Susan Senator

“Live in ‘parment.'”

Back when Nat was transitioning out of school, at the beginning of his adulthood, we were able to learn from him that he wanted to live in an apartment. For a year leading up to his turning 22, I searched for apartments that he could share with a roommate or two, and a live-in caregiver. I took him along. I don’t know which of us was more excited. I figured we’d fund the caregiver through Adult Foster Care (a live-in caregiver who’d get a small tax-free stipend), and the rent through Social Security (SSI). Nat loved the city life he’d always lived, and so we wanted to duplicate this as closely as possible. We worked with a few families, but found we wanted different things: their sons had never lived away from home so they were looking for less independence in their settings. Plus they were country mice, and did not want the city mouse life that Nat did.  Plus I was a little too passionate (pushy) for them.

Since adulthood, from 22 years of age, Nat has moved a lot. By now he’s been in two publicly-funded group homes as well as three different publicly-funded shared living arrangements. I would not say that any of these situations were failures; each ended for good reasons. The first was a shared living-group home hybrid with friends and one new guy. It morphed into a group home when one of the families dropped out. Then this group home became Nat’s residence from 2011-2013. But that one started having trouble with another of the families, who dropped out. This was just before Nat left, in 2015, for a shared living arrangement for two years, in an apartment in the city, which had always been Nat’s preferred location. That shared living experience ended when we discovered Nat’s injuries. We still do not know how the injuries occurred so I do not necessarily hold the shared living responsible. Then from 2016-2018 Nat was in a new group home, which was very well-run. However, state-approved group homes are so risk-averse that they frequently opt for doing less than more. When the opportunity came for Nat to live with two musician friends/teachers, we jumped at it. We took months to prepare. But the providers only knew Nat a certain way and did not imagine he could be much more intense in his needs. They knew it but they didn’t know it-know it.

Nat is living at home again. Our wonderful experiment in shared living did not work out. There were too many issues for the young couple — it was far more of a struggle than the three roommates had bargained for. Nat became seized by a terrible anxiety that lasted for months, which I believe was partly a normal phase for him, and partly due to using an ineffective cocktail of medication.

Things were very raw for a few months while the providers and we worked on supporting Nat (and them) more effectively. But too many factors coincided that made this simply impossible, so we took Nat home. Just two weeks ago, though, we landed on Ativan, a very low dose at bedtime, and Nat has calmed down remarkably. But it was too late to make a difference to his providers, so we moved him home. So far, so good. He is very happy living with us for now, but yesterday I took the opportunity to ask him what he might like “soon.” Nat does not grasp the concept of the future too well in some ways; in other ways it is all he thinks about. His calendar is very important to him; he recites it with us daily and repetitively.

We enjoy this because it is a way to converse with him when he is very focused and motivated. We get a lot of talking out of him when he wants to talk calendar.

He is still very invested in where he lives, of course. So yesterday in the car I asked him about where he’d like to live, giving him choices rather than leaving it open-ended. Open-ended questions elude him because they have no structure. So I paired up a few options and finally got that he wants “parment with friends near the T.” Just love that guy and his valiant persistence to stand up and be counted.

So not much has changed for Nat, even though in some ways, everything has changed, again and again. But he’s rolling with it, and if he is, then I am.

Photo by Laura Senator

Here is my latest post in Psychology Today, about listening to what Nat has to say.

I talked about you today. I was thinking about our new agreement, that we follow the schedules carefully, use the timer, and stay consistent. We didn’t make this a formal agreement, of course, it was one suggested by Miyabe and Elaine, and then underlined by your insistence to keep the world from becoming chaos.

I’ve always known you wanted that, but it was my belief back then that we had to make you flexible, that we wanted to be able to be our impulsive selves, to be a family of five, and not just three. I wanted your brothers lives and rights to be as strong and vital as yours.

I also learned a long time ago that I had to stay on your side. Not like staying on your side as opposed to someone else, but stay with you, lay aside all of my needs other than the one to connect with you. It’s more than a need, though; it is my job. The most important thing in my world is my family and that includes you.

Today I thought more about what staying on your side is. I found myself looking back over three years, back to the time when you were hurt and we didn’t know how or why. We took you back home with us. I am so glad we did that because I think that was exactly what you needed. Your anxiety has been through the roof since then and today I realized that it probably is your trauma speaking. You never had a chance to really work through and make sense of the broken ribs, the tremendous pain your were in. The fear of whoever did that to you. So of course wouldn’t those emotions and burdens stay with you? Doesn’t it make sense that anxiety propels you skyward, doesn’t let you go, keeps you barely tethered to the rest of us?

