Tag Archives: Disability

Who’s Leading Who?

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So today is Father’s Day. In honor of the day, I thought I’d dust off a post from a few years ago, update it a bit, and repost it. (That, and I’m too busy being a dad today to write something new.) So here goes:

Who’s Leading Who?

In one of the lesser-known resurrection accounts in the Bible, Jesus tells Peter: “When you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” The passage goes on to explain that Jesus said this to signify “by what kind of death he [Peter] would glorify God” (John 21:18-19).

This passage has always had special resonance for me, to the point of being a kind of interpretive key to almost all of the major events in my life. It sounds kind of grim, doesn’t it? All this talk about being led where you don’t want to go and dying—even if that death glorifies God. But that hasn’t really been my experience. Rather, I’ve found a surprise or two along the way as I’ve seen these words unfold in my life.

One major surprise came when I realized who it was who would end up leading me along unexpected paths: my own kids! Now I’m sure that many parents can relate. None of us really knows what to expect when we hold our first child. We can never fully appreciate how much our lives will change now that we have welcomed this new person into our lives. How much more when you are blessed with six children! And how much, much more when it turns out that all six children are on the autism spectrum!

Unexpected Paths.

I named an earlier post “A Little Child Shall Lead Them,” and I meant it as something more than a clever play on words. I can testify that my kids—all six of them—have led me in ways I never expected.

  • They have led me to the waiting rooms of psychologists and psychiatrists and speech and occupational therapists as I have sought to understand their challenges and help them make sense of them as well.
  • They have led me to school conference rooms, where I have advocated for them and labored mightily to convince unimaginative, one-size-fits-all educators to give them a fair shake.
  • They have led me to my knees in prayer—not desperate prayers for their healing, but impassioned entreaties that God will grant them a future full of hope, a future where their gifts are welcomed and where they can make a difference for other people.
  • They have led me down rocky paths as I have helped them work through sleepless nights; relationship challenges; full-scale tantrums; days-long depressive episodes; and anxious, hours-long perseverations.

Death and Freedom.

Now, Jesus told Peter this stuff as a way of hinting at the kind of death that awaited him. And that has proven true for me as well, in a more figurative way. No, I’m not writing from beyond the grave! But my kids have definitely led me to experience other kinds of “deaths”—

  • The death of my dream for a Brady Bunch kind of life. It was a pretty self-centered, self-indulgent dream anyway, and I’m glad it’s gone. Now I don’t have to worry about how clean or dirty the house is. Or about when my kids are going to record their first pop single.
  • The death of any rigidity or legalism I may have brought to my ideas of parenting. I have learned to become much more flexible and creative in my parenting. “So what if she wants to wear all black clothing to church?” “You want to stay in your bed to avoid the noise of the dinner table? Knock yourself out! Just make sure you eat afterward—and clean up your plate.”
  • The death of a few close friendships due to some people’s lack of willingness to “get” our family’s dynamic. This was especially hard at first, but I realized that it’s in times of difficulty that you learn what your friends are really made of. That’s when you have to decide who is really worth your time.
  • The death of a romanticized take on the spiritual life. There are no simple answers. There are no guaranteed formulas. And yes it’s true; sometimes God does give you more than you can handle. That’s why he gave us each other. It’s also why he created wine.

It’s ironic, but each of these deaths has made me feel a little more alive and free. Little by little, my kids have led me to a place of surrender. Not defeat. Not resignation. But acceptance. I have learned so much about myself; about human nature, both the bad and the good; and about God that I feel like I’m a very different person now compared to who I was when our first one was born. And that leads to the final part of this passage.

An Unforeseen Glory.

According to the story, Jesus was pointing to the way Peter’s death would glorify God. Well, I’m not about to think that I give God all that much glory. Not unless he is glorified in huge messes! But I do think that the deaths I listed above have helped me to see God’s glory in new, unexpected ways.

