things I don't say...
Jan. 25th, 2002 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kuangning...and should. Not things hidden for any particular purpose, just things that are so big or so small that they never make it here.
My eldest child is autistic. His diagnosis is a fairly recent development... they told me for certain last summer. It's been a relief, in a lot of ways, to have that diagnosis. There have been many, many nights when I've sat by his bed or his crib, and wondered what I was going to do, how I could keep coping, with a child who is obviously bright, but so difficult. And what I was doing wrong, that he'd be so difficult.
Logan is the baby who went through hell with me. His father, Richard, walked out on us when he was a year old, and hasn't been seen or heard from since. Except that I resent the fact that he doesn't care enough about our child to support him in any way, I haven't really regretted Richard's absence. I get angry, when there's something I want Logan to have, something I feel he should have, and I can't provide it... but that's as far as that goes. We get by. My kids aren't malnourished, they haven't been allowed to suffer in any real sense because money is sometimes short. And yet... and yet sometimes I wondered how much Richard's leaving had to do with Logan's behaviour. And if I could have done more, been more, to lessen those effects.
Logan was an intelligent baby, and he's still obviously an intelligent child. He walked at nine months, and by a year old, he had an astonishing vocabulary. I can't point to any one day when I realised something was wrong... he'd always been a self-contained child, happy for company, but quite content to play by himself. It just seemed that that trait became stronger as time went by. He loves trains... so it didn't seem at all odd that he'd enjoy lining up all his toys, that he'd throw a tantrum if someone disturbed the pattern. He's strong-willed, we said when we'd speak to him and get no response... we learned that when that happened, we had to get down to his eye level and repeat the instructions. And that more often than not, he'd turn his head or close his eyes when we did, not making eye contact unless he was forced to.
Autism never crossed our minds... after all, he was still the same little boy who would come to me to be hugged, who'd sing and loves to be sung to, who'd lead us by the hand to get him something he wanted. He comes to us with toys, saying, "fix it?" That means he wants us to help him attach them to each other to form a train. He says, "Logan want bites?" or "go eat?" when he's hungry. And still... other four-year-olds speak clearly, and have left baby talk behind, right? We started being more aggressive about teaching him words... I was noticing that his working vocabulary wasn't progressing as it should have. He learned the words, said them back to us, and yet... and yet. Ari, two years younger, seemed to understand us more than Logan did.
We worried for a little while about his hearing, set him tests... he heard just fine. We got annoyed, at times, because it seemed that he was purposely ignoring us. Some days, he was sociable, tractable, and charming, and other days... he wasn't. There'd be tantrum after tantrum, fits of violence against himself or whoever was trying to interfere with his tantrum. He'd destroy anything he could reach, smashing or ripping things. Time outs had no effect. Being sent to stand in the corner had variable effect... sometimes he hated it, and then sometimes he'd send himself to the corner, and cry bitterly when he did so. And then, sometimes he was sent to the corner and seemed to enjoy it. Spanking provoked tantrums instead of stopping them. I learned to pick him up and hold him in a restraining hold; he absolutely hated that, but would eventually wear himself out and fall asleep. Provided, of course, that I was able to do nothing more than hold him and rock him until that happened. He has more energy than anyone I've ever seen, he sleeps little and lightly, and when awake, he is never still unless he's forced to be.
When I went to NY the first time, I brought him back a book of puzzles. The speed with which he put them together astounded me. And then I noticed a peculiarity. All the puzzles had pieces which were shaped exactly the same as the others. So that except for colour, the pieces were interchangeable between puzzles. Logan would interchange the pieces... he wasn't concerned about colour at all, only with the shapes, and those he dealt with amazingly. I, with colour and shape and practice to help me, took at least four minutes to build each puzzle. Logan finished within two minutes, every time. He learned his alphabet, and I began teaching him the letter sounds... and there I ran into a roadblock. He knew the letters, yes, could identify them all... but he didn't seem to understand that they could be words. He'd look at a book, and identify every separate letter, but teaching him to combine them into words seemed impossible.
He has an amazing memory, we found. Books I'd only read to him once, he would repeat to me, word-perfect, months later. And often I found myself puzzled, knowing that what he'd just said was a reference to something, but unable to remember what... while he grew more and more frustrated that he wasn't understood. Those episodes would always culminate in tantrums. As did more mealtimes than I care to remember. He was, to say the least, a picky eater. He ate so little, in fact, that it was hard to reconcile that with his energy, and I doubled his vitamins. What he refused to eat... the majority of what we put in front of him... would end up on the floor or the walls, unless we gave up before he did and let him go back to playing without his meal. We refrained from taking him into social situations because of his behaviour, and, much as I'd loathe myself for the thought, sometimes I wondered just what kind of little monster I was raising, and if there were anything that would change him.
As it turns out... there is. Some of what we were already doing, in fact... only more of it. Massages, joining him in his play during "floor time," to play the game his way at first, but then to guide it to something more sociable. There's therapy available to him now, since his diagnosis, and since he is only mildly autistic, his prognosis is good. But, maybe more importantly, putting a name to what we were going through lets me know what's going on, how to counteract it... and it lets me look forward to having all my children home without dread. I won't expect him to act like his sibs do, I won't wonder why he doesn't. I know.