So our agreement is that you stay with us all weekend, every weekend. It’s what you like best. We were trying, before, to get you flexible about where you’d be on the weekend but you let us know that this kind of uncertainty was a trigger.

Now, and back in my best parenting moments, I need to be completely present for you. I need to boil down to the very essence of mothering. I feel like I have to inhabit your soul for a little bit to give you the connection you need. You’ve always said, “you” when you mean “I.” It’s always been hugely complicated for you, being Other with people, especially me. I don’t think you want that feeling at all. That alien floatiness.

And so, each weekend, I need to get myself to the point where I am no longer afraid or bored or resentful or distracted. I am just with you, and it is very small and quiet but it is everything. Because you feel it when I’m with you. When we’re like that I can simply rest next to you and just be, and watch you just be, too. You feel that oneness and it calms you and you have touched the ground again. Staying on your sides means we ground each other, and then we can face anything.

I’ve always been fascinated by extreme opposites working together at the same time. I love the way classical, orderly Enlightenment Europe morphed into its opposite, stormy, histrionic Romanticism. In philosophy, music, poetry, and painting. Late eighteenth century rationalism caves into moody sturm und drang of the early nineteenth century. The symmetry of Mozart into the surprises of Beethoven. Voltaire, Rousseau and then Hegel to Marx.

Whew. That was a long time ago, in history and in my life. I thought those interests of mine had gone underground in the last few decades of my life, disappearing into autism advocacy and public policy, mountain biking, and bellydance. For me, one opposite pursuit slowly bleeds into the distant other. Until I recently realized the connections my subconscious makes between one and the others, I hadn’t understood the obsession I have with Datura online Tribal Fusion bellydance classes. Tribal Fusion is an amalgam of two streams of bellydance: American Tribal and Classic Raqs Sharqi (Dance of the East, or what we normally think of as bellydance). American Tribal Style (ATS) originated in San Francisco in the 1970’s — hippie-like and organic, round and flowing — a completely new branch of bellydance that incorporates a lot of ancient folksy styles and traditions along with a whole new vibe of relaxed group dance, following a leader.

Fusion is a spinoff of ATS in that it adds in more of the Golden Age cabaret style of bellydance combined with a kind of steampunk/new wave thing.

Tribal Fusion is earthy-metallic. Black lace and pewter. Big ruffled skirts with black and white striped tights showing through. It is not sparkly and pink. There is a return to the good old Lebanese-style relevé, but also the traditional flat-footed country Saiidi style.

I can’t understand why I am attracted to Fusion but I guess every passion evolves over time, and I’ve been bellydancing for thirteen years. I sew sparkly girly Egyptian-style costumes, but these days I dance Tribal Fusion.

Lately I’ve been dancing for an hour or more to this stuff. Tired, aching, but in the zone. Arms almost straight out, shoulder height, bellyrolls up-to-down, down-to-up, body figure 8’s, and 3/4 shimmies on relevé. When you’re doing Fusion it sometimes looks like your body is a Hydra, composed of many snakes moving in all sorts of directions. You simply boil with movement.

My body is 56 years old and I feel very proud of the moves I can make these days. Just today I mastered belly flutters and 3/4 shimmy Arabic style. Hips shaking at one speed, torso rolling at another, feet on tip-toe stepping delicately one behind the other, arms waving as gracefully as possible.

Why am I going on and on about this? Because dancing it is not even enough of an outlet for what I’m feeling. And I’m glad that I can finally kvetch out even this erratic blog post, because all I have been able to do lately is dance and then stare at my screen. And write about autism? I can’t, I just can’t. More on that later. (I hope)

Dance for me is the opposite extreme of me as autism advocate. No thinking involved. It is just movement born of brain energy pushed into one area of the body and then another. The music doesn’t even make sense (to me, a North American) the way Western music does. The ribbony melodies, the exotic instruments, the trance-producing drumming — they are the antitheses of writing about autism. Which is the antithesis of writing my Master’s thesis which was, of course, about one particular symbol of Rational-to-Romantic thought, Leo Tolstoy.

And yet you will find that my website’s tagline is a quote from Tolstoy, turned on its head.

But — that quote was Tolstoy during his Rational phase, before he became a mystic.