  • I see his light shining through my nine-year-old’s unassailable innocence, both when he’s in full melt down mode and when he’s completely aflutter with the joy of something as helping Katie cook dinner.
  • I see him shedding a tear when my fifteen-year-old gets himself tangled up inside and needs to be talked down from a ledge of self-condemnation.
  • I feel his arms around me every time I dive into yet another parent-teacher conference or begin yet another bitter disputation with the insurance company.
  • I see his covenant commitment every time I come home and watch Katie coaching the kids in homework, making dinner, and trying to help the six-year-old overcome his loud, insistent perseverations all at the same time.

So yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff that comes from these little, unlooked-for deaths. Leave it to religion to be so delightfully paradoxical!

This Is My Body.

 For those of you who don’t know, I’m a Catholic, so this last one comes from my faith tradition. More than anything else, I see God in the bread at Mass as he says, “This is my body.” But I don’t just see and believe. I’ve also found the audacity to pray in return: “Hey! Over here! This is your body, too—this precious family you have given me. We’re part of you, and we all belong to you. So don’t pass us over or forget about us. You made my kids this way, so you’re stuck with us.”

Then I go one step further and tell him, “And here is my body, my life. It’s nowhere near the image of you that it’s supposed to be. It’s still too much shadow and not enough light. Still, I offer it to you. Go ahead and keep leading me, even if it’s where I don’t want to go. With all of these little deaths, you have found so many ways to empty me. And I guess that’s fine. But now I need you to fill me and raise me up so that I can give myself—body and blood, soul and humanity—back to my children.”

And the Lord reaches out his hand to grasp mine, and responds: “Amen.”

Happy Father’s Day, everyone!

A Wibbly-Wobbly Ball of . . . Stuff

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Wibbly-Wobbly Ball

Before we start, take a look at this very short clip from Doctor Who, in which The Doctor explains the true nature of time. Trust me, it does relate.

That was pretty good, wasn’t it? Now for the explanation.

In a recent blog post, ASD guru and Aspergers role model John Elder Robison tackled the use of terms high-functioning and low-functioning when it comes to describing people with autism. Here’s what he said:

Much has been written about calling people high functioning or low functioning. With all respect to you and your situation, I don’t do it anymore and I suggest you don’t either.

It’s not accurate, and it’s degrading. . . . Suggesting that “you’re a real high functioning autistic” feels to me a lot like “you talk pretty good for a retard.” People say the former to me all the time today, and they said the latter to me quite a bit 50 years ago. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.

Robison then goes on to talk about how dividing people up based on their “functioning” status misses the point of how autism works:

We now know that our functional level changes with time and other factors. As bright and capable as someone like me can seem, I can have meltdowns during which I become essentially nonfunctional and have no more usable intellectual capability that someone with an IQ of 70. It’s true that is not a lasting condition for me, but it happens, and when it does I would just as soon not be stigmatized for it.

As I said in my last post, my kids are showing me that autism can shift and swirl over time. Not for nothing is it called a developmental difference. It’s a matter of how and when a person develops social, cognitive, and communication skills. Some people develop more slowly or more unevenly than others. Some have persistent, nagging glitches in their development that affect them throughout their lives, while others overcome some challenges as they mature—only to find new challenges crop up. For many, it’s a mixture of both permanent and emerging attributes. So it’s awfully simplistic to reduce such a complex thing as autism to a question of high or low functional skills.

Forget the Spectrum.

But I want to go one step further. I want to suggest that along with abandoning the high- versus low-functioning distinction, we should scrap the image of a spectrum altogether. When we use this term, we evoke a kind of linear gradation, with some people lower down, or farther back, on the scale than others. But one problem with this approach is that people are assigned their place on that spectrum according to different criteria. Is it IQ? Is it verbal communication? Is it eye contact? Social skills?

Someone with limited verbal skills may well have an off-the-chart IQ. Or someone who can appear gregarious and outgoing in public may be masking significant social struggles, only to melt down in private. Where would you place each of these people on the spectrum? How would you decide? And most important, what purpose does it serve?

The Autism Ball.

Rather than talking about a spectrum, I’d like to suggest we talk about a sphere—a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, autism . . . stuff. There’s no low or high end. There’s no up or down or forwards or backwards. You just happen to be somewhere on that sphere, and your fellow autistics are somewhere else on it. No one is farther along than anyone else. No one is of greater value than another because he or she is “higher functioning.”

