The world wide, wide world of Autism

Autism and the big picture. It is a vastly sensitive subject, and one that should not be taken so lightly and with that being said, it does not mean the end of the world for you or your child. There are so many horror stories out there. And the sad fact is: that there is much reality in the horror, but also much sensationalism and a vast majority of misunderstandings and stereotyping. And yet all of that, is in fact understandable. Much of what is known by the vast majority about Autism comes from movies like Rain Man and Mercury Rising. And thus, with only the extreme cases out there fictionalized with a certain amount of creative license, there is a large amount of pain connected to the word “Autism” when you hear that your child has been slapped with that label.

Imagine on the routine two year check up for that perfect and beautiful child of yours, the doctor pulls you aside saying he’s got something to tell you, your child has something “wrong” with them, or worse yet, he had no answers for the strange symptoms/characteristics your child is exhibiting. If you’re unsure of what I’m talking about, then I’m right there with you, I was ignorant to the subject of autism at one time. I went three decades knowing practically nothing about it, although admittedly I am still no where near the expert, nor am I a doctor of any sort. All I know, comes from personal experience and various written resources. I have read much on the subject in the past two years, since my oldest son is within the spectrum.

Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, High-functioning Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) or Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) and Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS or plain PDD); however you title or define this disorder, disease, evolution (or my favorite, the extreme male brain) of the human mind predominately found in males is on the rise, or is it? My own theory, from reading so many different accounts is that Autism is status in quo, the severe are as severe as they always were, and yet those not so severe and found in the Spectrum of Autism are indeed on the rise, or are they? Is it that we are seeing more and more of this epidemic, or that we are much more capable in recognizing certain behaviors attributed to their, we’ll go with my favorite, extreme minds.

In addition, there’s the other side of the equation, while I fully believe there are many cases within the spectrum out there, my own son included, people tend to jump on the band wagon and lump kids who do not exactly fit the criteria in the spectrum for a rainbow of reasons: they want the financial support, it’s easier than dealing with the diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder . . . basically translated, they choose to be a brat, it’s the latest fad, they don’t know what else it could be. The same way, kids, in the spectrum have been lumped into various other diagnoses over the years. And for these, and a slew of other reasons, over the years there has been numerous forms of backlash to the problem. Likewise, when I was diagnosed with A.D.D. after having it for 17 years, many people believed and still do believe that A.D.D. doesn’t exist, that it’s merely an excuse. I was medicated for a time and I can tell you the medication worked, I was indeed A.D.D. and still am, although I had already spent 17 years unknowingly learning to deal with my specialness and or own extreme mind and therefore took myself off the medication because I already knew how to cope with my lack of single-minded focus.

So it’s out there, Autism is here and most likely here to stay. There are dietary restrictions that can be of help, I know Dean has far fewer episodes when he doesn’t drink a lot of milk. And there is always talk of finding a cure, talk that some find insulting, mostly I think because no one wants to admit that anything could ever be wrong with their kid, and believe me, as a father I understand that, and if those who didn’t had half a brain, well, they would too. Although again, on the other hand, I look at Dean, and minus the extra difficulties his extreme mind has to cope with, I cannot legitimately see anything wrong with him, there truly is nothing to “cure”. Dean is an exceptionally bright individual, remarkably observant (sometimes a little too observant), and one of the most caring and compassionate kids I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Wha? Autism kids can feel? And again, herein lies the main problem with Autism, the need for a spectrum, there isn’t one fit to the extreme mind as there are certain aspects that are alike within most cases. Many kids in the spectrum are high functioning, for them, autism is not a debilitating disorder. They can actually function quite well in society: in some areas better and in other areas not as well. While Dean is very loving and is completely capable of showing true and genuine emotions, he does not always see certain social cues. However, this is not to say that he cannot see when my wife and I are distraught or happy, nor does it mean he cannot feel those things himself. Sarcasm, and figurative language are lost on my little man, among various other language hurdles, I remember how proud we were of Dean when he finally started to grasp the correct use of pronouns.

Dean also needs to be shown the way at times. He learns best when things are modeled for him. When there is structure. When we mess with his schedule, something we never do intentionally, yet life happens, he can and will often melt down. And in that area, he doesn’t always deal with transitions well. While my mind is always off in a million directions, Dean’s mind is single-minded, he grasps onto things and isn’t always capable of letting go as easily as someone else would. Coupled with certain other aspects Dean has to deal with within the Spectrum, his melt-downs do not seem as strange as an outsider might imagine.