I wonder what Tolstoy would have made of bellydance?

When Nat was five he started his life at the May School in Arlington. The May is a behavioral school, dedicated to positive reinforcement such as earning tokens towards desirables, taking small incremental steps towards goals, and scrupulous attention to “behaviors.” The May people jumped right in to getting Nat’s attention, which is one of the first lessons taught in behavioral schools. I was very heartened to see Nat learning how to pay attention to people.

Nat’s first May teacher was joyful and kind. She focused her bright eyes on Nat and got him to listen to her sometimes. At the May Nat learned the concept of the classroom, of paying attention to the teacher, and doing what she said to do. That was huge.

Nat did well with learning the skills of the school life, because school skills work well with step-by-step, systematic reward-based approaches. But about six months in, the May began its Home-Based program, where we were to be trained in using these same techniques on Nat at home. That was when we kind of lost the thread. Teaching play skills in particular stymied me. “Put doll in car.” “Yayy, good job, Nat!  Now, Move car.” “Yayyy! Good job! Car says “vroom.” And so on. I saw that Nat could indeed learn how to look like a boy at play but we could not make him see the point of playing this way. The scales fell from my eyes and I began to sour a little on the May’s approach. We were only giving him forms to follow, structures, systems — but no joy. It was all too robotic. And besides, Nat’s joy was and still is found within his own mind. It seemed false, and missing the forest for the trees. I became skeptical of the whole structure-system-reward approach and told myself that Nat did just fine with my style and was learning flexibility. Over the years we have had our difficult phases with Nat, where we wring our hands and try to figure out how to help ease his anxiety. We look for solutions, we ask doctors, we adjust medication. But we don’t use timers and intricate schedules, that’s just not how we live.

Enter Elaine and Miyabe, Nat’s new Shared Living Providers. Elaine is an autism specialist, a transition-vocational special educator. And Miyabe, her wife, is one of the most brilliant minds I have ever met, and is also highly organized and intensely into structure.  When we first began discussing the possibility of Nat living with them, we made sure that they understood the full range of Nat’s anxiety (or “behaviors”). The four of us took a few years considering whether Shared Living with Nat would work. They had not experienced Nat having a full-blown anxiety episode, but they assured us that they could handle it, mostly because they would structure their home environment so that he would not feel too anxious to begin with. Before Nat even moved in, they had created a notebook with pages of brief instructions about what to do and how he can do it, such as a page on Morning Routines, or What to do in the Afternoon for Fun. He had a big whiteboard in his room for his weekly calendar, rules printed here and there, and labels on things like the shampoo bottles. All to head off anxiety at the pass.

I respected all of this, but deep in my heart I was afraid they’d still encounter terrible times of Nat’s anxiety. Of course we had not kept up with the behavioral techniques the May tried to teach us years ago. I’m not organized that way. I hate planning. I hate schedules. It is very difficult to create a schedule for a Saturday. If you try to plan, what about if something else comes up? Then he’s upset about the other thing not happening.

But once Elaine and Miyabe started living with Nat and implementing schedules, and Ned and I continued not to, we all started to run into trouble. Nat was having terrible episodes of anxiety where he’d be slapping his head and screaming. Elaine and Miyabe were very stressed out. But they were convinced that the outbursts were about inconsistency in Nat’s life — meaning when he was with us, because we were not adhering to calendars and schedules. Elaine and Miyabe, on the other hand, were using timers and writing it down, even for things like, “15 minutes until leave for the Y.”  But we were not, that’s just not how I roll. I continued to tell them that Nat needed a medication adjustment — true — and also that he was always anxious in the winter. Plus he had only just moved into their apartment in September.

Finally things got really bad. We asked the doctor to increase Nat’s Gabapentin. But Miyabe felt there was something missing. Why couldn’t we just try it a little? Couldn’t we try to stick to the calendars and schedules rigorously, to go over them the same time of day and week with Nat every time, even to use the timer if possible for transitions? Maybe — just maybe — if there was consistency across his life, he’d be less anxious. I took the timer and said I would try. But deep down I worried that I wouldn’t be able to, that it just doesn’t work. Or that Nat would be skeptical (why is Mom suddenly using a timer?) and he’d resist.

I was wrong.

