Looking Through The Autism Glasses....

ASD in its high-functioning form, can be very hard to see for those who don't know much about it and only think of autism in the way it is often portrayed in the media.  Once someone points out the more subtle signs of it you though and you really start to understand it, you really can't NOT see it.

For my husband and me, it took awhile to mentally move past the idea of "these are just some kind of random weird things our kid does" to understanding it was all part of a much bigger picture.... to see it for what it probably was.

And as that happened, as the early intervention teacher would point things out to me that were starting to add up and I began to see my son differently, it made me so sad.  I once referred to it as seeing him through "autism glasses" all the time. The idea that he might be on the spectrum caught us so far off guard way back then.

Though I wasn't totally uneducated on the topic, up until that point I hadn't even considered ASD was what might behind his speech delay and other atypical behavior.  (and, actually, hadn't even considered most of what they were saying was atypical was even atypical!) But then, suddenly everything he did made me see it... everywhere... all the time.

It's been 2-1/2 years since then and we've all come a long way. We have learned so much and also realized in that time that we''ve been likely living with and dealing with ASD for much longer than we realized because J has so much in common with his oldest brother.  And guess what? Nothing was different. B was still B... J was still J. I realized I don't always have to see them through those glasses.

Some days though, they are forced upon me when I'm not expecting it.

Today, we took the three boys to the aquarium. I quickly realized J was overwhelmed by the darkness and the crowd and the noise. I cringed as I noticed his favorite things were not the fish, but instead the signs, the escalators, the revolving door leading to the rainforest, and the elevator we didn't ride but that he talked about for ten minutes after we passed it.  When we weren't riding an escalator, he just kept saying he wanted to leave... "it's too dark.... it's too loud.... i don't want to be here." He was calm about it, but very anxious. I know he was nervous about the darkness because it reminded him of a movie theater and he is scared to death of movies. We don't know why he is afraid of movies....it's just one of those things. If he even hears the HINT of the beginning of a movie on television, he cries and hides.

I made the choice to keep the glasses on when we walked outside.... trying to see how he was interacting differently than others with the world around him.  I watched as he held his ears when loud motorcycles flew by. He did it again when my husband played a little xylophone in the park we stopped to play in on the way to the car.

It's hard for me NOT to look at this photo and see autism... which is part of the reason I stopped to take it.  On the days when people make me feel a little crazy for getting intervention for him, I can look at this and remember that this is real.

However, THIS is also real.

Much of the time, he's just a pretty typical, fun, silly little boy who is first and foremost, our J ... NOT ASD.

Autism is part of our lives as a family, but it's not everything.

It's part of who our boys are, but does not define them.

There is a lot related to ASD that I wish I could change for my kids  -- the social struggles,  the anxieties.... I wish I could watch them with peers and not have to hope they act "normal" enough to not get made fun of.... or trust that J won't freak out on another child because they play with a toy the "wrong" way.

But there is also a lot I wouldn't change.  Their uniqueness, their passions, their innocence and lack of "street smarts" relative to that or their typical peers, or the amazingly interesting ways they see things, are just a few.

I'm just happy I've learned to take the glasses off once in awhile. :)