How to Help Nurture Friendships for Your Child with Special Needs
What is the true meaning of friendship? This is something I’ve struggled to define, as I raise a child with
Read MoreWhat is the true meaning of friendship? This is something I’ve struggled to define, as I raise a child with
Read MoreWith Father’s Day beckoning, now could be the time to indulge in fatherhood musings. How my son, Isaac, has affected any perceptions I may have had. How he enriches the experience. And challenges it. How his autism may have sent us off course for a bit. How my role as a father in my universe sits slightly out of kilter with others’ universes.
But that feels unnecessary and unimportant right now. What feels very right and very relevant this father’s day is to celebrate something, dare I say it, more fundamental to Isaac.
His mother.
His mother, who gave birth to him in barbaric conditions. And balanced recuperation with a stressed baby from day one.
His mother, who from that day to, well, perhaps forever, bats off judgemental glares and tuts from people who should know better but know nothing at all.
His mother, who had no place to hide from what felt like hell, when her husband could escape daily.
His mother whose instinct told her something was wrong but battled on because what else could you do? Who nodded unknowingly when other’s shared their similar stories; because in reality they were different.
His mother, who ferried around her sinking and struggling son to therapists and doctors. His mother, who never flinched in her unrequited love for her unresponsive son.
His mother, who kept calm when diagnosis was delivered. Seeing a future not finality.
His mother, who learnt and listened and devoured and dissected. So she was armed to the teeth with rights and knowledge.
His mother, who made the system fear her and not vice versa. Who got Isaac the right support, his statement of needs and who never ceases in improving his life.
His mother, who found him a school that was right. And another one when it all went wrong.
His mother, who campaigned not just on his behalf but on the many like him. Spreading awareness, sharing, inspiring, strengthening, surviving.
His mother, who sensibly delayed having a second child for the sake of her first. Before finding the inner strength to create a sibling for Isaac. Mixing nature with counter-intuition and most of all courage.
His mother, who tolerates swings in behaviour of an epic scale. Experiencing outpourings of love, bundles of anxiety and no little cruelty, day in, day out.
His mother, who knows how to push not punish. Comfort not compromise. Who can temper frustrations with empathy. Whose maternal instinct never wavers.
At best I play second fiddle to my wife’s orchestration of Isaac. Managing his days, taking him places, speaking to his school, arranging his time. She is mum, mentor, therapist and teacher. His absolute anchor. Which is why I see this Father’s day more than ever for what it is. An affirmation that what I do as a father is enabled and enhanced by the miracles managed by his Mother.
The very things that many people think make the world go round, actually make the world go wrong for anyone associated with autism. Hustle and bustle, chin-wagging, dropping everything to do nothing, spontaneity, chilling, trusting instinct, nous, crackling atmospheres, surprises, adventure. Society is bred and nurtured on wholesome truths like variety is the spice of life. When for so many touched by autism, variety is the spectre of life. A world where the primers of improvisation and intuition make it a world wrought with bafflement and, quite, frankly, danger. Off script, on high alert – us and Isaac.
Battening down the hatches has its appeal, believe me. Burying our heads in quicksand, getting lost to a limited life of fierce logic, linear living and uniformity. Scripts, structure, rigidity, predictability. Repetition, repetition, over and over.
And revealed to me in these positive and proactive moments – when brightness seeps in and there’s buoyancy and a bouncy spring in all our steps – is that Isaac’s existence can be one to really revel in. That despite how ill-fitting the world can be for his autism and dyspraxia (from sensory overload to the ubiquity of physical and visual disorder) right now, permeating this 8 year old boy’s climate is an extraordinary kindness. We are discovering microclimates of care and love orchestrated by friends, family, even strangers. At this very particular moment in time.
Out and about, his turn of phrase, turns heads. Bringing joy more often than not. Who can’t fail to warm to a young boy earnestly commenting that he is “so happy when I’m on a bus; having such a lovely time. Can we watch a little bit of buses and trains please daddy when we leave this bus for the street near the station at Highgate? Highgate has a capital H. Capital letters are for restaurants, people, names and places.”
Thoughtfulness can be found in the least expected places. Some recent repair work to our house meant a cavalcade of builders disbanding in his space – and disrupting. The noise and mess could easily have accelerated in Isaac’s troubled mind to a torpedoed home landscape. Step in builder Jim and his innate appreciation of autism, and perception of Isaac.
Fanciful maybe, but it even felt he allowed for Isaac’s visual perception and motor skills challenges, showing him where work would happen, bricks moved, tools left, mess cleared. Unifying for him this tapestry of disturbance to his world into a digestible, comprehendible whole.
But what if he arrives there and it’s not yet open? A kink to the flow of the punctiliously prepared day exposed already. Like a cumbersome computer ever expanding its ram capacity, Isaac’s ability to store information increases by the day; the flip side being a crash when the storage malfunctions will be ever more dramatic.
Talking of trains (which Isaac rarely doesn’t do) Isaac’s monologues of multiple station names and their adjacent roads are – at the times when he’s open to communicating this extraordinarily processed and recalled information – received with relish by friends. In awe of his photographic memory and encyclopaedic knowledge, blessed by his idiosyncrasies, these fleeting episodes affirm the value of his ‘difference’ and how it can instil optimism in all.
When things are good, it’s an extended family micro climate where his exuberance, eccentricity and infectious hysterics, just makes them smile and laugh. It’s so gloriously spirited.
They clash, of course. My wife mediating magically. But there is a kind of beautiful complementary nature to their interactions. Her typically evolving play is imaginative, implying the fine spatial and visual skills that he is so bravely battling with. Compering her mini tea parties can become quite chaotic – she creates, he crash, bang wallops. But Tabitha loves his rebellion somehow.
As she was, as if seated breathlessly in an atmospheric auditorium, by his extraordinary delivery, word perfect and completely from memory, of the entire Gruffalo story; most amazingly, in the exact tone and tenor of the film they’d both been rapt by. This sublime skill of his – entertaining and enthralling Tabitha (and us) in equal measure.
All these events and relationships emphasize just how safe and comforting the many man made microclimates of kindness, openness and awareness are, when we are lucky enough to find ourselves in them. Sometimes in public, usually not. Where awareness has been impressed upon people with vigour.
Who knows the longevity of this not impossible to locate kindness? I feel tears when recollecting the tantrums that people interpreted abjectly in the early years, when kindness was at best evasive. I block out the din of inner dread when contemplating him getting older. Where the world is one of dipping in and out of things; with intuitive filters and edits life-saving tools for folk – anathemas to how Isaac sees the world, pursuing excessively, fixating, immersing, obsessing. When his quirks may be not as refreshingly received. A crushingly conformist world at odds with those deemed odd.
Another day, another telephone call regarding The Boy’s behavior. This time, he appears to have gone so far that he
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