Sparrow Migrations was featured in the June issue of this all-digital magazine, available for iPad or pdf download. Click the link to subscribe to their e-mail newsletter, which entitles you to a free issue. You can also find it in the Apple App store. The June issue is dedicated to siblings – ASD and NT. From a mom who has one of each, it’s good stuff.
www.AutismParentingMagazine.com
Tuesday, 8:30 a.m.
We are in the garage. I am sitting in the driver’s seat, trying to read a book to my four-year-old daughter in the backseat while my seven-year-old son with autism screams outside the window. It is a snow day and there is no school, and he does not want to ride with his sister to daycare. This is not part of his routine, after all. After trying to coax him for 20 minutes, I gave up. Now we are waiting for my husband to come home from work so he can transport our daughter.
“Stop reading that book! Please, stop reading that book! Audrey’s not going!” he screams. Over and over and over.
“Mommy, that yelling scares me,” my daughter says.
Her words slice deep. I swallow hard. I try to read louder. This is a power struggle. I am following advice and not engaging in the struggle. But my son screams on, and I can’t shield my daughter, either. Why? Why, God?
Thursday, 3:30 a.m.
Our son has awoken and my husband has gone to see what the problem is. He’s taking a long time so I go downstairs, too. Husband is rummaging in the dryer. Son has declared he wants different pajamas. It’s another power struggle we don’t want to engage, especially at this hour. So we look for the jammies at 3:30 a.m. Mercifully we find them. We go to bed, bleary yet stunned. These are our lives?
Friday, 9:30 a.m.
Still sick. I make doctor’s appointments and announce them to both kids. Son states he wants to go to the library after the doctor’s office. Since our schedule doesn’t allow that, I offer to take him to the library before the doctor’s, or later. In the afternoon. Son refuses to accept this. Cue the power struggle, again. Two hours this time.
I stay calm. I do not yell. I have yelled before. Lots of times. Now, I yell in reverse. My voice gets quieter and quieter the closer I come to losing it. I am doing the right things, or what I am told are the right things. I am not engaging. I am preparing him in advance of transitions. I am offering choices. I am accommodating his challenges wherever possible, even at the expense of others, others I love, too.
And I feel like one of the rats in Hamelin, following the Pied Piper of autism.
ven though the best outcomes for autism come as a result of early treatment, I’ll always be grateful that our son wasn’t diagnosed until he was four and a half. If alarm bells had gone off sooner — some say symptoms are observable at 18 months — we wouldn’t have had our daughter.
Almost exactly three years apart, some aspects of Audrey’s neurotypical development — such as her easy handling of silverware, a fine-motor task Owen struggled/struggles with — were in fact clues to Owen’s place on the spectrum. Now, as he strives to navigate the neurotypical world, she also provides the closest example for him to emulate.
Is that fair to Audrey, though, I wonder? I recently saw novelist Jodi Picoult interviewed here in Traverse City. One of Picoult’s breakout books was My Sister’s Keeper, about a girl whose parents deliberately conceive her as a bone marrow match for her leukemia-afflicted older sister. Our siblings’ situation wasn’t strategized, but it’s got enough parallel resonance to give me pause.
Who's the big sib, here?
Especially now that, at age 3 and a half, Audrey craves the kind of playmate Owen won’t ever be. It wrenches my heart to hear monologues that should be dialogues, like this one the other day:
Audrey: “Owen, do you want to play with me?”
Owen: No response.
Audrey: “Owen, do you want to play with me?”
Owen: No response.
Audrey: “It’s really fun!”
Owen: No response.
On the occasions he does agree, she just beams. “Mommy, my brudder (brother) Owen’s going to play with me!”
Oh, sure, I’ve seen enough sibling interaction to know that being mutually typical doesn’t guarantee closeness, or even camaraderie. And my husband remarked once that all their lives, she’s going to be the one who just gets Owen. That kind of relationship could be far richer than I can imagine. But during this Autism Awareness Month, I’m aware that autism’s invisible tentacles wrap around the undiagnosed, too.