My Unlearning of Isaac – My Son Isaac
Time was, life with Isaac felt like having the scary multi-shaped components of a gigantic IKEA flatpack kitchen that I needed to construct. Scrolls of instructions and thousands of widgets laid out, baffling piece by baffling piece. Me headshakingly not knowing where to begin.
As we built our lives together, it was less about things slotting into place and more about an open approach. Instruction manuals, fitting in, following conventions were futile. Instead, grasping the up-against-each-other pros and cons of autism, ADHD and dyspraxia has involved a fluid learning curve – that gets refined like a 24/7 optimising algorithm. It’s become the story of all of our lives.
A story of an untypical family progressing, where we’re stumped less and can cope more, thanks to understanding Isaac and his world. Whilst forever expecting the unexpected.
Take Isaac’s recent observation:
“Dad, please move your nose, it’s invading my personal space,” he bugled, sending me up whilst sending me slightly self-conscious too.
Before landing his metaphorical punch on said proboscis:
“I find this difficult to say, my father, but I have to be honest. It’s because your nose is a feature of you that keeps on growing and, well, it’s massive now!”
This impossible-to-take-offence insult – more burst out laughing than burst into tears – screamed ‘Isaac’. And so much of what I’ve learned about him:
A here-and-now, hilarious, no holds barred battle cry. That’s solely from his perspective. Because if we’re talking personal space, he’s the chief invader ninety-nine times out of a hundred. His scattergun squeezes, hugs, kisses plus in-your-face repetitious phrases, closed questions and gags define him without always delighting me.
But on this occasion, with me in his vicinity, he clearly discovered a perfectly timed ace up his sleeve and dealt it. We’re talking the lesser well studied Isaac ‘Davis’ Law of Motion here: where a personalised perception of objects, lowly spatial awareness, impulsive thoughts, wild wit and imagination clash like whizzing particles in the Hadron Collider.
Put simply, this nose themed cracker had a full and well-balanced flavour of exactly what I’ve come to accept in Isaac in all his individual and neurodiverse glory. That, at full tilt, he’s funny and factual. Big and bold parts to his personality – individually and collectively.
He’s funny. My, he’s funny. His Head Teacher says how “he makes me laugh all the time now.” Enough endorsement, if needed.
His repertoire of puns and jokes runs to three figures, testament to his memory. Comedian Tim Vine’s top spot as quick-fire pun master could be in the firing line. Isaac misses few beats now when out and about; in the sandwich shop recently, he dropped this to the owner:
“What do you call a chicken with tomato and lettuce in its eye?”
“Chicken sees a salad.”
His delivery is one of crowd-pleasing MC, the comedy contagious, with no shyness at laughing at his own joke.
Isaac has laboured away, I think, at getting his inimitable head around this sort of wordplay and rhyme. It’s a fact-full and straightforward joke. His funny bones get all shook up by experiencing others laughing on YouTube. The ear informs as much as the eyes with Isaac. There are two ways of saying things, “a truth is a truth whose opposite is also truth,” as Thomas Mann said, but perhaps not meaning to decode the whims of the English language.
Maybe the content of the joke and realising the appropriate context (food joke equals sandwich shop) is sufficient. When I pose this vague sort of question to do with deconstructing the joke – does he get it? – I can’t always get to the bottom of it but is the digging really worth it?
(The comprehension conundrum chimes with school challenges. Isaac’s speaking skills gallop, whilst inference and listening ones lag a little – emphasizing the importance of consistent speech and language therapy in positively pushing and prodding him.)
More factual jokes flow from him, “What begins with w and ends with t?” he’ll ask.
“What?” I reply.
“Correct!” He concludes proudly.
They get me every time. A jokebook’s full of such literal tomfoolery. Impressions, too, are his forte, of family and friends, famous folk and teachers (they know!).
And tech inspired slapstick. Terabytes of it. Blackbelt editing and wizardry using TikTok features and YouTube studio’s box of tricks mean a mountain of memes and sliced up silliness, courtesy of Isaac.
