What We Need

        I hate birthday parties. They generally are everything C struggles with combined into one event. Eating, waiting (for someone else to open presents), unstructured play, social situations, noise, groups of boys, and mean kids. Navigating the birthday party waters is fraught with potential disasters, most of which occurred today.

     The problem is, C loves everyone. No matter the wrong done to him, everyone is a friend. I love that about him. What I don’t like about it is the future I see for him - being picked on relentlessly. I watched today as a group of boys played a game of tag, and no one was ever “it” except for C. For anyone watching, it looked like he was fully participating in the group; what was really going on was a very subtle form of bullying. He had a blast for awhile, and then he wandered off to play alone.

      The disconnect for me is that I keep thinking because he is so kind-hearted and friendly, kids will want to be his friend despite his idiosyncracies. What I realized is he’s never going to fit into their world. You’d think I was new to his diagnosis, because every time I realize this fact, it hits me like a ton of bricks. It’s not about some desire of mine for him to be popular - I just want him to have friends, so I try to teach him the necessary skills. It’s what he wants. I’m following his lead, and I never want to give up for him or on him. 

     I had an epiphany today, and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant one. I realized my child has autism. I know this in my head, but for my heart it’s always a surprise when it remembers. For all that carries with it, whatever interesting and wonderful things come out of it, it breaks my heart that what he wants the most is probably the one thing that will never come easily to him.

     I suspect some people would call me a soccer mom. I drive a volvo station wagon, don’t work outside the home, and live in suburbia. But to me, a soccer mom is the lady I saw at gymnastics tonight. She reminded me how happy I am to have a child with special needs, because I take nothing he does for granted.

     It is hugely entertaining to watch C in gymnastics as he takes such joy in the class and is an enthusiastic, although terribly unskilled, student. He loves to be there even though every single thing is extremely difficult for him to do, and he compensates in a way that makes everyone chuckle. But one mom was lecturing her son when we arrived about how he needed to work really hard to get to the top of the rope (think 7th grade gym class - who could get up that thing???). She went on and on about how he just had to do it. It wasn’t encouraging at all, and I felt sorry for the little boy (who of course couldn’t do it). I could see the future of this mother, which included her yelling at her kid from the sidelines of the soccer field because he didn’t score a goal. I could also see her complaining to the coach for playing my kid because he also didn’t score a goal.

     I realized, in that brief and lovely moment, how we take joy in every little thing C does. There’s little pressure; not because we don’t expect much, but because we recognize the effort it takes for him to accomplish anything physical and we are proud when he does. He struggles mightily to walk across that balance beam, and we applaud him wholeheartedly whether he makes it across or he falls off after the first step.