. I can’t begrudge him that.

     I suppose most parents would either ignore the behavior or talk generally with their child about being kind to everyone, and the behavior would continue or it would not. Neither of those options work for me. Given my natural protectiveness of children with special needs, I’m not sure which is more painful to me: that this particular child is being hurt or that it’s my child who is partly responsible for the hurting. I simply can’t just ignore the behavior, no matter how much I’d like to say this behavior is a natural part of growing up. C has been on the receiving end of this kind of behavior far too much to simply let it go when it comes from him. And talking generally with C about being kind is never going to sink in to the point he realizes I’m talking about how he treats R.

     So I had to go for something more dramatic, something C would not confuse or only partially hear. I pretty much read him the riot act, complete with telling C he wouldn’t be allowed to play with T on the weekends anymore if the two of them couldn’t figure out a way to be kind to R. I reminded C that he too had been left out of groups and how upset he was by it.

     What I realized, unfortunately too late, is that this approach didn’t work either. It became painfully obvious, after a particularly unproductive, mostly one-sided conversation, that I had blown it completely. C had no real idea what I was talking about. I figured on some level he knew he was being unkind, but he really didn’t. It simply did not occur to C that R was hurt. And that is what broke my heart most of all.

Speaking out

     We’ve always known C has a tendency to go from one end of the spectrum to the other (no pun intended) in learning new skills, which made teaching him how to speak up for himself appropriately no small task. In preschool, when a kid would knock him down and take his toys, C didn’t protest. Then, in 2nd grade, he went from not telling anyone when a boy was physically and emotionally bullying him to telling anyone and everyone when that same boy even looked in his direction. When it comes to self-advocating, the difficulties of teaching C how to speak up for himself without going overboard has been a delicate balancing act.

     There are a few signs that C is growing successful in learning this ability. Whether it’s because of his comfort level with his 3rd grade teacher or his own personal growth, he is learning to at least sometimes speak up to her when he needs to. Helping C realize that adults in school are there to help him has been, for reasons unexplainable to me, very difficult. While he has bonded with just about every adult on the premises, it seems it wouldn’t occur to him to ask one of them for help if he needed it.

     The first time C had his card turned this year (unfairly, in his opinion), he was devastated. I knew the minute he walked out of the building that he was upset, and he barely made it into my arms before the tears spilled. We talked it over, and he decided he wanted to email his teacher. “Dear Mrs. D,” he wrote, “I wasn’t talking when J was doing checks recorder but he wrote my name down on the board. J thought I was talking but it was really K. It made me kind of disappointed when it happened and it upset me too.” He talked, I typed, he clicked “send” and off it went.

     C still won’t say anything like that in person, but I was impressed that he could at least get it written down, and I was proud of him for speaking up. It didn’t get him anywhere; the day was over and the deed was done, but he felt better about the whole experience and was able to let it go. And at the end of the day, that’s how I want him to feel about issues he has – perhaps they won’t all be fixed and wrapped up in a bow, but at least he can deal with them in a way that satisfies him.

Alone time

     I spoke with a friend today whose daughter is home sick from school. Mom’s comment that S was “sitting on the floor playing with her stickers and coloring” while Mom worked from home rendered me momentarily speechless. You mean kids actually do that? Sit on the floor and play quietly by themselves? Seriously? Wow. Just WOW.

     I marvelled for a moment at how different our two kids are. When C is awake, it is a constant, all-consuming, every moment affair. If he’s actually quietly playing somewhere, chances are he’s overflowing his sink, testing to see if the flashlight works in the toilet, or pulling the ears of our way-too-patient dog. When it’s too quiet in our house, there’s a problem, or else everyone is asleep.

     C’s need for interaction, any type of interaction, is simply so great as to make me wonder if C recognizes he is in fact his own independent person. It would seem that he is almost solely validated by his relationships with other people, which I suppose doesn’t exactly fit the stereotypical ideal of someone with an autism diagnosis.

     While all of my pondering on this subject has yet to yield a reason for it, the effect on me - the INFJ on the Myers-Briggs Personality Profile - is great. Perhaps now I value my alone time more since it is more rare, but I find myself staying up late at night, enjoying solitary trips to the grocery store, and yakking on the phone with girlfriends, well, never.  It’s almost as if C believes he ceases to exist if he is by himself, and I feel as though I can only remember my true self when I am alone.

Breaking up is hard to do

     When I was in college, I pledged a sorority. I didn’t really want to, but my parents encouraged me with stories of how much their lives were enriched by Greek clubs while they were in college. The short version is that the hazing, something I have never really fully put behind me, changed my college experience entirely. The final straw for me, however, was talking to a pledge sister about the hazing, hoping we could change the experience for the next year’s pledges. “I can’t wait until next year,” she said, “when I can pass all of that hazing on and do it to the next group to come through.” That was it for me; I quit.