The stars of these shows are either me caught unaware ambling around, whistling, perhaps saying something lame, or his ‘good sport’ octogenarian grandpa just going about his business and answering Isaac’s wacky and off-the-wall questions to camera. Then whatever Isaac captures gets cut to a soppy sounding snippet, looped, sped up, auto-tuned and then perfectly remix-ed to any beat and melody from country to Hip Hop to Klezmer to RnB to any trending bit of aural stickiness. Lay over filters, voice effects and the like, and it’s the stuff of comedy gold, for people who know us, and even for those who don’t. The content exists privately for now – but I don’t doubt its virality and universal appeal.
I always remember studying an early 20th Century American Journalist, Norman Cousins, whose work on humour led to the phrase ‘internal jogging’ which encapsulates tidily the tears streaming hysterics that grab you, make you breathless, and can leave a post euphoric haze. Authentic belly laughs that make you ache.
Isaac’s ‘memes’ get me internally jogging, fairly regularly.
Not a problem. Far from it.
What can be a problem, is how filter-free he is, needing to show me them over and over, “it’s our tradition dad, I must show you more after dinner,” and at times that aren’t suitable, “you know I’m an off topic person, so I’d like to stop this conversation, and do some Papa Paul content.”
So much of his humour and broader personality actually veer into the filter-free, one way and non-stop, highlighting the difference in how he interacts with people. Sometimes Isaac will be like this as a way to express underlying angst or frustration with the world. Either way, it’s something I grapple with. Indeed, when he’s in full and endless flow like this, I have all the leverage of a little finger on a burst mains.
He’ll persevere until I get ratty or to some utterly unpredictable point when, suddenly and solemnly, like a stoic preacher vowing some silent introspection, he’ll label me, “the misery guts father,” and wander off, his world collapsed.
Which demonstrates that whilst there was the temptation to use the nose joke as an aha moment of understanding Isaac and what I’ve learned about him, it actually unleashed in me the opposite.
It’s not so peculiar why the joke triggered this brief bout of navel gazing. What pours (and pours, and pours, and pours) from Isaac’s mouth occasionally benefits from a determined sift through. Clues, or indeed clarity, can come to the fore. Under the microscope, truths glisten. For a moment, I may even think I’ve got a dimension of him wrapped up with a nice little bow on top.
But that’s neat, too simplistic, and of limited use.
More and more, Isaac represents a beautiful mystery where traits fizz and fade and his complex personality seesaws between surviving and thriving in an autistic (mainly) unfriendly universe.
In fact, at 14, for all the vital learning I’ve invested in for Isaac, I’ve entered a phase of balanced unlearning – certainly not to replace it – but to sit alongside it.
The bullseye, centre of gravity to my unlearning is autism itself. Its fluidity as a condition, its changing state and how Isaac represents as an autistic person. I have a bit part in the autism narrative as a parent, which is not to say I’m not confident voicing an opinion and sharing views – despite a tiny twitter-fied minority has sadly taken to vilifying parents.
In the ten years since Isaac was diagnosed, the diagnostic criteria have changed, too esoteric and detailed to list here. Broader and more enlightened research has revealed a more layered approach, with a diversification of the autistic community – no doubt the label liberating many diagnosed late in life, as well as parents with vastly different experiences to us. Helping further to inform and instruct a neurotypical world that can be so alien and hurtful.
I keep up as best I can, but am held back by the entrenched muscle memory of the paediatrician diagnosing this 3 year old distressed child – with observations around delayed milestones of speech, social imagination, repetitive behaviour and other classic autistic traits.
And reflecting back the ever changing autism identity in the wider world is, as I’ve said, Isaac’s equally altering ownership and understanding of his autism. Like a hall of mirrors, I see his identity, abilities and needs, but much seem contorted, different and peculiar to not only how he was and has changed but to other autistic people too. To see clearly, I must also unlearn how I imagine his mind ticks now. Just a small example:
“Dad, I am interested in train station car parks, with their beautiful architecture and importance to the transport network. I can name them all and would like to visit to film them, please.”