And now, so do you.
My eldest child is autistic. His diagnosis is a fairly recent development... they told me for certain last summer. It's been a relief, in a lot of ways, to have that diagnosis. There have been many, many nights when I've sat by his bed or his crib, and wondered what I was going to do, how I could keep coping, with a child who is obviously bright, but so difficult. And what I was doing wrong, that he'd be so difficult.
Logan is the baby who went through hell with me. His father, Richard, walked out on us when he was a year old, and hasn't been seen or heard from since. Except that I resent the fact that he doesn't care enough about our child to support him in any way, I haven't really regretted Richard's absence. I get angry, when there's something I want Logan to have, something I feel he should have, and I can't provide it... but that's as far as that goes. We get by. My kids aren't malnourished, they haven't been allowed to suffer in any real sense because money is sometimes short. And yet... and yet sometimes I wondered how much Richard's leaving had to do with Logan's behaviour. And if I could have done more, been more, to lessen those effects.
Logan was an intelligent baby, and he's still obviously an intelligent child. He walked at nine months, and by a year old, he had an astonishing vocabulary. I can't point to any one day when I realised something was wrong... he'd always been a self-contained child, happy for company, but quite content to play by himself. It just seemed that that trait became stronger as time went by. He loves trains... so it didn't seem at all odd that he'd enjoy lining up all his toys, that he'd throw a tantrum if someone disturbed the pattern. He's strong-willed, we said when we'd speak to him and get no response... we learned that when that happened, we had to get down to his eye level and repeat the instructions. And that more often than not, he'd turn his head or close his eyes when we did, not making eye contact unless he was forced to.
Autism never crossed our minds... after all, he was still the same little boy who would come to me to be hugged, who'd sing and loves to be sung to, who'd lead us by the hand to get him something he wanted. He comes to us with toys, saying, "fix it?" That means he wants us to help him attach them to each other to form a train. He says, "Logan want bites?" or "go eat?" when he's hungry. And still... other four-year-olds speak clearly, and have left baby talk behind, right? We started being more aggressive about teaching him words... I was noticing that his working vocabulary wasn't progressing as it should have. He learned the words, said them back to us, and yet... and yet. Ari, two years younger, seemed to understand us more than Logan did.
We worried for a little while about his hearing, set him tests... he heard just fine. We got annoyed, at times, because it seemed that he was purposely ignoring us. Some days, he was sociable, tractable, and charming, and other days... he wasn't. There'd be tantrum after tantrum, fits of violence against himself or whoever was trying to interfere with his tantrum. He'd destroy anything he could reach, smashing or ripping things. Time outs had no effect. Being sent to stand in the corner had variable effect... sometimes he hated it, and then sometimes he'd send himself to the corner, and cry bitterly when he did so. And then, sometimes he was sent to the corner and seemed to enjoy it. Spanking provoked tantrums instead of stopping them. I learned to pick him up and hold him in a restraining hold; he absolutely hated that, but would eventually wear himself out and fall asleep. Provided, of course, that I was able to do nothing more than hold him and rock him until that happened. He has more energy than anyone I've ever seen, he sleeps little and lightly, and when awake, he is never still unless he's forced to be.
When I went to NY the first time, I brought him back a book of puzzles. The speed with which he put them together astounded me. And then I noticed a peculiarity. All the puzzles had pieces which were shaped exactly the same as the others. So that except for colour, the pieces were interchangeable between puzzles. Logan would interchange the pieces... he wasn't concerned about colour at all, only with the shapes, and those he dealt with amazingly. I, with colour and shape and practice to help me, took at least four minutes to build each puzzle. Logan finished within two minutes, every time. He learned his alphabet, and I began teaching him the letter sounds... and there I ran into a roadblock. He knew the letters, yes, could identify them all... but he didn't seem to understand that they could be words. He'd look at a book, and identify every separate letter, but teaching him to combine them into words seemed impossible.
He has an amazing memory, we found. Books I'd only read to him once, he would repeat to me, word-perfect, months later. And often I found myself puzzled, knowing that what he'd just said was a reference to something, but unable to remember what... while he grew more and more frustrated that he wasn't understood. Those episodes would always culminate in tantrums. As did more mealtimes than I care to remember. He was, to say the least, a picky eater. He ate so little, in fact, that it was hard to reconcile that with his energy, and I doubled his vitamins. What he refused to eat... the majority of what we put in front of him... would end up on the floor or the walls, unless we gave up before he did and let him go back to playing without his meal. We refrained from taking him into social situations because of his behaviour, and, much as I'd loathe myself for the thought, sometimes I wondered just what kind of little monster I was raising, and if there were anything that would change him.
As it turns out... there is. Some of what we were already doing, in fact... only more of it. Massages, joining him in his play during "floor time," to play the game his way at first, but then to guide it to something more sociable. There's therapy available to him now, since his diagnosis, and since he is only mildly autistic, his prognosis is good. But, maybe more importantly, putting a name to what we were going through lets me know what's going on, how to counteract it... and it lets me look forward to having all my children home without dread. I won't expect him to act like his sibs do, I won't wonder why he doesn't. I know.
And now, so do you.
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no subject
Date: 2002-01-25 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-01-25 12:28 pm (UTC)