     The difference between C’s experience and mine is that my experience was voluntary on my part. C has had no such choice in how kids treat him. Yet recently, I discovered how quickly the tides can turn. C has “infiltrated,” for lack of a better word, a group of two boys and become the third in that group. I have watched this friendship develop with a certain amount of trepidation because of the tightness of the original two combined with an autism diagnosis for one of the boys. I suspect it was just as hard for “Andrew” to make friends as it has been for C, and I was concerned that in this situation, three might be more than a crowd.

     When C came home from school today saying that Andrew told C and ”Billy” that he wanted to “break up” with them, I was immediately on alert. C talked about how he, Billy, and Andrew were playing a game, and Billy started to tease Andrew a little bit. C apparently joined in the teasing against Andrew, and from his description of the event to me, I’d say it was with a certain amount of joy.

     Whether C relished the new-found feeling of being tight enough with someone that the two of them could be against a third, or if he’s just so happy to have a friend that he will follow whatever comes along I’m not sure. What amazes me, however, is how quickly this can happen. In a span of days, C went from being the odd one out to the one excluding another. I was nothing short of stunned, having never seen this type of behavior from C before.

     I suppose it feels so unusual for C to be on the giving instead of the receiving end that consideration of another’s feelings just flew out the window. It’s all harmless playground drama for most kids, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that has hurt C so much in the past. The irony of the fact that Andrew also has a special needs diagnosis is not lost on me. I’m hopeful C will quickly realize that being on either end of the teasing specturm is sad and make nice with Andrew once again. And in a world where three is almost always a crowd, two boys with autism and a third – who is also not your average joe kid – might make for more than one friendship group can survive.

Part of something

     C has always felt very much a part of things. While I suspect there have been moments where he’s felt left out, I think most of the time he feels right in the middle of it all, even when he really is not. Yet I’m thrilled to report that this year, he actually does seem very much a part of things. He still struggles; there are days when he tells me he sat alone at lunch because he wanted to, and days when I observe him at recess while he wanders around the playground by himself. But for the first time in C’s entire life, I feel as though he might just make it through okay.

     On the heels of doing some data collection at recess where C had 0, count them: 0, productive interactions with other children, I have also seen him respond and relate to other kids in a way I never have before. I listened to him carry on a true back and forth conversation with two of his classmates at lunch the other day, and tonight I had to nag him to get off the phone with a friend simply because he was talking far too long. He’s had playdates at our house nearly every weekend, with several different kids. Even bigger, he seems to be branching out, somewhat successfully, from the safety of girls to trying to make it in the boys’ world.

     All of this causes me to wonder whether C is growing up or growing out. Out of his diagnosis, that is. I suspect it’s more growing up, and that all it will take to validate his diagnosis once again is a birthday party or school field day (a haven of insanity that brings all of his challenges forward). After all, I’ve been here before; lulled into complacency and the thought that C’s struggles nowhere near compare to other children who share his same diagnosis. True as that may be, I would no more take away his quirky, interesting personality than I would take away his dimples. C just is who he is – and he’s perfect.

On an aside, please, please, please read this post about a child who needs a family and share it with anyone you know who might care.

Heroes

     We live in a pretty small town. You can’t run to the grocery store without seeing at least five people you know, everyone knows the mayor personally, and the local paper comes out once a week with feature stories about a new restaurant or boutique opening. We also have the typical small town parades, complete with fire engines, five zillion Pop Warner football players, and local business owners riding in their convertibles and waving like they just won a beauty pageant.

     C loves parades desperately. He jumps up and down and shrieks with joy at each and every “float” going by, even if it’s just a bunch of kids in the back of a truck. He eagerly gathers up candy, yelling “Yay! Smarties!” as he stuffs them all in my hands for safekeeping. Nevermind that he doesn’t even eat candy, but collecting it is sure fun.

     This year’s highlight at the Homecoming parade? Not his usual, which is listening to the high school band. No, this year, C’s absolute favorite thing was seeing his beloved P.E. teacher, Mr. S., riding on the float with the high school football players. You would’ve thought he’d seen a rock star or the President for all his excitement at the unexpected Mr. S. sighting.

     It got me thinking about people C admires, and it’s a pretty neat list. He looks up to his teacher, President Obama, his favorite babysitter, his aunt and uncle, and the principal at his school. Not a single bad guy cartoon character or overpaid, drug using sports figure in the bunch. So having his PE teacher on the list? Well, that’s just fine with me.

Celebration

     I know it’s bad to get excited when C gets in trouble at school, but I can’t help it. For years now, he has exhibited such model behavior as to make his preschool teacher jump for joy the one time he got in trouble during his two years with her. To her, it was a sign of typical behavior a child should display, and that was cause for celebration.

