Tale of Two Kiddies

So, I have 3 children. My 9-year-old son, Aidan, has autism and a sweet, gentle view of exactly how the world should be -- filled with fire trucks where he controls the sirens and a world band where everyone can play a musical instrument while he creates the show. My 5-year-old daughter, Kateri, is typically functioning and has a great eye for beauty and hilarity and already knows the joy of sending an audience into gales of laughter. My 2-year-old son, Declan, is also typically functioning and has a rascally, up-to-no-good, confident smile and great enthusiasm for engaging and interacting with his fellow human beings. Declan was a big, happy, exhausting surprise, coming into the world in my 45th year, as I had used fertility drugs to conceive my older two children and Declan was conceived without the help of modern pharmacology.

I've been told recently that parents of children with high-functioning autism really don't fully accept their child's disability until the child's 8 or 9th year and I believe that is the case with me. Aidan has been through years of developmental therapy where we work to increase his ability to maintain two-way communication through play. Aidan's therapists are trained in DIR/Floortime therapy which focuses on keeping engagement by reaching Aidan through play based on his interests and initiations. This past summer, Aidan learned how to ride a bike, with the help of his occupational therapist and twice-weekly early-morning biking lessons at a park down on the lakefront in Hyde Park. Aidan is gloriously, recently fully potty-trained (which I will discuss in detail in a future post) and is making gains with his low muscle tone and  body awareness. He also has a great ear for music and loves telling knock-knock jokes that make little sense.

Declan's presence in our home has been a revelation. Now, Kateri is typically-functioning, and I'm sure she appropriately hit her developmental milestones right on time. However, when Kateri was an infant and toddler, I was so absorbed in trying to find the answer or anything to mitigate the effects of Aidan's autism that I don't remember how different Kateri's development was in comparison to Aidan's development. It could also be that, because Aidan and Kateri are closer in age, the differences in their development were not quite so obvious.

I watch Declan engage with us with such joy, ease and abandon that it simultaneously astounds me and breaks my heart. Declan's effortless, unconscious accomplishments at 2 years always show up for me against the background of Aidan's struggles. Declan waves good bye, blows kisses, names parts of his and other's face, spontaneously dances to any good beat, punches me with a cranky-you-piss-me-off-lady pink-cheeked and blueberry-eyed face and mimics his fellow-family members as thought he is in a race to embrace and absorb  everything.  Declan is constantly checking in with me to see if I have seen the miraculous things he sees.  In contrast, my sweetheart, Aidan, while he has made tremendous gains in his short life, can be very inflexible and likes to live in his comfort zone, engaging in the world through things like fire trucks and musical instruments, DVDs, beloved characters like The Wiggles and Yo Gabba Gabba, and his beloved Fahey cousins, who he likes to guide in music videos as though they are precious ubermerrionettes. For Aidan, the world is supposed to show up for him in a very specific way and when it does not occur as he expects or desires, he retreats from interaction by asking questions he knows the answers to, engaging in an activity that he can control or, if he is having a really bad day, he retreats from the reality of his experience by throwing himself on the floor in a fit of despair and outrage insisting in his own way that the world should be some other way.

I guess I'm working toward my full acceptance that my son, Aidan, has autism and that his experience of his life shows up through the prism of a world that should be certain even though it never is and never will be. So, I go forward with the intention that I will help Aidan become more able to regulate his sense of well being so he will be able to engage in life with joy, ease and occasional abandon.