This is why I like the Doctor Who clip. It paints the picture of time, or in this case autism, as something that isn’t static but full of life and energy. And that makes it unpredictable: wild and mysterious, wonderful and dangerous.

So let’s imagine a ball that contains all the possible symptoms and manifestations of autism, all wibbling-wobbling around. Things like hand flapping, mind blindness, rigid thinking, sensitivity to loud noises, toe-walking, perseveration, narrow focus of interest. Imagine that ball also containing the comorbid conditions connected to autism: OCD, depression, ADHD, ODD, etc. Finally, imagine that this ball contains the positive traits of autism: laser focus, attention to detail, unflinching objectivity, a quirky imagination, a strong sense of justice, and an innate innocence.

Now, imagine your own ASD profile as a line running through the ball in one end and out the other end. As that line travels through the ball, it intersects with the various ways your autism manifests itself—not all of the traits, just the ones particular to you. No two lines are in exactly the same place, and no line is in a better position than another. They’re just there, marking out their own individual quirks and challenges, strengths and gifts.

High? Or Low?

All of this theorizing has a point. In an earlier post, I described how misleading the term “mild autism” can be. I gave some examples from my own kids of how difficult things can be for them, even though they would be considered high-functioning. As Robison said, people with high-functioning autism still have autism, and it still affects them profoundly.

We recently went through a rough patch with one of our kids, in which we saw just how much he keeps things hidden inside of himself, especially his awareness of how different he is and how hard it is for him to feel like he fits in. But on the outside, he presents as a clever, quick-witted, amiable boy. So while he seems very high-functioning, a lot of “low-functioning” stuff is going on underneath the surface: depression that can keep him in bed for two days straight, lack of empathy, misunderstanding of other people’s emotions, learning glitches, and an inordinate need for physical stimulation. He can navigate the outside world, but only for a time. Then he shells up when he’s home or alone. Where would you place him on the spectrum? Is he low-functioning or high-functioning?

Then there’s another one of my boys. You need only five minutes with him to “see” the autism: his odd gait, his lack of eye contact, his unusual speech patterns, his stimming, and his tendency to disappear within himself for a time. But hidden behind all of these quirks and tics is a very intelligent, sensitive child with keen insights into his own behavior and the people around him. Where does he fit on the spectrum? In the higher-functioning part of the line? Or the lower? Why?

Get on the Ball!

Mind you, most of this is irrelevant to me. I just look at them as my kids, with all of their strengths and weaknesses, their beauty and awesomeness, and work with each of them based on who they are. But it does make a difference in the universe outside of our home. It makes a difference when I attend IEP meetings or when I have to explain some unusual behavior to a friend or neighbor. It also makes a huge difference in the way society treats people with autism. If you’re a Bill Gates kind of autistic, you are given as many opportunities as you want. But if you’re nonverbal or if you’ve got some other trait that people might call low-functioning, you’ve got fewer chances to show just how awesome you are and what you can accomplish. And that’s sad, because you risk accepting a bleaker narrative about yourself and your potential than if you were given the opportunity to shine.

If we can get away from defining people based on their so-called levels of functionality, we can get closer to seeing each person as a precious individual with his or her own unique set of talents. We will stop assigning each person a value based on what he or she “contributes” to society. Each person is a gift, and you don’t assign a value to a gift based on its usefulness. You treasure it for what it is: a token of love from the One who gave it to you.

So get off the line and get on the wibbly-wobbly ball!

Serenity Now!

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As my kids are getting older I’m finding myself in an unexpected position. You see, five years ago, when the diagnoses were coming fast and furious, I went through somewhat of a crisis of faith. So many challenges were cropping up. Fears for my kids’ futures began to loom large. I grieved the loss of my vision for my family. But then came a period of relative calm. I came to a clearer understanding and acceptance of our situation. I resolved to fight for my kids’ rights at school. I determined that nothing would come between Katie and me as we took up the challenges that we faced. I had, to a large degree, made peace with it all. Yes, it was going to require extra work to help our kids be successful, but by gum, we were going to do it. We were going to be the autism family!

