Dear Society...

Dear Society,

                I am a mom and I have three kids. My kids are twelve, fourteen, and three. My older children were toddlers together and for the most part they were able to live up to our social standards but I don’t encourage it and I will say in the last ten years our social expectations have risen quite a bit. My older children could speak full sentences very young and communication was never a problem. They could sit still when they needed to and understood the world around them better than many adults I have met in this life. I worked hard with them to make sure they were prepared for school and ahead of the expectation. They are well behaved and work hard in school. They do as I ask 95% of the time and are growing into amazing additions to our crazy adult world.

                I have taken the same approach with my youngest but he doesn’t speak sentences. He doesn’t tolerate social order such as standing in line yet and he doesn’t pick up on those expectations we have put in place to fit in. My older children can adjust when it is necessary but alas the youngest is not able to grasp this concept. He is autistic as much as he has to learn, society still has much to learn about autism.

                You see I have worked to teach him the alphabet, numbers, colors and to behave in order to appease the people around us but he has taught me this is not so easy. Repetition is what he needs and so repetitive one person nearly can’t keep up. Technology is nice because it has a battery that doesn’t run out unlike mom. The more he sees it and hears it the more it is pulled out. An example of this would be the alphabet. Over and over I sang it, showed it to him, and forced badly made DVD’s on him to learn the sounds. There was never a sign he was retaining it until one day he showed me. He knew the sounds and he could recognize the letters. He made it all the way to letter S and he fought like hell to get it all out.

                Next time you see a child blasting by you in a grocery store or whatever public place you may be, and you see a mom blasting by you right behind him with extreme patience for her child’s actions keep in mind this repetition process. Today she got him in the store peacefully for the first time. Today she may have gotten an extra half hour out of him to get what she needed. Today she also ran out of frozen waffles and it’s the only thing he will eat for breakfast. These outings, she prays for just a few more minutes of success because the repetition of trying is what makes that happen.

                I will tell you with my son’s autism, and I can only speak for him, he sees, hears, and soaks in everything around him. He may not say it or make it known he is doing it but he is. This includes the actions of society towards him. He knows he being stared at and he sees people whisper. He notices when you roll your eyes and give his mom an odd look that doesn’t appear to be a friendly one. The nasty comments made to some parents are heard and they soak in. The repetition of society is teaching our children the social expectations they are required to learn. How society reacts to a difference makes a difference to a child and a family.

                A child with autism may not be doing what everyone around them expects of them but they are fighting like hell to understand what that means. The actions of others play a bigger role in that process than people think because on the outside looking in it may seem autism isn’t paying attention.  I ask one thing and one thing only…please practice understand and repeat it as often as you can.

                That simple act almost everyone is capable of and not only does it help just a bit to create 1 in 88 amazing additions to our crazy adult world, but a little self improvement never hurt.

Sincerely,

An autism mommy, who has run out of waffles.