This is autism

What do you think of when you hear the word "autism"?  What do you picture?  I always imagined a young boy sitting on the floor with his knees up to his chest, rocking back and forth silently, locked inside another world.  That's all I knew about it.  If I'm honest and dig really deep, I would have to confess that I felt so fortunate that that wasn't my son.  Those poor parents that have to deal with something so terrible.  Tsk-tsk.  Let's be completely transparent and admit that when we know someone who has a child with a disease or a condition like autism that we secretly say to ourselves, "thank God we have a normal child."  I give you permission to say it.  You're just being honest.

Daniel has autism but Daniel doesn't sit on the floor and rock back and forth.  There are children with autism who do.  It's important to say this:  When you've met one autistic child, you've met one autistic child.  Each child on the autism spectrum is different.  This is why it's called a spectrum.

There are good days and there are bad days and it seems, at least in our home, that there is no in between.  Our son has extreme emotions.  

This morning Daniel slept in until an unprecedented 10:00.  He's usually awake by 7:00.  With Daylight Savings Time starting today, technically it was 9:00 to him, which is still pretty late.  He woke up ornery as a rabid dog. Who is this child?  Buckle your seat belt, we're in for a wild ride.  And so our day begins.  At some point before he got out of bed he heard the toilet flush.  This began a meltdown of massive proportions for twenty minutes.  Did he want to flush it?  Did he want me to flush it again?  Did the sudden sound of the flushing take him by surprise?  What's with the toilet flushing?  My theory is that if something happens before he is prepared to receive it, it sets off his sensory system -- a toilet flushing, a dog barking, a sneeze, a cough, the shower, the coffee grinder.  He needs predictability.  Finally we took him into the bathroom -- why it took us this long to figure it out, nobody    knows -- crying, yelling, combative, and flushed the toilet together as a family.  I live in a crazy world.

This is autism.

All is relatively calm now.  Daniel is perched on the couch watching The Jungle Book and singing "I wanna be like you" with his friends Baloo, Mowgli and Bagheera.


Passengers, you may unbuckle your seat belts now.