The Things We Don't Do Anymore

At some point, when you have a kid on the autism spectrum, you realize you don't parent like your friends. Usually, it's at about the same time you find yourself saying, "It shouldn't be this hard. What am I doing wrong?" It's not surprising you find yourself saying this when your ASD kid is, say, doing that exact same thing you asked him not to do a thousand times. And I mean, literally 1000 times. See, this is before you get the diagnosis and you don't realize a) he probably hasn't heard you the other 999 times, and b) even if he did, he didn't generalize the suggestion to suit any other situation but one exactly like the situation in which you made the suggestion previously. Also before you get the diagnosis, and when you are still sure you are the world's worst parent, you find yourself wondering why you are having a knock-down, all-out shouting match with your 4 year-old over the fact he can't have apple juice with his dinner. After all, you have never let him have apple juice with dinner, ever, and no one made even the slightest suggestion to indicate the rule would suddenly change, but there you find yourself, arguing about an idea that has popped into his head for no apparent reason. And you can't back down because everyone knows that parents who give into tantrums just get more tantrums in return. So you stand your ground despite the fact that you're pretty sure not giving in to tantrums has done absolutely no good up to this point.

Somewhere along the way, you also realize how many things you have stopped doing, and you wonder if you would still be doing them if your kid was different somehow. And this depresses you because you think you should be a better parent than that, that you should be able to take your kid out in public and do things with him you always thought you would do with him. (Even as you know that you can't or at least that you haven't been able to do any of those things you stopped doing with any degree of success.) And the weird thing is that you don't necessarily consciously stop doing things. It just becomes easier not to do them. Things like:

* After school sports: team sports = your child running around wildly (and usually off field)

* Trips to the grocery store with kids in tow: face it, this is hard for any parent; imagine it with a kid who has sensory-overload issues

* Eating out: new environment=loss of inside voice and inability to follow simple instructions

* Casual play dates: "Yes, mother of other child, I have taught my child it's not nice to hit, but I didn't know your kid was going to start play fighting with him and didn't have a chance to explain to him the distinction between play hitting and real hitting." (He doesn't do make believe well.)

* Watching TV on school nights: who knew PBS could be so stimulating?

* Staying up past bed time: less than 12 hours of sleep = exponentially more meltdowns the next day

* Spontaneous anything

Once you get the diagnosis, everything makes sense, at least to you and to those who know and care about your kid. But it doesn't help stave off the judgment of hundreds of strangers, not to mention the moms of kids in the same class as your kid, or even some of your distant relatives. After all, he looks normal enough. Why can't you just control him?

And as a mom to one kid who is on the spectrum and one kid who isn't, you constantly have to ask yourself whether you are living right by each of those kids. And you have to cut yourself just a little bit of slack because you know that just because you can't do these things today, doesn't mean you won't be able to do them tomorrow. Sure, there will be new battles tomorrow, but what you don't know doesn't always hurt you.

To TV or not TV

Ren is an awesome dad. He comes up with the most insane yet totally effective ideas for getting the kids to do things. Kids leave all the grapes in their bowl? Put them in a cup, add a little water, and tell them it's magic grape juice. Almost 3 year-old not ready to give up the pacifier? Pretend to eat them, thank her for the yummy food, and never let her see them again. (That day, when I got home from work, she was quick to tell me how incredibly silly daddy was, forgetting about pacifier separation anxiety altogether).

Sometimes Dad's ideas misfire (usually because cultural differences get in the way). We've already established that Sky is a huge Star Wars fanatic. Dad likes to check out videos from the library but he doesn't like to sit for an hour and watch Sky play on the library computers. So on this particular day, Dad promised Sky he could watch a "new" Star Wars cartoon as soon as they get home if Sky didn't do the computers that day. Both came home happy, and Mom was proud to hear how well Dad managed to use positive reinforcement avoid a Sky-rific meltdown.

That is until Mom saw what the movie was -- Family Guy Star Wars. Sure it contains a warning that says it's not meant for children. But the writing is small and in a corner on the back of the case, and Dad was too busy keeping track of Sky to read it anyway.

Now, we don't let Sky watch much TV period because either a) it zombifies him, or b)it immediately causes him to imitate what he has seen. Take Thomas the Train for example. Like every other 2-3 year old, Sky loved Thomas. Problem is that Thomas and his friends crash, a lot! So first watch Thomas crash, next watch toddler crash into walls, furniture, people, etc. Turns out Sky identified a tad too closely with Thomas. Walking through the streets and train stations of Tokyo, this became a major issue. All the bumpy strips (for the visually impaired) that run down the middle of sidewalks and through station concourses look a lot like train tracks to a 3 year-old autistic kid who believes he's a train. So, first we'd hear the extremely realistic sound of a train releasing steam, and then he'd be off following the strips (which never take shortest route and which usually didn't go where we were headed). We only really lost sight of him in the crowd once (at Shinjuku station), but by then, he already had a tag pinned on him with his name, address, phone number, and a message that said he didn't speak much Japanese.

Of course, we didn't know he was autistic at the time, but I suppose this could explain why whenever he was uncomfortable in a social setting or whenever he wanted to make a new friend, he suddenly turned into a human train, usually to humorous effect. Want to impress the group of 20 college women at the next table at Olive Garden? Give them your best high decibel train whistle. Upset that the pastor is pouring water on your baby sister's head (i.e. baptizing her)? Toot at him, loudly, just as he closes his eyes to say a prayer. Uncomfortable when new people come to the house for dinner? Run in circles imitating a train, station stops and all.

So, yeah, anyway, television can be a problem at our house.

Thing is, autistic kids don't process unexpected change well, and when it comes to Star Wars, there is no reasoning with Sky anyway, so not watching the movie Dad promised was not an option. After all, Sky had done a really good job on their errands.

Worried about the foul language and the sexual overtones,I made Sky promise that he would under no circumstances repeat the words or imitate what he saw. "OK, Mommy," he promised, puzzled as to why I was so worried about a Star Wars movie.

When I sat down to watch with Sky (to do damage control or stop the movie altogether if necessary), I had to laugh. I mean, there was a lot of inappropriate content for a kid his age, but the only thing he even noticed was the "bad" word "stupid." And when he heard that, he exclaimed: "Mom, he just said a BAD word! Don't worry, I never say stupid!" He was so enthralled with the space ships and the familiar characters, he never even registered the other stuff (though it didn't hurt that I fast-forwarded through large sections of the movie whenever Sky left the room--something he is prone to do whenever the music crescendos). It also didn't hurt that I told Sky Pink P was too young for it and "disappeared" it altogether the minute she got home from preschool.

***

This incident reminded me of the first Father's Day we celebrated after moving to the US, when Big Sissy was still in high school. Back then, she met weekly with an English tutor, which turned out to be a very fortuitous thing. On the way home one day, she said, "My tutor told me to show you the present I got for Dad for Father's Day," and pulled out a key chain. We're lucky I didn't crash the car. In bold sparkly letters, the key chain said "Sugar Daddy."

Thank you tutor for your intervention!