And then we had MrTepps. And those conversations became increasingly torturous. Everyone else's little ones were cuddling, yabbering away, smiling, responding, saying "Mama" and "Dada" and we were more and more obviously being left behind. The painful dawning realisation that he wasn't the same as all these other babies was what eventually led us to an OT, then a neurologist and his autism-spectrum diagnosis.
I really struggled for a short while after he was diagnosed. But then ZooDaddy in his great wisdom said something very simple to me which to a great extent ended the struggle. He said, "He is who he is, and we love him." It really was simple. Nothing had changed. My mind made the shift back from viewing him as MrTepps-in-comparison-with-the-average, to MrTepps-in-comparison-with-MrTepps.
When you love an atypical child the usual developmental milestones become somewhat absurd. Milestones mark points along a road to a specific place. The majority of children are heading in roughly the same direction. My boy just ain't going that way. He is nonetheless on a journey. Compared to the journeys we made his seems a little odd. He takes detours, he heads off in odd directions, visits places in unusual orders and sometimes takes his time getting from place to place. But he is travelling, and it's also a beautiful road. And we his family have the unique privilege of being taken along with him.
My cousin's son is also on the spectrum, and despite a 5-year age gap, our two fellows have connected in a big way. I caught ZooGranny watching the two of them at play the other day, mesmerised. They just get each other. They hardly say a word, but there's this almost magical communication that goes on between them that is wondrous to behold. And they have such fun! Their shared journeying makes as much sense to them as ours does to us. It's the shared journeys that make the communication possible. It occurs to me that by focusing on getting MrTepps to reach our milestones I am missing a huge opportunity to discover another world by following his road from time to time. And by expecting him to to always find my road I am losing out on the opportunities of connection that I'd find if I made the effort to understand his.
I'm not naïve. I know that MrTepps is going to have to exist and function in a world that runs by its own rules, not his, and that will put him at a disadvantage. This means that every milestone he reaches that is in common with the majority will make his functioning that much easier. But increasingly I realise how much of an indictment that is on the narrow-mindedness of society - that narrow-mindedness which is robbing us of some wonderful people because of the "othering" that the mentality produces. The shared milestones will give him an advantage, but I wonder what we are missing out on by expecting this of him. What would the world look like if he was "typical" and we were the ones on less well-traveled roads? What would it look like if we just expanded the world to include the full range? My feeling is that it would be unimaginably richer.
This being said, MrTepps has recently had the grace to build some bridges from his road towards ours.
His language has made a leap. We now have names, and he takes great delight in using them. (His first "Daddy, LOOK", had both of us very emotional). He still borrows a lot of language and intonation from films, TV and computer games, but he has really started to play with his borrowed words. AND he uses them to express his great sense of humour. A friend of MrBiggs who wears glasses popped his head into the car the other day only to have MrTepps greet him with an enthusiastic "Hello, Harry Potter" and a peal of laughter. A small part of me wondered if he actually knew he was being funny, but I was reassured this week when the same friend was leaving after a visit. Someone told MrTepps to "say bye to Harry Potter" and was responded to with a know-it-all "s'NOT Harry Potter, s'Matthew!"
Potty training has at last happened, and as is usual with this boy, once he had made the decision that this was where he wanted to go, was pretty much instantaneous. I look back in regret now on a weekend where we first tried to keep the nappies off, and where both he and I cried (he in rage and me in despair) for two solid days before us giving up on the attempt. Friends tried to be consoling at that time with reassurances that "He won't be in nappies when he's 18", without understanding that they were in fact not helping. There are no guarantees with children like MrTepps that their journey will actually take them past every milestone that we reached. I am glad, for his sake, that he decided he wanted to call past this particular one. It will make his life in the unaccommodating world a little easier.
Most recently our boy has discovered his inner artist. This has been something of an adventure due to his choice of media. He seems to have a real preference for indelible markers (dark ones) - on walls. At the same time it has been a gift to his Momma. He has chosen to explore circles, mostly, but significant to me is that some of his circles have been faces - happy ones. When I studied child development we were told that children tend to draw things that are significant to them. To have my boy choose faces to draw seems to me to be a reaching out to us - an acknowledgment that he sees us, and our faces, as important, even though he sometimes may find it hard to let us see him looking at them.
It will be grand, though, when he decides he prefers to draw on paper.
(Or, in the light of the above,should I be expanding my world to include murals? Hmmm....)
