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.

Sometimes the sword beats the pen

     I write a lot about the playground and friends (most truly, here). Would that the playground equalled friends for my C, but alas, it rarely does. Whoever had the not so great idea to throw a bunch of kids into an unfacilitated situation with minimal supervision did not an autism child have. We tend to think that if we just put kids together, they will learn things; things like social skills and how to make a friend. It actually does work that way for most kids, but there’s always those special few who either learn something you didn’t intend for them to learn or they spend their free time wandering the fence line.

     Enter a great Mom. She got tired of watching her child with autism wander the fence line, sometimes playing near other children, but rarely actually playing with other children. She got tired of the tears in her eyes as she watched her child struggle with loneliness that only she could see, so she did something about it. (Does she sound like me? I wish. Read on.) She called in the experts, the fabulous folks at the local autism research and resource center and asked for help. They, in turn, developed the coolest, most real life functional program I’ve ever seen to help our kids thrive on the playground, and the data from the pilot programs is astounding. Using the simple formula of a well-intentioned playground aide or two, a quickly trained peer, and our target audience kids, interaction happens. Meaningful interaction. It seems so simple. It is so simple.

     I proposed that we incorporate this program into our district, and our district responded with an enthusiastic “yes.” So next week, a team of eight of us will attend a training in this program so that we can bring it to C’s 3rd grade playground. Eight lovely people who have kids like C in their hearts and minds. They understand how difficult making friends can be, and they are going to do their best to make sure these kids aren’t alone.

     Finally, it feels good to be doing something about this instead of just writing about it. I can’t wait to see it go live.

Dear Grandmother from the park:

     You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you. You see, I used to be just like you, although I never would’ve been as vocal about it. I was one of those people in the grocery store who couldn’t stand the sound of a screaming child. I still can’t stand it, but not for the same reasons: now I wonder if the child is overly sensitive to sound and light, or if they have been stretched past their point of self-control.  I don’t always assume kids are “typical” anymore because sometimes it’s so hard to tell. How I wish you knew this fact.

     You see, this wasn’t our first visit to the train park. My son loves that place more than just about anywhere else on earth, and we’ve worked very hard to make visiting there pleasant for all of us. We’ve been going for years, but going with a friend is something he’s never experienced. I took him and his one friend, the first real friend he’s ever had, there after school. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him as excited as he was that day, hands flapping as I picked them up, jumping up and down as we waited in line for the train.

     Perhaps it was my mistake, but after years of his begging, I finally agreed to let him ride in the enclosed kids’ caboose in the back. I’ve never let him go on the caboose because I wasn’t sure how he’d handle it. What if it terrified him? There’s nothing that can be done until the train ride is over, and I can’t be in there with him to help him. But this time, with his special friend, I thought perhaps it was time.

     Sure enough, he screamed the entire time – but happily. Stopping only to breathe, he continued his high-pitched, excited screaming for pretty much the whole ride around the park. In the car in front of the caboose, just far enough away that he couldn’t hear me, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was clearly so thrilled to be in that caboose he couldn’t even contain himself. Yet at the same time, I suspected some of the other kids didn’t like it, despite some of their eager participation in the screaming themselves.

    When the train stopped, I waited outside the caboose, speech prepared to remind him that when other people make loud, unexpected noises it scares him, and how he needs to remember there are other people around. Of course he let out one last little screech, which prompted you to scream yourself, so angrily, “Oh, STOP that SCREAMING already!”  Everyone standing there snapped their heads up at your tone, except my C, who was oblivious. Fortunately, you weren’t even on the train yourself (your granddaughter being able to go alone), so you didn’t witness the entire trip. Although I’m sure your granddaughter filled you in on the highlights.

     I had the chat with my C, after which he was appropriately chagrined. I saw you take your granddaughter over to the carousel, and I thought about approaching you to explain. I wanted so desperately to educate you about what we’ve gone through to get where we are. I wavered, not wanting to seem like a parent who makes excuses for their child, but also not wanting you to get away with feeling so self-righteous about this supposedly horribly behaved child of mine. I was so angry at you and people like you I wanted to strike a figurative blow for all of us parents out there who work so hard to even take our kids anywhere. We try so hard to protect your sensibilities, but frankly, I’m a little fed up at this point with worrying about people like you.

     So I find myself thinking it’s a good thing you are blessed with the lovely, quiet, seemingly well-behaved little granddaughter you seem to have, because I suspect if there were any hints of issues, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. It would probably surprise you to know how lucky and blessed I think I am. Wherever you are, oh grandmother, I hope you know how lucky and blessed you are.

We are the champions

    When something happens, good or bad, C often tells me the story in bits and pieces, sometimes over a period of days. Because his perception of events is often different than other people’s, he sometimes doesn’t tell me what I need to know in order to fully understand the situation and help him process it. I’ve grown better at asking the right questions to get to the bottom of something while still allowing his telling of the story to be in his way.

     The other day at school, a boy in C’s class called him a “loser.” The interesting piece of the story here is that C was running to get a ball at the time, and he got it. He took the word “loser” so literally as to mean he lost the race to get the ball. His point was that he DID get the ball, so he was a “winner.” He was upset, not because the boy meant something far more all-encompassing than C’s understanding of the word, but because the boy was technically wrong. 

     I was so thankful in that moment that he doesn’t comprehend the connotations of the word. I was so grateful that he sees things in black and white so he didn’t understand how awful and powerful a word it can be. For him it’s about the definition, not the nuance. Yet someday he will understand that word, and all its negative undertones. For that, I fear, he is sorely under-prepared (aren’t we all?). I can only hope when I told him that he is in fact a winner, it, like the other positive things we try to say to him whenever possible, settled into his psyche enough to help counteract some of what will surely come down the road.