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A whole new world of hope

On Saturday morning I woke up full of anticipation.  Gerard, George and I were headed to York University to get the results of George’s latest assessment.  It had been a year since the previous assessment, and the results of that had left us feeling bereft and overwhelmed.  We did not need this latest assessment to tell us that George has made progress: we have seen that unfold right in front of us.  Every single new word and every moment of connection, however fleeting, has been a cause for celebration.  However, it is always nice to have these things acknowledged as part of a formal assessment, to receive confirmation that the progress we see is not just the imaginings of hopeful parents.

The psychologist who led the assessment started by talking about adaptive skills – play skills, social communication, daily living skills such as tidying up at the end of the day, going shopping, and knowing to look before crossing the road.  In this area, George has made very little progress over the last year.  He has not actually lost skills, but compared to typical children of his age, he is relatively further behind than he was a year ago.  We discussed possible reasons for this lack of progress: Gerard and I are often so exhausted and worn out by the demands of day-to-day life that sometimes we just take the path of least resistance.  On hard days it is easier to tidy up ourselves instead of going through the whole time-consuming and exhausting process of prompts and reinforcements that would be necessary to get George to do it.  But recognizing that short-term pain so often leads to long-term gain, we have to change our strategy.

As it turned out, that was the only bad-news part of the whole assessment.  We spoke about verbal skills: George’s vocabulary and use of language, whether he can read and spell, how much he understand what is said to him, his ability to follow instructions with and without additional prompting.  A year ago, George had the verbal skills of an eleven-month-old.  Now, he has the verbal skills of a 30-month-old.  He is still well behind where typical six-year-olds are, but the gains over the last year are huge.  He has made nineteen months’ worth of progress in just a year.  So while there is still a sizeable gap, the gap has narrowed.

When we started talking about non-verbal skills, the news got even better.  Non-verbal skills include things like cognitive skills, problem-solving, understanding of what numbers are for, the ability to see patterns and solve puzzles, and all that kind of good stuff.  George has, to put it simply, made a gigantic leap in this area over the last year.  A year ago, he was functioning at about a twenty-month-old level.  And now – I get goosebumps just thinking about it – he is functioning at a 51-month-old level.  That, my friends, is a gain of 31 months – more than two and a half years – over the space of just one year.  Yes, his overall functioning in this area is still about two years below where it should be.  But a year ago, it was about three and a half years behind.  Again, a narrowing of the gap.

Overall, George has moved down on the autism spectrum.  While he is clearly still on the spectrum and has a long way to go, his autism is not as severe as it was.  The therapy that he has been going to has been making an enormous difference, and with continued therapy and intervention, George can move that much closer to where he should be for his age.

I don’t have a crystal ball.  I cannot say for certain what George’s future holds.  Maybe he will never be much of a talker.  Maybe he will never be able to live completely independently.  Or maybe he will – who am I to say something like that cannot ever happen?  But there is no doubt in my mind that he is loaded with potential, and that he will be great at whatever line of work he ultimately chooses as an adult.

Whatever the future holds for George, he is my boy and I am so proud of him that I could just weep.  It is an honour to be Mom to such an amazing little boy.

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Never forget the siblings

As I work towards my Run for Autism, my inspiration is George.  He’s the only member of my family – either immediate or extended – who has been touched by autism.  I could go on all day about his challenges, his strengths, and the fact that what most “typical” parents see as minor developmental milestones are, to me, gigantic accomplishments that make me want to jump for joy.  I am in the process of starting to work with a holistic lifestyle coach named Brandon: the first time I spoke to him he told me that while parenting in general is equivalent to a full-time job, parenting a child with autism is equivalent to an additional full-time job.  It makes sense.  I have to maintain two completely separate styles of parenting for my two children, because what works for one definitely would not be appropriate for the other.

And in this sense my Run for Autism is inspired not only by my autistic son George, but also by my neurotypical child James.  James, in addition to just being James, a unique individual in his own right, is also the brother of an autistic child.  Although he is chronologically the younger of the two, in most senses he is actually older.  He has the verbal skills, the social skills, the adaptive skills that his brother does not have.  There are times when he is called upon to understand the kinds of things that kids his age shouldn’t have to worry about.  He has a very strong sense of what is and is not fair, and when George’s autism leads to us reacting in a way that James perceives to be unfair, it can be very hard for his four-year-old mind to process.  Being the sibling of an autistic child cannot be easy.  And so when we do something to improve the lives of autistic children, we are also by extension doing something to improve the lives of their siblings.

We are very fortunate that James is the kind of child that he is.  He is a highly verbal, very social child.  He has opinions and he’s not afraid to express them.  Although there is definite sibling rivalry, James adores his big brother.  If he is given a cookie, he requests one for George.  If we do something simple like take George’s hat off his head in a playful moment, James will get upset and demand that we return the hat to its rightful owner.  When George is having a meltdown, James feels sad and says things about how he will take care of George.  He has never used the word “autism” in relation to George, but he is aware of George’s disability. Based on his character, both Gerard and I believe that James will grow up to be friend and advocate to his brother.