     Since then, his schools have used the card turning method, where they have several levels of colors that correspond to the severity of their transgression. In first grade, he got his card turned once, from what I remember. He was pretty upset that first time, crying and sobbing because he got in trouble for being too excited about something. In second grade, I don’t even recall a card turn, although I suspect there was at least one.

     This year, however, C has already had his card turned several times for talking. The first time, he was quite cranky about it because he thought it was completely undeserved and that it was actually someone else talking instead of him. Since that time, however, he’s been caught yakking on more than a few occasions.

     I suppose I should chastise C for this, but I’m finding it hard to do so. All I’ve managed to squeak out when he tells me about it is, “Oh, well, that’s a bummer.” I certainly don’t let C see my happiness about it, and he missed Husband’s fist pump in the air when he heard the news last night. Frankly, I’m so excited he has friends to talk to that as long as he keeps himself out of detention, study desk, or the Principal’s office, I could not care less.

     I am truly sorry, Divine Mrs. D., and I promise that if it gets really bad, we’ll close rank and read him the riot act. But until then, I’m hoping you’ll forgive me my joy.

Friendships anonymous

     I was reading a book the other day that weighed the pros and cons of integrated classrooms against self-contained classrooms for kids with an autism or Asperger’s diagnosis. The point that intrigued me the most (and one I hadn’t considered) was that in a self-contained classroom, remedial social skills training is part of the curriculum.

     C has never been a candidate for a self-contained classroom, but reading the book made me wonder why remedial social skills aren’t a part of the general curriculum for all children. Kindergarten certainly seems to be all about social skills, and while each teacher C has had since has done a wonderful job of creating community in the classroom, I watch those lessons not carry to the very places C struggles: the playground, the lunchroom, and standing in line. Truth be told? It’s the other kids’ response to C that bothers me the most. He may miss some social cues, but darned if he isn’t putting forth the effort. What happened to a grade of “A” for that?

     To argue that school is only about academics is crazy; studies show that pro-social skills in 3rd grade are a greater predictor of academic success in 8th grade than 3rd grade test scores. Yet it seems that the social skills training is mostly directed at the special needs kids. Friendship groups and social skills groups comprised only of kids with social skills challenges doesn’t teach our kids anything about interaction with their typical peers. 

     We’ve been fighting this issue of social skills groups for kids with autism at every school C has attended, and I’ve just never figured out why anyone would put a group of socially challenged kids in a room together and expect much success. I figure we can work on the academic stuff as it comes up, but the social skills are far more challenging to master. Yet it’s not just my child who needs training in this area. Quite frankly, I find many of his typical peers far more challenged in this area than C will ever be. I watched him compliment another child about his shirt recently, and I smiled at his earnestness and appropriateness in terms of timing, delivery, and tone. He probably shouldn’t have used the word “pretty” to describe the other boy’s shirt, but I figured he’d be forgiven the minimal error. When the other child merely grunted as a reply and turned away to talk to someone else, my heart broke just a little. Well, more than just a little.

     I wanted to put that other kid in a friendship skills group of his own. Where can I sign him up?

The ties that bind

     C has gone through developmental stages at various times, none of which seemed to quite match the evil developmental charts posted in the pediatrician’s office. Separation anxiety reared it’s ugly head at the start of 1st grade. In preschool, it was, “See ya’ Mom!” Or at least that’s what I imagined him saying if he could talk. At the time I thought perhaps he had skipped that developmental step altogether, and I patted myself on the back while I walked out of the building, teary eyed from my own separation anxiety.

     When the anxiety hit in first grade, it hit hard. I remember one particularly dark day when a teacher had to pry C off me, screaming and thrashing as the other kids looked on. C of course was fine five minutes later, although I spent the remainder of my day in that same teary eyed state. I’m sure the teacher was used to it, but I felt bad for her too.

     The anxiety has mellowed, although there’s always a few weeks at the beginning of the year where the tears flow in the car on the way to school, and I find myself using every trick in my book to distract C and stave off a complete meltdown. Now, however, one month in, he goes to school with a somewhat steely resignation that I know is replaced by happiness the minute he gets in the door.

     C still, however, wants me to walk him onto the playground and stay until his class lines up and goes inside. Thankfully, there’s at least one other parent in the third grade whose child is the same way, and we commiserate on the way to the parking lot about whether or not we’ll be walking our kids to their college classes in the future. We hope not.

     I’m sure teachers everywhere would like us to just drop our kids off and get the heck out of the picture. Things would probably be a lot simpler for them, which is always a good thing. If I had a typical kid, I might do that, but I figure there’s a time and place for coddling C a little bit, and if my being there in the morning lessens his anxiety, then I’ll do it. Frankly, I’m in no rush for it, but I’m hoping the developmental stage of C’s wanting me to drop him off at least a block from school – so as not to be embarrassed by my geeky Mom demeanor – will happen at some point. Hopefully that will happen before college.