Cue me sagely nodding as he exhaustively unloads this wide-ranging knowledge, so much information soaked up by his brilliantly wired brain. Only for him to then hand brake turn, and see my learning skid into an unknown:
“That way I can train spot independently, so you can sit in the car and listen to sport and football and so forth and things of that nature, and not be sad faced.”
I’ve never doubted his over indexing on love and overt kindness (and how he’s smartly discovered those abilities), but this specific type of empathy, contradicting some out of date ‘theory of mind’ type autistic studies, involves the unlearning I’m talking about. There’s a beauty and distinctness to how he enters the mind of others.
The fact of the matter is, I’ll always need an element of unlearning thanks to my inherent parenthood expectations, so dogged as to even predate his diagnosis.
(The pursuit of happiness and security entwined with the blending of his and our worlds never wavers of course. But I’ll always be tussling with a temptation to expect, button down or plot out milestones – whilst knowing there’s a pointlessness to it. Imagining conventional developmental and social roadmaps are cul-de-sacs.)
But as a teen who displays so many typical needs for sociability, a willingness to dispute and aspiring adulthood, my misaligned default of ‘he’s growing up’ with ‘he’s different’ demands an unlearning glue. Which day by day is undeniably aiding me and in turn, I hope, Isaac.
His rebellion follows no known rules – it has a pragmatic and honest streak:
“I’m an 8 year old boy trapped in a 14 year old body; behaving well at school is hard, I concentrate but distraction is a thing you must please address. I find things that are funny that I want to laugh about in class but study is important for me too.”
Right there I get befuddled between him wanting me to talk to the teacher – a no, no from my almost misspent youth – whilst challenging himself to be irreverent. Supposed neurotypical and autistic traits blurring make me feel like a skier on the foggiest of black runs. I tumble, get up again, tumble again, making as much progress as possible.
He wants to be his own man, but “I don’t want to go and meet friends alone. And please don’t buy me clothes and I know Tabitha wants to learn to do her laces up but it’s not really something I have an interest in!”
And, as he’ll unashamedly announce, he wants a girlfriend who is a trainspotter, who we must find for him.
This mish-mash of Isaac-isms, mixed with his resolute routine and scripted dialogue spread across the day, make him a unique force. Someone I’ve learned so much about and equipped myself to help fly as best as possible – whilst needing to free myself of irrelevancies, floaty knowledge and assumptions.
Plus of course there’s his running commentary and random wonderfulness that I can neither learn nor unlearn but just live and breathe:
“Why don’t they just arrest the horrible criminal Putin? 999 in the UK, 911 in the USA, Russia must have a number too??”
His school, a little ironically, is the seat of optimum unlearning that offsets steadfast learning – and is enabling Isaac to stay stable on this long and winding road. Especially through recent tough episodes. They, as always, possess the collective wherewithal to build a robust platform for this young man – the architects, scaffolders, expert builders, designers all in one. With Eliza, my wife, project manager of course.
As Isaac’s struggles and achievements meander depending on class size, personality, cognition, sensory needs, anxiety, dysregulation, and more, they real-time track his development and needs. And with transition to his upper school imminent, he’s making a pivot (that he’s pleased with and collaborated on) to a more nurturing environment. Where a different pace and path doesn’t mean a glass ceiling or fewer qualifications. It means sensitive autism practice – in a world as mentioned earlier where autism and unlearning go hand in hand – and knowing how to nimbly administer change. Helping me manage and unlearn misperceptions and certain expectations and giving me confidence instead. Confidence that that there will be wider opportunities, whether apprenticeships, vocational training, GCSEs or whatever is deemed appropriate as and when. What to grasp, what to shed.
Perhaps, then, that’s the crux of why I’m attempting this unlearning state of mind. My unresolved future fears have reared, fed by old-fashioned ideas and prejudices and a biased world. Where only a school like Isaac’s can stake a claim to knowing what might be best and what’s possible.
Unlearning is to always have an eye on tomorrow. Whilst always having that reference and foundation of what I have discovered and hold dear about Isaac, the funny, factual and filter free young man. Whose future could actually be anything, I just have no idea what it is yet.