But there’s something about this autism thingy that took me by surprise. It shifts and swirls. It’s never the same thing year after year—or month after month. I’m finding myself surprised at some of the challenges my kids are facing as they get older. Some are completely new, while others are just more intense versions of what we saw a few years ago.

So while I honestly have made peace with a number of aspects of our family’s make-up, I’m also feeling more at war with others. Not war as if I’m fighting against my kids, mind you. More like a war within myself in terms of embracing our latest “new normal.” Let me try to explain.

Serenity Now . . .

I’ve made peace with the fact that my kids are going to be different. In many ways, I enjoy their differences—their quirky take on life, their brutal honesty, the innocence with which they approach life. I’ve also made peace with the fact that I’m going to be advocating for them and teaching them to advocate for themselves for quite a few years to come. Even though it sounds like a cliché, different, not less really does describe our kids as well as the way we look at them.

I’ve made peace with the fact that my family is going to stick out, and not just because there are so many of us. For instance, on those rare occasions when we go out to eat, I’ve come to expect the unusual. Like one kid will get up and start wandering around the restaurant because he or she can’t sit still. Or another will have to go stand outside halfway through the meal because of sensory overload. Or a third will end up curled up on his chair or under the table to avoid the noise. People will stare, but it doesn’t bother me anymore.

I’ve made peace with the fact that members of our extended family, well-intentioned and big-hearted as they are, won’t always get it. It doesn’t bother me that I’ll probably be explaining things until the day I die. It doesn’t bother me, either, when one of them offers unsolicited advice based on what works for his or her neurotypical child. It doesn’t even bother me that our kids aren’t involved in all the extracurricular activities that their peers enjoy. That’s probably because I’ve also made peace with the fact that we’re going to be spending more time in therapists’ waiting rooms than on soccer fields and tennis courts.

Finally, I’ve made peace with the fact that money will always be tight. With therapies and related health problems, our expenses are more than the average family’s. Plus, we’ve got six kids!

Insanity Later . . .

I haven’t made peace with the thought that our kids still have a long way to go. Now that our oldest two are well into adolescence, I’m getting a sense of the wild ride that comes when you mix autism with hormones. I’m also getting glimpses of the difficulties they’ll face as they lurch toward independence. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for those. Schools have behavioral counselors. Churches usually are welcoming, understanding places. But employers—well, that’s a completely different story.

I haven’t made peace with the other diagnoses that have come attached to our kids’ ASD. It’s bad enough that they have social and communication deficits. Do they really have to deal with crippling depression, intense mood swings, OCD, and emotional dysregulation? Does it really have to be so hard for them?

I haven’t made peace with the fact that many of my kids will find it hard to establish and maintain relationships in the real world. The thought of them being alone kills me—even more than the thought that some of them may never leave home. It kills me to think about all the people who will overlook how cool and kind and sharp and loveable our kids are. Our kids deserve to be loved!

Finally, I haven’t made peace with the way I let our ASD-dominated life close in on me. We don’t often do things as a family, because some of our kids will have a hard time. We don’t live too far from Washington, DC, with sites like the White house or the National Air and Space Museum. But a few of our kids simply cannot handle crowds. So we don’t go. Our hometown is surrounded by mountains and woodlands. But a few of our kids become very anxious when exposed to the sounds and smells of nature. So we don’t go. Just the idea of taking some kids to the movies makes me break into a cold sweat. I know there are ways to help them through all of this. I also know which ones might do well in a museum and which ones might do well in the woods, so I can always divide and conquer. But I just don’t have the fight in me. I’m often too worn out by the daily challenges of ASD life to even consider trying something new.

Dammit!

I know, I know. I’ll probably end up making peace with these things, just as I did with the others. I know, too, that God isn’t finished with me or my kids yet. But dammit, wouldn’t it be nice to catch a break every now and again? Does everything have to be so difficult?

I guess in some ways I’m like every other parent. I want the best for my kids, and I hate it when they struggle. The only difference is that my kids have more struggles than the average kid, so I have to be stronger to help see them through it.

And believe me, I will. Just let me catch my breath first.

