autism is a journey: "how can his outside...

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

"how can his outside...

look so normal and his inside be so broken?" from Rules by Cynthia Lord.

Wow! This is a great book, I'm only half way through but totally recommend it to anyone who knows and loves a kid with autism.

Enough said.

Jackson is 10! He is convinced now that we're headed back to Disney (since I told him we're going to mickey mouses house because you're going to be 10, it's the Disney Double Digit). Yeah, can you say "idiot", AGAIN! I just forget how very literally the kid absorbs things. Now, he gets up in the morning and announces, "It's time to pack your bags".

Broken....

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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....