autism is a journey: Uncle "D"

Friday, March 7, 2008

Uncle "D"

My little brother Darren is 7. Jack and Cal both adore him...he's become especially patient with Jax. He's here tonight to spend the night and Jackson wants to be sure he's here to stay. More than once he's said, "No grandpa" and "He's staying with us". When Theresa called to check on Darren, Jack quickly picked up on it and said, "No Theresa, he's sleeping. D's staying with us"

Autism or no, this sweet kid does connect with people. He wanted to be sure uncle Darren was staying. It's small, but it's meaningful.

On a selfish note, I'm glad Darren wants to be here with us, too. Truthfully, it could get annoying for any kid playing with an egocentric 5 year old and and autistic 10 year old.

I'm including an old photo of the three boys sleeping together in Jackson's twin size loft bed.

Sweet isn't it?

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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....