autism is a journey: Music

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Music

I have to wonder how many other autistic kids are totally motivated by music. Jackson is very into music. Today in church Grandpa sang with his music group Chords. Which meant he also played his trombone and bass guitar. Jackson was very well behaved in church. He didn't need any re-directing or distraction activity to keep him quiet. In fact, he was quite engaged with the program.

One of his favorite things to do lately is to play his miniature electric guitar (like Daddy's) and watch himself in the mirror while he sings.

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There he is 'jamming'. Now if I could just figure out a way to channel this interest....

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from "Metaphor-the puzzle piece symbol"

Ever had one of those "ah-ha" moments? I'm driving down the road today, pondering Jackson's recent successes--boyscout camp and football camp. It occurred to me that each experience gave me back a piece of Jackson. [I'm not doing a very good job explaining this...] When we learned about Jackson's diagnosis, so many dreams were snuffed out. We no longer thought about our son becoming an athlete, a scholar, or even a friend. We thought in much smaller terms:"how many words does he have?""did he learn a new sign""is he reaching out to us?""that's playing pretend, isn't it?"Our perspective as parents permanently changed. It's like we had this complete picture of our child and autism fractured it--into a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.Each day little by little, we get pieces of the puzzle back. It'll never be complete, never the same as we expected, but there will be parts that will come together.Like when he participated in the school music program, enjoyed boyscout camp, rode the roller coaster and attended football camp. Bit by bit, we get pieces of what we expected back.Of course, the flip side of this is all the joys we gain from Jackson that we never expected in spite of the autism, but that's another post my friends....