Consider a world where you were completely focused on one thing and yet could take in the whole world at once. Where you didn’t compartmentalized all the different sounds you always hear until they became an unnoticeable buzzing in your ears, you hear the typing on the keyboard, the buzzing of the air-conditioner, the various voices in the background in various conversations, the clutter of your co-workers opening up boxes and shuffling papers, the bright lights and constant movement around you and so on, and then consider as you are in the epitome of your focus (I know you parents get this, when you are deep in your thing and your kids always chose that moment to interrupt or anyone who would dare stop you in the middle of a favorite activity, you wouldn’t exactly be cheery about the distraction. Dads, when wifey asks you to take out the trash right in the middle of a game, it makes you kind of pissy, huh.), so imagine again you’re doing your thing while already having constant distractions, and someone stops you dead in your tracks, no warning, just stop and move along, even as an adult, most of you would throw a tantrum.

Now kids being kids, once a kid feels that mental state building, it is hard to stop that feeling freight-train of emotion. Once the tantrum starts, there are times it must simply run its course. Anyone knows, trying to talk to a kid mid-tantrum or even a spouse for that matter is not easy. Try to get someone in a truly emotional state to focus on reason, logic or anything that would be considered constructive when filled to overflowing with emotions. So trying to talk to a child, especially one in the spectrum, at that point could be considered useless. So, does that mean that you should never interrupt said tantrum and calm your child, by all means, no. It merely means that if you try to correct the child while in this extreme state, you won’t be getting anything constructive done and will usually heighten their emotions. The first step is to calm them down. There are various tactics to do so, in my opinion, asking them to calm down is the first and foremost. I usually point to Dean’s eyes and then draw those eyes with my fingers and my voice to my own eyes and ask him gently to calm down. Albeit, the first time, I wanted Dean to calm down, I held him over my shoulder upside down. That may sound funny and it kind of was, but the purpose was in the initial point of this paragraph, kids have a hard time focusing on more than one thing at a time, so all Dean could focus on was being upside down and calmed down rather quickly then started laughing. He also learned he could calm himself down, something I used positive reinforcement to encourage.

As most parents, hopefully, know: encouragement is a wonderful tool. Children are always looking for their parent’s attention and approval, and when they don’t get that attention, they will often seek negative attention. This attention is then ofttimes sought with undesirable behaviors: enter behavior modification. Sounds like something out of the CIA’s handbook, yet it’s much more innocent than that. It simply means instead of yelling at your kids over and over again, to give them a positive replacement behavior, something that is extremely helpful to a kid with autism who doesn’t understand what he is doing wrong. Say your child wants a toy out of their reach and sits there screaming for it until you or one of his siblings gets it for him. Instead of reinforcing the bad behavior, you can give him a replacement behavior: like modeling for him a positive action such as signing for the toy or asking for it, that’s going to give him positive reinforcement by obtaining the toy and not have you screaming like a banshee at him as he screams like a tortured child at you. Now he has a functional and acceptable way to interact with society and communicate his needs.

My wife has been ever vigilant with Dean and I have tried to help him as much as I can as well. And to that end, Dean has developed by leaps and bounds: I haven’t seen him have much stereotypy (repetitive movement) behavior of late; he still restricts his activities (gets preoccupied with single shows, toys, games) yet he can wait his turn and will even leave off his obsession with that particular item or object of his affection for another activity; he still has compulsive behavior (lining up objects or stacking them), but it does not rule his life anymore; he now sleeps through the night; he still loves his rituals, but can now cope with variances to his day; still has moments of self-injury when he’ll pick his fingers till they bleed but much less and will on occasion stop before we remind him; his motor skills have vastly improved as well as his coordination (he is a master of Mario Kart). And where before, he needed the Speech pathologist and other treatment interventions, his IEP now puts him at the top of his class and says he is completely ready for kindergarten. He has come a far way.

And therein lies the entire point of my ramblings, if you have or know a child in the spectrum, don’t give up and lose heart in the midst of all the horror stories and by all means don’t become bitter, give your still wonderful creation all the love and encouragement and understanding they’ll need while learning to cope with the things they lack and develop the advantages they have. And while early intervention can be a tremendous help, no one treatment method has been found to successfully improve communication and other skills in all individuals who have autism, save love and persistence. There is so much more to say on this subject, and luckily 100’s of specialized books to help.

On a side note, to anyone who doesn’t have or know an autistic child, if you ever encounter a child in the middle of a meltdown, it of course can be a truly uncomfortable situation for you and other onlookers alike, although as any parent knows, it is the most uncomfortable for the parent of a child throwing a tantrum in a public place. Still, if this situation occurs, please be understanding, don’t just assume what you don’t know, because, you don’t know all the variables, you don’t know if that child is utterly over-stimulated and is desperately trying to maintain. Either way, there is no reason to exacerbate things by harsh tones or dirty looks to a parent and child already out of sorts. And definitely don’t slap the kid in question, Mr Walmart man. Seriously.

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That is all

Leaving on a Jet Plane..