I frequently worry about whether I am doing right by James.  So much of James’ life is shaped by George’s autism.  A simple example is Mr. Potato Head.  George loves Mr. Potato Head.  He has about twenty of them, and he has to know where they all are at all times.  If anyone touches his Mr. Potato Heads he gets very upset.  Any Mr. Potato Head that enters the house is automatically deemed to be George’s property.  There have been times when James has tried to play with a Potato Head, and he’s been prevented from doing so, either by George himself or by parents who are too frazzled to deal with a meltdown.  Over time, James has been conditioned to not play with Mr. Potato Head.  I have no idea whether he’d like it or not, and I feel oddly sad that we’ll never find out.  Another one like that is Lego.  We tried getting James Lego that is different in appearance from what George likes, but we have had limited success.  James will still make the occasional attempt to play with Lego, and if I happen to be around, I play with him and fend off George’s intrusions.

I sometimes wonder whether James’ passion for trains and cars is genuine, or if it’s just something he has gravitated to because George isn’t really interested in them.  When these thoughts start troubling me too deeply, I console myself with the knowledge that James truly does love his cars and trains and gets a lot of joy from them.

What I really want to convey is this: autism does not only affect the individual diagnosed with it.  It touches every member of the family.  The autistic child is not the only one who needs special care and attention.  We must never forget the siblings.

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Retrospectively speaking…

This morning I indulged in a bit of retrospection.  I was looking back at the day, almost three years ago, when a doctor broke the news to Gerard and I that our son had autism.  I remember that moment with such sharp clarity that just thinking about it brings back that stab of pain to my heart.  As I sat in the chair in the doctor’s office, I could almost feel the physical force of my world crumbling; I am convinced that the odd buzzing sound I heard was the sound of my expectations shattering.  In that instant I learned that the phrase “to have a weight on one’s shoulders” is not merely metaphorical: I actually felt a physical weight being placed on my shoulders.

The next half-hour or so was intensely painful.  Gerard and I sat and listened as the doctor told us his prognosis for George.  He may never talk, the doctor said.  He has very limited capacity for learning, and as he gets older the gap between him and his peers will get wider and wider.  He will always have severe cognitive delays, he will not be able to function in the world of “normal” people without constant care and supervision.  He probably won’t complete high school; as an adult he may hold down a very basic job but he won’t actually have a career.  We, the parents, were advised to prepare ourselves for a lifetime of intense hands-on parenting.  It all sounded so hopeless, as if George was doomed to a lifetime of misery.

Once the disabling shock and desperation had worn off, I made a decision.  The doctor would be wrong.  I accepted that George might always be different to other people of his age, but we would do whatever it took to help George reach his full potential, whatever that might be.  I was not going to let the well-meaning but pessimistic doctor dictate what George would or would not accomplish.  I would become an advocate for George, I would learn as much as I could about autism, I would give him whatever opportunities were feasible.

And so the hard work began.  My first mission – on the advice of his speech therapist – was to teach him to point.  It was explained to me that pointing is a crucial precursor to basic speech.  Babies point before they can talk; pointing is a very simple, basic, and effective form of communication.  Most kids learn how to point intuitively; children with autism need to be taught.  And so I taught.  Every evening for nine months, I would sit with George and a variety of books, painstakingly pointing to this thing or that thing, using hand-over-hand assistance to help him point.  Prompting, reinforcing, encouraging, never giving up.  There were days when it seemed as if I was getting nowhere.

Are there words in the English language that can describe the immense, overwhelming emotion I felt on the night when George hesitantly, almost shyly, lifted up his tiny hand, formed it into the shape of a point, and with his index finger touched a picture of Bob the Builder in the book we were looking at?  The memory alone makes my eyes go misty.

Since that day, there have been many accomplishments.  George still doesn’t talk a lot, but he makes requests using full sentences.  He even says please.  In recent weeks, he has tentatively entered the world of imaginative play by pretending to be a turtle.  He can read, he can spell out full sentences using his alphabetic fridge magnets.  He counts to a hundred and beyond, and he is learning to do sums using the big wooden abacus that a relative bought for him.  He finds what he wants on the computer without assistance, even typing his own search strings into Google and Youtube.  He has unique but effective problem-solving techniques.  The teachers and therapists who work with him are united in their opinion that George is a very smart kid.  When it comes to numbers, he outperforms typical kids of his age.

There are challenges, of course.  There are the tantrums, the autistic meltdowns, that originate from things I cannot always identify.  There is his refusal to try foods he has never seen, his phobia of doctors, the fact that I have to cut his hair and his nails while he is sleeping to avoid a panic-induced meltdown.  There are the sleep problems that plague us from time to time, especially when there has been a change in routine.  There is his heartbreaking frustration when he tries to express something to us but does not know how to.  There are the times when I have to spend over an hour physically restraining him from banging his head on the wall or the floor.  There are the persistent social communication delays and his anxiety in big groups of unfamiliar people.

Yes, there are a lot of challenges, a lot of days when I want to tear my hair out.  But that doctor was wrong, damn it!  I wish I had the opportunity to tell him so.  I honestly believe that he would be very happy to know that in this particular case, he was wrong.

George is loaded with potential.  I have no doubt that as an adult, he will be one of many autistic people making a truly valuable contribution to society.  It is truly my honour to be running for him and for people like him.