Because I really want Nat’s new living situation to work, I gave it an honest shot, using the timer the first chance I got once he was home visiting us. I heard Miyabe in my head say, “So yah you turn the dial to 15 minutes and then in 15 minutes you really have to do the thing you said you’d do.” I tried it. In 15 minutes I would get ready to go food shopping with him — something like that. I went over to my puzzle and worked on it and then suddenly, “dingggggg.” I had to stop. I was surprised how short 15 minutes was. But I stopped immediately and Nat watched as I got my stuff together. Out we went.

I won’t tell you that all the anxiety simply melted away. But as Nat’s medication increase took effect, and as Nat began to see that we were indeed using the timer for things we used to just kind of get to when we were good and ready, he softened up. And I found I was able to create schedules just breaking up our normal unconscious routines. I could set the timer for an hour until pills. An hour until ice cream. Do Facebook for 5 minutes. As long as the timer was ticking and the schedule said something, and we complied with our rules, Nat was content. Ultimately, he realized we were serious. He realized he could trust us.

And that trust bred an ease within him, a reconnecting between us. Paradoxically, the robot-like approach of first-then-and now this, and then reward that we learned all those years ago at the May has led to a new sense of organization and purpose in our life together, a heightened awareness on my part of Nat as a person with needs, rather than a problem that needs maintenance. Again I learn he is not mysterious and difficult. I just need to use these simple tools to keep myself organized, and then he responds with happiness. And though it’s a little more work for me to remember to sit down and write up a day of tiny events and commit to the timer in between, the relief we both feel makes it immeasurably worth it.

About 25 years ago, I suffered from acute Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It took the form of going back and checking. Really ugly stuff, I’m not going to describe it here. Until I had a very wise therapist who really understood — that, combined with Prozac, and the day came where I felt the tormented tickle of “you better turn around and look,” yet I walked on.

Moving forward is particularly difficult for me because I often still dip into obsessive-compulsive disorder. Now it is not the way it was back then, it is more of an idling, stalling engine. It stays put, rather than whipping me backwards. In other words, it is bearable. But that, combined with my sharp and heavy mood swings, make it a challenge to see my way out of the chaos that is my life. I hear things on two levels, all the time. I hear the meaning the person is trying to convey, while I hear all the lifelong messages in my own mind — emotional clouding of the picture, checking and re-checking the words.

This condition is worst when it comes to Nat. I have conversations about Nat and I’m parsing the intended message, right along with, “Wait a minute, is this message I’m hearing okay? What did I do, is this my fault? Did I screw something up, or did they?” Right away it’s either-or, right away I’m defensive and really it’s all because of fear. I get afraid that my whole world is going to collapse — usually in terms of Nat. I go right to “okay, a bad thing is happening, just like always, what did I miss, what should I do now?” It is so hard to sit and understand, to sort out the actual important message that I’m supposed to hear. I can do it now, with great effort. And my husband Ned’s cool water, his ability to stay clear.

My panic about how the world is treating Nat — and by Nat, maybe I mean me? — is ingrained, layered into my skin, muscle, and blood. Like any new mother, I held him so close because that was my job, but unlike many non-autism mothers, I never let go. I couldn’t. And so my own development took a turn as a young woman because I had a baby that no one understood. My child has struggled to learn, to grow up, and to move away from me but I have been SO afraid to let that happen. So neither of us has grown completely in that sense. I’m not saying I was right to be this way. I’m saying I can barely help it. You could say it’s a co-dependent thing Nat and I have. Even when he’s pushing me away with man hands, I let him, but I feel my stupid veins stretching right back out towards him, looking to reconnect.

Having a child no one gets is probably the most elemental scary thing that can happen to you as an adult. It’s no coincidence that my OCD began when Nat was a toddler. You have this fragile, beautiful innocent little being in your care, you seeded him, nurtured him inside your own body. You made him. And now he’s kind of being rejected by the world. Well, that’s how it felt to me, I think. It’s a Refrigerator World, not a Refrigerator Mom. The Mom is the opposite of the Refrigerator, she’s a hot oven that has no thermostat.

Every doctor had a theory, and when it didn’t apply, they shrugged. Every school had a dogma, and when Nat continued to defy their ethos, they kicked him out or they held on but their anxiety was transmitted to me. Now I don’t even expect people to understand Nat. My wounds for him are just weakly scarred over, lumpy and prone to ripping open again. Even when I have evidence that people do understand and care deeply, there’s a part of me that remains unconvinced, the OCD part. I never have had the feeling of sweet, deep rest. I have never been able to let go of him entirely.

It is not healthy for either of us, each being so tangled up in You.

