How Technology Is Enhancing Everyone’s Ability To Learn – Everyone’s!
As we’ve progressed as a species, we’ve seen an unfathomable amount of changes to the way we do things. Our
Read moreAs we’ve progressed as a species, we’ve seen an unfathomable amount of changes to the way we do things. Our
Read moreWill I feel comfortable with Isaac being aware of this blog as and when he acquires the ability to?
The question (nuanced rather than in unreconstructed form) has therefore acted as a gentle leaver on the moral compass if you like. Not that it was needed at all in his early days. Chronicling them demanded a frank, exposing honesty such was our raggedness – with raging against society’s stares going hand in hand with amplifying autism’s awareness a matter of Isaac’s human rights. Intensity informed everything and I felt compelled to communicate all we learned. I wouldn’t change a smidgen.
As he approaches nine however, the question devolves from what I singularly (as a father) say about him to something more pluralistic. Maybe not a question, more a constant consideration that whatever I say needs a degree of respect and parity with his own opinions, profile and personality. How, if at all, will he feel, be aware of, love, hate, tolerate, tame, embrace, enforce, his autism. It’s his journey, my part must, as much as possible, be curated by – at least be in conjunction with – him.
“Willy Wonka’s got autism.”
Such is our real time – forever on and forever fruitful – relationship with school, they are always alert to little aberrations like this. Isaac probably didn’t have a knowledge of autism, some boys in his class may have. There was certainly no Charlie and the Chocolate Factory revelatory autism story though. A semblance of self-awareness was seeping into him. A healthy, in hand, observable occurrence that always happened to boys at Isaac’s school.
So much so that on the occasions I pick him up, I find myself in a jubilant state – flushed with the endorphins of expanded expectations; his jolly, sociable, developing self being clear to see. In fact the narrative right now is Isaac is nowhere near his glass ceiling and deserving of lofty ambitions.
Isaac is often in possession of a one rail-track mind. To stem it is to leave him ferociously frustrated, unfairly so. Equally, as championed by school, to dwell on the obsessions, means they fester, he gets entrapped in them.
He’s taken to – “as a way to relax after school, daddy, I need to write about transport” – typing the entire tube map completely from memory; effortlessly, at break neck speed. All the stops, their intersections listed, in perfect order; of all the lines; north, south, east and westbound. It’s a preposterous skill really. Mindboggling in its depth and dimensions. His photographic memory transposing the visual into perfect verbal form.
So how to harness this passion that can be on the precipice of pointlessness?
In this case, success has been achieved by introducing some social skills. His octogenarian grandfather, Papa Paul, is an enthusiastic, kindly man, whose interests and generosity are varied. One of which, trains of all shapes and sizes and vintage, is something I, in a previous less informed, less responsible life, gently ribbed him about. Now I strongly reinforce it, aware as I am its vital purpose as a social tool.
This marshalling of an obsession into something positive and social, is one of many small but significant steps Isaac is making. Repetition is different from routine. He’ll always thrive from and need routine. So a regular collection from school incentivised with train stimulation is a wholly positive development.
Reward of friendship is wayward with Isaac – the innate skills of reading body language are invisible, regulating himself from cavorting, physical play is a fierce challenge, reciprocation is not part of his natural make-up. Perhaps all this goes hand in hand with the esoteric concept of social currency; something so yearned for in typical children, appearing of limited value to his self-confidence. Yet we do have some foundations in place that could start to paint the broad brushstrokes of potential. Music, he loves; cataloguing and remembering in the main. Any playlist on popular radio he knows in full, “this song we’ve heard already, sometimes you hear things more than once,” I hear a lot on a long journey, DJs’ propensities to play songs over and over, a lack of imagination irritating Isaac slightly. His knowledge, I know, could stand him in prime social pecking order, in time, “this is Hair by Little Mix featuring Sean Paul – I’ve seen it on music television and am listening now to Capital Radio Extra.”
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.
Thanks to my youngest minion, Emmett, I know that this stair case has 44 steps.
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