Flying on an airplane, for what’s got to be the one hundred quintillionth time. Even though the last time was over a decade ago. And for my children, it’s the first time they’ll ever remember flying. Nate is sitting to my left asking a quadrillion questions (I figured I’d stick with the super big hyperbole of numbers). ‘Are we going backwards,’ his little voice quivers with excitement as he also states every obvious motion of the plane. Ahh, give the kid a break, it’s his first time and this is big time. Likewise his older brother, Dean, is just as exuberant, even though he once flew at six months old. Nevertheless he’s a born again virgin in the world of aviation not being able to recall his earlier experiences as he nervously tries to hold Aly’s hand as she’s trying to feed the baby, refusing to look out the window. Nate, on my other hand, is curiously looking out the window and trying to take in everything at once.

And now for an announcement from your friendly stewardess (I know what you call them). She starts and from the start bumbles through the information no one would ever recall in the slightest during a real in-flight emergency, I tell my boys the one true safety measure everyone must know: how to pop your ears for take off. And of course as kids will be kids: Dean all of a sudden gets ornery and starts yelling, ‘I don’t want to pop my ears!’ You may think he’s being naughty, really, I just think he took me a little too literally as most kids with his condition tend to do, I say that now, but at the time, I wasn’t as superdad to think so logically. Yet, as fast as any truly sarcastic dad would, I calmly replied to my crazed little man, “then they’ll explode.” Dean’s eyes almost popped as he stop dead in his tracks and starting opening and closing his mouth and swallowing like mad. Crisis averted. Now, you may think that was mean, but I fell asleep once during a touch and go and it felt like my ears did explode.

Anyways, all this hoopla made me reminisce about old family vacations with my parents and oh how the tables have turned. We didn’t often fly on these wondrous vacations. They usually consisted of mind numbing hours stuck to the horribly hot vinyl seats of a station wagon and pit stops at your local greasy spoons. “Did the plane’s tires actually screech trying to stop going at a speed slower than a golf cart taxiing down the runway.” Yikes. For some reason, Aeroflot comes to mind. Well, I didn’t see any patches on the tires and at least it’s not snowing, at least I think it’s not where we’re landing. The stewardess continues to drone on in my memory, her constant fumbling of her “vital” speech haunting me, thinking about budget no frill flights and hoping the no frills aren’t skimping on the vitals.

We’re still taxiing into place to take off and Dean abruptly looks up and asks, ‘Are we going to drive to Idaho?’ My wife laughs agreeing that it certainly feels that way. Then just as unexpectedly, were kicked back in our seats and Nate literally screams in delight crying out, ‘We’re going fast!’ Ahh, my little captain obvious. He gets it from his mom. Some people however never see the obvious. Like the girl who was sitting next to me at the beginning of the flight who was flirting up a storm. I tried several tactics to avoid this very thing the moment she sat next to me and gave me that come hither look. It’s got to be the glasses. I tried to make my wedding ring more noticeable as I plugged in my iPod and only placed the earbud only in my left ear all the while trying to send a few picture texts. She still insisted on talking to me and kept on keeping on until my wife, God bless her soul, called me honey from across the aisle and I finally unplugged the iPod and conversed with my wife and three kids. I think it took a second or two to sink in and the girl finally got the hint, then the obvious was instantly more than obvious and she went exit stage left rather quickly at that point, citing that there were plenty of empty seats in the back. Now my wife is not a jealous woman and trusts me explicitly, so I wasn’t worried of any consequences of this woman blatantly flirting with me right in front of my beloved, it’s just when you have a goddess sitting to the right, right next to you, mere mortals lose their flavor. No, I’m not kissing up, my wife rarely reads these things. Well, more now than before, but still. And yet this was nothing compared to the Costco incident, when I was hit on by a guy who asked me out to a movie I don’t even think was in production at the time.

The engine continued to roar and I dosed off next to Nate, much better company than an over zealous stranger. Bang, boom, “Would you care for a snack or drink?” Wha? Oh, drink service. Strange, I’ve never been on a plane where the snack cart was filled with such sugary like goodies, am I in a Harry Potter-esqe train? still dreaming? Then I quickly noticed the money stuffed into a cylindrical container and my split-second internal dialogue ceased. “I’ll just take an apple juice for the little guy and a Diet Coke for me.” The evilly sly stewardess waited till I popped the top on the juice and said, ‘four dollars please.’ Wha!?! Damn, she got me. I shelled out a twenty and got back my change shaking my head. I think even Aeroflot gave first drinks free. Hmm, that seltzer water wasn’t much of what I would call drinkable, it was wet though.