People smile at this and say, “well, sure, you’re the mother.” But I don’t think they get how it actually feels, to be the one and only for someone you love with the force of a hurricane, an earthquake, a tornado, a shark attack. So when he’s out of my sight, I am always always wondering — will he be safe?

Am I consigned to always be dealing with Nat this way? How do I heal? How do any of us heal the ravages wrought from ignorance. My rage at the stupid ignorant world pours down on all of you and then it’s all rained out. Then, out of nowhere, I’m bizarrely hopeful again. Flying by the seat of my moods.

And so with Nat, I go in a loop. It’s relationship OCD.

Will I ever be able to walk on, to believe in his wellbeing, without looking back?

Here is my latest post for the Psychology Today blog, about how common it is to infantilize people with disabilities; how I recognized this attitude in myself. An experience with MUSE was, as it so often is, my muse for the piece.

CNN just published a print story of the voting booklet that I made for Nat for this election. I tried to figure out just what he would need to understand, in order to vote like a responsible citizen. I did guide him to consider being a Democrat, the same as I do for my other two sons, because it is my responsibility as their mother to make sure the actions they take have only a positive impact on their lives. But I have created a more general, more neutral format of the booklet that I will share here and hopefully others with developmental and cognitive disabilities will use it and be able to vote:  Voting-Public Version
Also, here is a nonpartisan guide to teaching voting, put out by 3L Place, a service provider in Massachusetts that is all cutting-edge, holistic, intellectually stimulating in its approach to people with developmental disabilities.
Use, enjoy, spread the word, and vote!

On this ugly rainy day I find my mind turning to the potentially ugly future. Over the years that I’ve written in my blog I have made no secret of the fact that I’m both Jewish and a Liberal Democrat. I am in mourning for the Jews that were shot yesterday in Pittsburgh. Two of them were developmentally disabled. The others were also innocent human beings.

I live in Massachusetts, I believe in publicly funded social programs like Welfare, supports for the disabled, elderly, poor, and addicted. I believe in funding public education and special education and bilingual education. I believe in the spectrum of human gender, of human neurology, of race, of the human condition. I believe that the climate is shifting to very dangerous patterns and that it is because of our abuse of the earth, its environment, and the atmosphere. I believe in the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion. I believe in laws that restrict capital enterprise because the wealthy and competitive need limits. I believe in free press that does due journalistic diligence. They must courageously present fact. (Like NPR, who always has the other side on to express their opinion and viewpoint.) I believe in tougher gun laws which bound people to get a licence to buy a PA-10 rifle or any other firearm. This Website is the one I go to check out my favourite guns just in case you think I’m against guns. I believe in the rights of all people to vote and live their lives safely and happily. No one in this abundant earth should be hungry and if they are, the other countries should be aiding them. I’m an FDR Liberal, a JFK Liberal. I, too, Have a Dream, and that is a country that is compassionate and helpful to others.

Got it? Here’s what else: I believe in history. If you count yourself as an educated person, you have to look at history to understand that the American government we are living with right now is a dangerous, pre-fascist one. The hallmarks of dictatorship are all there in the Trump and GOP-led Congress. Separating — literally — groups by their skin color and religious beliefs or nation, and then calling them names like “rapists,” “animals,” people from “shithole countries,” “criminals,” and  “globalists” — this is engaging in the time-dishonored tradition of dictators. Trump encourages violence against different groups, again and again.  That is how Holocausts begin.  It can happen here. Make no mistake. Right now, it is the weak and careless Republicans in Congress who are not defending our country’s philosophy of Life, “Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Justice and Liberty for All. E Pluribus Unum. This current administration has done the opposite and believes the opposite of everything I believe in, that I mentioned above, in my second paragraph.

In the name of my sons, the future generations, I am voting for a healthier planet and the lawmakers who will stand for that. I am voting for a Congress that protects voting rights and does not support far right Supreme Court justices who trash them. I am voting for a Congress that supports Medicaid and Social Security programs because those give my autistic son an adult life, outside of my home. This GOP Congress wants to slash those programs to pay for a tax cut they gave to the wealthiest in the country. I am voting for a Congress that supports compassion, fairness, a social contract. Protection of the most vulnerable. The Welfare State. The MLK Dream.