Aspie on the Verge

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So here I am, sitting in our local Music and Arts store, typing away on my iPad while my son spends the next thirty minutes in heaven. He knows we’re not going to buy him an electric guitar until he gets a lot better at his acoustic, but he still likes to come here to try out the electrics and to dream.

The thing is, by most calculations, he shouldn’t be here at all. He was rude to his mother. He was verbally abusive to his little brother and sister. And he hung up the phone on me this afternoon when I told him I didn’t want him playing a particularly violent online computer game. He didn’t come up from the basement for dinner, and he gave us some serious lip when we told him that he had to clear the table after he finally did eat.

So why am I giving in to his request? Why am I not withholding this highly desired activity as a consequence for his negative behavior?

Because the rudeness isn’t the whole story. In addition to being obstreperous, he was also jittery, depressed, and anxious. Even the dog, whom he always loves, gave him the heebie-jeebies. Just one whine from her, and he clenched his fists, hunched his shoulders, and covered his ears. “Roxie!” he barked back, “Stop it!” When his little sister turned on the TV just a little too loud, he jerked his head back, winced, and yelled at her. His eyes were red-rimmed and darted back and forth. His breathing was shallow. He paced back and forth around the kitchen, his muscles betraying the tension of a hunted animal waiting for the arrow to pierce him through. I knew that if I didn’t get him out of the house, he’d explode. And that’s never pretty.

I sometimes wonder if I’m just enabling his bad behavior when I do this. After all, it’s possible that he’s manipulating Katie and me. But this isn’t a nightly pattern. There are many evenings when he’s generally okay, evenings when he participates in dinner, does his chores without complaining, and shows at least a little bit of tolerance for his younger siblings. There are also plenty of times when he doesn’t get his way, whether he likes it or not. But still, every time this happens, I wonder if I’m being a bad parent.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this. When your kid is on the autism spectrum, you have to be ready all the time for God only knows what. You never know what’s going to set him off. Maybe he had a tough day at school. Maybe one class was a little too rowdy, and it set him on edge. Maybe a classmate said something mean, and he kept it in, letting it fester, or maybe it was an innocent, joking comment that he misinterpreted. Maybe he was overly tired from staying up too late (which he does on occasion but rarely admits to). Maybe it was nothing special at all. Maybe the ordinary challenges of living in the world have finally gotten to him. Of course, we know some of the things that definitely will set him off, but there are so many unpredictables in everyday life that just about anything could trigger a melt down.

Fast Reset, Slow Reset.

By the time we were ready to go to the store, I was pretty much done. I had been home for a little more than an hour, but that was enough, after a long workday, to wear me thin. This kid’s aspie-on-the-verge shtick had drained me of what little reserves I had left. It was all I could do not to unload on him when he asked me to take him to the store. “Keep it together,” I told myself. “He didn’t mean half of what he said. Just give him this time to reset himself, and it’ll be okay.”

Sure enough, the reset began as soon as we got in the car. Away from the noise and triggers of the house, his mood shifted, and he became the chatty, relatively chipper kid he often is. I, on the other hand, was still rattled from trying to keep the peace at home. I never stop marveling at how quickly our kids can shed their symptoms, oblivious to the effects they had on the people around them. It’s just another example of the social challenges they face–not really “getting” the feelings of other people. So there he was, chatting up a storm, while I was trying mightily to cool down!

So now I’ve got a half-hour to regroup. That’s how much time I’ve given him at the store. I hope it’s enough. For both of us.

An Inspired Diptych

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Pieta

So here we are in the middle of another Holy Week—the seven days between Palm Sunday and Easter. This is the time when Christians pay especially close attention to the stories of Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection. And as you might expect, believers conjure up beloved images during this time—images drawn from the Stations of the Cross or from a classic movie like The Ten Commandments or Jesus of Nazareth.

My favorite image, however, is a little different. I tend to think about Jesus’ mother, Mary, and especially that moment after the crucifixion that has been called the Pietà. See that picture up there? It’s Michelangelo’s rendering of the scene, and it’s on display in St. Peter’s Basilican in the Vatican. 

Anyway, the Pietà wasn’t always my go-to Holy Week image—at least not until something happened about four years ago. And since it’s Holy Week, I thought I’d share the story.

