Over the past two years I have paid very close attention to who my son bonds with and why. When everyone can seem overwhelming for one reason or another, I can only imagine what people might look like to him at times. Especially when he is already very little and everything must seem large and loud to him. I have watched him react to typical things people do around children and most of the time his reaction is not what people expect simply because he doesn't view everything the same way we do.
An adult might walk into a room and in a loud enthusiastic tone standing tall, say hello to him. He then turns and puts distance between himself and that person. We might be in public and someone will speak to him randomly but he has never seen them before and that first introduction to people is a lot for him to take in. How they look to him, how they smell and yes he will react to a smell even if he isn't close, how they sound, and most of all how they approach him. That first ten seconds if interaction is much more to him than most people realize.
When I realized this it was our first visit from an advocate in October of 2011 and it was the first time I saw him react to a stranger in an extremely positive way since autism came to be. The reason was she walked into the house quietly, she kept her voice low, and even though I had a living room full of furniture she chose to sit on the floor. My son came out of his room and approached her right away without any hint of being intimidated by her. At the end of our visit he was playing with her jewelry and was trying to make eye contact with her. Sometimes he will get right at eye level and tilt his head back to focus on another persons eyes but up until then I had never witnessed him doing this with anyone but our family he sees every day. The reason was simple, she created a comfort zone for him and when it happened I was reminded of how many people he had encountered that were just to much in that first ten seconds. Once I understood this I knew what to expect when he was around people because of how they approached him. I personally even made some adjustments at home to turn life down when he needed it.
Many times this has been mistaken for my son not liking someone or not bonding with someone because they could not understand but at the same time consistency is a big pay off in his life. Even if someone overwhelms him at first the consistency of the person allows him to overcome that. He can get past all of the things that turn him away if he is constantly exposed to it and it breaks down that barrier for him. My teenager daughter has a friend who comes to our home nearly every day. I stress teenagers because teenagers are not quiet, they are the opposite as we all know. Recently my son has started to hug this friend without warning because he likes her and she is a consistent person in our home no matter how loud it gets and these hugs took months to happen.
The way he chooses to acknowledge and show affection to people doesn't just happen right away. If we are spending a day with people he knows but has not consistently been around he might even come across as now being aware they are even there. He is aware and he knows them but the barrier is still there if they are not people who are in his life every day. This is also why when a new therapist works with him at the center it takes time for him to adjust to that person. It's why he is most comfortable with his siblings, therapists, and is just now beginning to allow hugs from grandma and grandpa who are now consistent instead of a couple visits a year when we lived far away.
Looking back to when we lived in Montana and I would tell my son grandma and grandpa were coming for visit, there was never a reaction from him like you would expect from a 3 year old about to see his far away grandparents. Even when they walked in the door he would often hide for bit but when the visits became closer together with a quiet approach he began to express himself. Now we leave the autism center and every single day consistently he asks to go see grandma and grandpa, although he doesn't always acknowledge them when we get there he will allow hugs and kisses and that is enormous progress.
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