It takes a courageous soul and a true downhill specialist to attempt a double diamond run in a blizzard. And only the most expert of sailors would take out a small craft under the warning flag and sail wing-on-wing. As for climbing up to the Everest base camp in a pair of flip-flops: leave that to anyone born in an afternoon’s shadow of Annapurna. And, by the way, parents of autistic kids are of a different breed of parent, though not quite gifted as you are welcome to think.
No more or less skilled than those of typical children, indeed, parents of autistic kids are like school crossing guards assigned to monitor the security of Fort Knox. We are the veritable employees of McDonald’s placed in charge of establishing a nutritional system and meal plan for the United States of America’s Olympic Rowing Team. Yes, we are like high school graduates sitting for a bar exam. Let me be clear, although my autistic child has special needs that I ought to address, my parental super powers are not superior to those of any parent of a typical kid.
Obviously, I wish I had super powers. Autistic kids are not easy kids to raise. Although an ASD kid may be gifted with early reading skills as he enters Kindergarten, he might also retain the emotional maturity of a two-year-old through the end of first grade, tearing, screaming and crying his way through the days. And he may alienate his peers with disturbing or repetitive behaviors, like, and for no apparent reason, slamming his own head into the wall over and over again. While our son’s classmates engage each other in pretend play and sports activities on the playground, he can be frequently found to be spinning himself in circles. The thing about Seb is that he spins around and around and around, but he never gets dizzy. He just keeps spinning, and I wonder, could this be a talent?
To raise a child with autism certainly requires a level of intervention that most parents simply do not anticipate that they can easily muster. It’s doable, but with ASD, there is no wait-and-see. We do not endure tantrums, continue to change diapers and foster our child’s obsession with spinning things beyond age 5 and otherwise do nothing. If we do not act while our kids are young, they will simply fall further behind and then perhaps require even more special attention. Actually, there is so much more we can do right here, right now.
If I could have one super power, I would want to be able to be everywhere at once. So that no matter where I had to be, I could also be on the playground with my son encouraging him to stop spinning and make some friends. Such persistent qualities as these, the delay in socio-emotional maturity and the odd repetitive behaviors, keep ASD kids from advancing. If they hit them at all, they reach their organic development milestones late. For now, I am simply trying my best to help my kid improve, and it seems that I will have to try just a little bit harder.
The Meandering Sidewalk 