It had been a long evening—and it was only 6:30. Our second child had been fighting Katie over homework, fighting her older brother over the use of the TV, and fighting me over whether she was going to eat her dinner or just sit at the table and wail.

She was nine years old at the time: a very pretty girl with big, ice-blue eyes; light brown hair with natural blonde highligts; and a fair face with a few freckles. When she’s not throwing a tantrum, she has a lively sense of humor and an innocent, even sweet disposition.

She also has Asperger Syndrome. Among other things, this means that her brain has a difficult time processing all the visual and auditory input that we neurotypical people take for granted. So after a full day dealing with the sights and sounds of school, she has had just about as much as she can handle. She spends six hours every day holding it all in, and it’s only when she gets home that she feels safe enough to let it out. And that’s precisely what happened this evening.

So there I was, taking my daughter from the dinner table and escorting her to her room—again. “Maybe if I sit with her for a few moments,” I thought, “she’ll be able to calm down.” So up the stairs we went, me tugging her as she reluctantly followed, crying and swatting at me. I sat down on her bed, held her in my lap, and tried to speak in soothing tones while she shook and wept. But it was no use. She just kept pitching back and forth, wailing and screaming until she fell asleep in my arms.

Recognition and Revelation.

I was lucky that night: she fell asleep quickly enough for me to make it to the prayer meeting I had been attending. It took place in the chapel of a large Catholic church. The chapel was dedicated to Mary, and it featured a series of stained-glass windows depicting various scenes from the Virgin’s life.

I got there a few minutes early, tied up in knots and on the brink of tears. Since only a few people had arrived, I found a quiet corner and knelt down for some private prayer.

As I bowed my head and shut my eyes tight, a host of anxious thoughts swirled in my mind. What was going to happen to my little girl? Would we ever find the right therapies and medications? How could Katie and I keep up? What about our five other children, all of whom are also on the autism spectrum?

But then I looked up, I saw that I had stationed myself right next to the stained-glass window depicting the Pietà. I saw Mary, a look of both resignation and surrender on her face as she cradled the lifeless body of her son, the image pierced my heart. I had just come from cradling the seemingly lifeless body of my child, and here was Mary doing the same thing.

It was a moment of recognition and revelation. My reaction to my girl’s suffering was tinged with bitterness, but so was Mary’s. Looking at her face, I could tell that she didn’t just shrug off what had happened with a sense of holy indifference. She was a real mother holding her own flesh and blood. As I kept looking at the image, I imagined Mary telling me, “It hurts, doesn’t it? It really hurts. I don’t have comforting words to offer you, except to say that I know how bitter it is—because I’ve tasted it. Does that help?”

An Inspired Diptych.

In that moment, I felt a sense of kinship with Mary that I still have a hard time putting into words. The best I could come up with was a diptych, a kind of two-paneled painting. On one panel, I imagined myself holding one of my children, much the way that Mary holds Jesus in the Pietà. As I contemplate this panel, I realize that, just like Mary, I too am sharing in my children’s pain and frustration and anguish. When melt downs like my little girl’s happen, I am just as helpless as Mary was, and the best I can do is keep vigil with them and pray for God’s strength to keep moving forward.

On the other panel, I see myself as the lifeless body, spent and exhausted, lying in Mary’s lap. I have given all I have to give, I have done all that I know how to do, and there’s nothing left. But Mary is there, accepting my pain, sadness, and helplessness as her own and ennobling it by turning it into a prayer that we offer to God together.

I realized that night that this is an okay place to be. If Mary is with me, I know I’ll find some kind of resurrection, some kind of divine grace to help me get up and take the next step. I saw that it’s okay to collapse upon occasion; someone will always be with me until I can rise again.

Rising to the Challenge.

What I learned—what I felt—as I looked at that stained glass window has stayed with me. My little girl is not so little any more. Her melt downs may not be as dramatic, but her challenges have become more complex. So too have our other kids’ challenges, melt downs, and rough patches. Frankly, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t get the chance to identify with one or another—or both—of those pictures on my diptych. And that’s a good thing. Because I don’t know what I’d do without them.

I hope you have a happy Easter.