Meet my son Colin. He’s 16 years old and is classified by the DSMV4 as severely autistic. But that of course is just words on a page denoting a series of behaviours and symptoms, Colin is much more than that.
He was different right from the beginning. He was a big kid at birth and a strong one. While all of the other babies just lay in their cribs he would lift himself up and look around. He furniture walked at an early age and physically seemed pretty advanced. We didn’t really suspect anything out of the ordinary until he was a about two, when we began to notice that while other kids would get tired of certain toys, Colin would just keep on playing for extended periods, especially if it involved spinning things. He wasn’t a social kid either, it was like the other children weren’t even in the room.
We started the ball rolling towards a fixed diagnosis by the time he was about three. It still took another year to get the official diagnosis. Soon after we were visited with a family tragedy of a greater scope than our son’s disorder. A house fire claimed the life of our youngest son Sean and left Colin badly burned as well. The next three years were spent dealing with various aspects of physical therapy, skin grafts, tendon reliefs, and wound care. The disorder itself sort of faded into the background at this point. Not to mention that my wife and myself were also both going through our own personal hells too.
We toughed it out however and kept on trying to do our best for our family. You focus on the little triumphs. The daily successes. Colin getting dressed in the morning or making his own sandwich (without taking half a jar of mayonaise to do it). You work hard to figure out what he’s trying to say to you, the real meaning of what he wants. And occasionally you marvel at how he puts things together in order to get his own way.
Case in point, the video store.
Colin and I (and occasionally my daughter Kathleen) will go to Blockbuster video, usually on a Saturday. Colin picks out one film and one video game for the week. He has a circuit he likes to follow through the store, starting at the for sale section. When we first started going, he was always very attentive about the actually process of purchase. He would watch what we were doing very intently. I never even thought for a second that he was planning his next big move.
So, the weekend comes where we go to the video store. Having been lulled into a feeling of false security by his standard cruising pattern through the store, I go off to the new arrivals section to see whats in. So I never see my son pull a DVD off of the sales shelf. Phase one of his plan is in operation. Phase two, he goes back to his regular routine of picking out a movie and a game and makes his way over to me on the other side of the store. Now he just has to get me to pay for the rentals he’s picked and the DVD and he’s home free. Phase three will be acomplished.
“You only get to rent two things Colin, you’ve got three, put one back.” I say and then I notice the other DVD is one you have to buy. I point to his hands, “What’s that?” Colin looks down at his hands and then back up at me.
It looks like phase three isn’t going to go Colin’s way. He goes for phase four, his back up plan. A mad dash for the sales counter. To his way of figuring, the sales counter is Switzerland, if he can get the movies there, I have to pay for the lot. The reasoning is sound, for the last many weeks, he has picked out what he wanted and I have paid for it at this counter. Thank God it was a slow morning with no line up or it could have gotten messy. So I stand there watching this six foot tall kid making a mad dash for the front of the store. I know exactly what he’s thinking too bad I’ve got a plan of my own, phase five, selective purchase. He was most distressed when I just had the clerk hold the DVD he wanted back but he learned a valuable lesson, if you want something, you have to ask for it and accept the other conditions that go with it. He’s allowed to get DVD’s but means no other rentals for that week. This allows me to teach him proper use of language and the appropriate time to use it and avoids him creaming other customers in the store in an effort to get to the sales counter.
In later blogs, I’ll cover, dining out, going to the movies, the joy of having a child care worker and why we like segregated schooling (for us).