Not long after that, I felt the plane lurch and we immediately started our decent. Nate was already opening and closing his mouth and squeezing his eyes shut a few times, then went back to excitedly looking out into the darkness and the spray of city lights, as I sat back in my chair, that I never did figure out how to recline, and thought, “Ah, survived another flight.” My before nerve wracked wife telling me it was a given with five babies on board, a theory I often told her on the way to Vegas, that we had our own little insurance policy: since Davin was traveling with us the plane couldn’t crash. And yet, I’d have to agree, with five of them in flight, they’d have to be the future Hitler’s of America for our flight to of gone down.

What a drama free beginning to our vacation. Wonder what adventures await our arrival to the slow paced life of Idaho Falls. In Bill Cosby like fashion, all I have to say is, “I’m on vacation!”

That is all.

Super Luigi Bros

To be honest, I always thought Luigi was the lesser of the brothers. And until the day my oldest son became obsessed with Mario Kart, he probably was, but that day is no more. It is the Luigi Bros in my household as far as my two sons are concerned. And oh the that drama ensued before I told them they could both be Luigi in their imagination orchestrated races my middle son puts on. Races he usually wins, another point of contention. ‘If you’re not first you’re last’ in both my sons eyes, although they’re learning to lose with grace, slowly, but still learning. One can hope.

So when when the season of disguises started creeping up on us I asked both my boys what they wanted to be, the monkey still cannot answer for himself even with all his leaps and bounds in development so I didn’t bother asking his thoughts, and almost before I finished my question they hollered back, “LUIGI!” with wide-eyed frenzy. My wife with all the diplomacy she could muster (she’s very good at it) started to mediate before something akin to World War III began. Though as a preemptive strike to long drawn out negotiations on who would give up their stake I intervened and said, “Why not, let them be the Luigi Bros.” Seriously, the very idea of it amused me to no end, and my wife figured: why not, if they didn’t mind neither would we.

The thing I find most amusing is how different my sons are and yet how very much alike they tend to be. My own brother and I were much the same. Even in looks, although I have never been able to truly see it (I wouldn’t be surprised if Dean and Nate claim the same thing in the years to come), virtually everyone we meet knows we are brothers. And when I’d ask them how they knew, they’d look at me as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world and tell me that we look so much alike. I admit, we are nearly identical in multifarious ways (albeit I am so much prettier) as much as we are different. It must be the older-younger sibling cliché: my older brother is the logical, serious one and I being the younger middle child am the more creative and artistic one. We got along famously at times and others we’re worse then oil and water. For instance, the apple incident where he was the cause of my hospital trip and chin stitches, and well, the underwater karate episode wherein I was “allegedly” the reason he got water in his lungs and spent some time in the hospital himself. We’ve had our downtimes as brothers and on the other hand we’ve always been there for each other. Even if he was annoying when he helped me move last.

Nate and Dean are brothers to the core. They, like their progenitors, can fight like cats and dogs. If one has a toy and is enjoying said toy, the other must have that toy and no other. And yet at the same time I’ve seen them be abundantly generous and altogether self-sacrificing with one another. I’ve witnessed how much they love being together and noticed if we separate them for a short time, such as taking different cars, they both require constant updates on the other’s whereabouts. You’d think they were twins. To boot, like most twins, they’re also as different as oil and water. Dean is certainly the thinker, the nurturer. While Nate is the little ball of energy always on the go, imaginative and impulsive. In addition and fairly unexpected, Dean is the fearless one in social settings while Nate takes a more reticent approach to initial social situations. Many times I’ve seen Dean just walk up to complete strangers and introduce himself and sit right down all the while continuing to engage his quarry. At the same communal gathering, Nate will test the waters before he lets his guard down.

In this whirlwind of mutual brotherhood I’ve often wondered where our newest monkey would fit in. Could he enter such a tightly knitted bond of brotherhood and make a niche for himself? Would they see him as the annoyance that always took up mommy and daddy’s time? My wife and I discussed the various storylines thoroughly, trying to figure out where our little men would be with the new arrival and how they’d wade in the unfamiliar. We should of known better, our Super Luigi Bros who can fight so fiercely for that motorcycle toy or the win in their latest pretend race both love just as fiercely. Davin is the third musketeer they are extremely anxious to play with. Already, they include him in a thousand ways even though, at the moment, he has no idea the part he’s playing in their world.

My wife once wrote: “My first son made me a mother and challenged my ability to love unconditionally through hours of screaming. My second son made me strong and gave me the courage to take the hard road. My third son has brought me peace and completion. I am blessed to have three boys who fill my world with Love (Dean), Joy (Nate) and Peace (Davin).” And while there are a world of stories in that asseveration. The point is, my three sons are a blessing to us and to each other, they all bring something unique to our family and it does my heart good to know that even though we are so different in our dispositions, we’re all just as much alike in heart.

Not to mention, the Super Luigi Bros may have a Mario someday, in due course, the monkey has yet to pick a sponsor.

That is all.