Of course you can disagree. If you can civilly point out places where I’m wrong, go for it. I’ll read it. But if you’re nasty, I won’t print it. (My blog, my decisions.) If you’re offended, don’t read me. Trump’s is a Hitlerian-style regime. In the memory of the Tree of Life Eight, the Orlando nightclub victims, the Newtown children, the Parkland students, and the all the rest, I dedicate my heart, passion, and resources to the Democrats.

Fall is the empty nest time of year; even the trees must deal with the fact of their seeds dropping off to start new lives. And I am an old mother, dealing with my children’s departure for years. My son Nat has lived away from us for eleven years. But this particular autumn I find myself unable to shake my sadness, the feeling that there has been a permanent shift, and that I’m not ready for it.

Like many families, Nat, who is my oldest moved into a residential school at 17. Unlike many families, this was a school for students with severe autism.  The move out of the home is so dreaded by most autism families that it even has a special term: going residential. For right or wrong, sending your autistic kid away feels like you failed him somehow.

For years I fought this feeling. I told myself that Nat “had to go.” He was out of control. He acted wild, like a stranger, he reminded me of the Warner Brothers Tasmanian Devil, a whirlwind of scary biting and terror. I’m sorry, but this is how I remember it when I think back. That, and I wonder if his brothers weathered it okay, and I cling to the memory of how easily he left us, how quickly he was absorbed into that group home community.  “So he must have needed a different environment,” people reason. They believe this, it is easier for them to decide that because Nat’s difficult behavior subsided, it means that he found peace in the strict schedule of the residence, comfort in the consistency and similarity of school/home routines.

But now that Nat is an adult, I experience him differently. He has learned, over time, to stretch out the moments between the spark and his response. There is space between us now, where I can now see how he is feeling, and not simply that he is feeling.  He has developed a wisdom and the strength to pull back and let me see him. He has learned how to be vulnerable and dwell in that particular discomfort that used to cause him to erupt.  When did this happen? Why did this happen?

I look back and I see the memories of my time with Nat, and the conclusions I made back then. One particular memory that I make myself look at is the night I cried out, “If you keep hitting people you won’t be able to live here.” To which (I think) he answered, “you be good.” Even if he did not answer that way, what I remember is that he took it in. It didn’t change anything; he went on lashing out at us without warning, until finally my husband and I decided we needed him to move out.

Was that the moment when he suddenly realized he was not a part of me, that Mommy was not Forever, and that he might find himself alone?  Over the years it has broken my heart to think, yes, maybe. I did the worst thing a mother can do: I threatened abandonment.

It is not just with Nat. I remember when my middle son, Max, wanted to sit on my lap, which was occupied by his infant baby brother Ben. And I told him, “You have to be a big boy now.”  Snap.

I hate the cruelty there, those moments of being only human, because I believe with all my heart that my children deserve better than that.

But lately I wonder. Do they also need to see the grotesquely flawed parent? Is it possible that children must somehow experience that break with their parent, in order to separate later in life? Max is now 26 and living in New York, working in the film industry. He is and always was a peaceful, accepting soul. When he’s around I feel a sense of comfort and easy joy. So it must be that his separation was healthy.

So there are times when I really worry that Nat’s separation was born of that horrible threat I made. Or maybe it occurred when he went residential. In those dark times, like during the rapidly shortening autumn days, I would see Nat’s independence as a sad thing, something he doesn’t quite understand, something that might actually feel like a punishment.

And indeed, he anxiously insists on staying at our home on the weekends, even now that he’s living with two wonderful young women who love him like a brother. I have no doubt that he adores Elaine and Miyabe right back; and yet he must stay with us on the weekends.

I’m leaving out something really important here. Two years ago he came back home to live with us for nine months. Nine months — the time of complete human gestation. You are born after nine months.  In coming back home to live, did he experience some kind of rebirth? Some kind of very old healing? He certainly healed on a physical level — the reason we took him home was that he showed up one weekend with mysteriously broken ribs. I took him back and got to know him all over again. And he me.

He’s settled happily with Elaine and Miyabe. But there is still that insistence to come home on the weekends. And at the same time, though, there is this new breath he takes when he is becoming upset, a short, flappy moment where he is able to look at me and wait for me to understand what’s wrong. His faith in me makes me calm and confident and then I actually do understand. And then we work it out.

Last week, when we were creating his calendar with Elaine and Miyabe, we floated it out to him that he was not going to sleep at home Saturday night. He listened intently. I then offered that the week after he would sleep at home the entire weekend. “Okay,” he said.

“Wow, he was so chill,” exclaimed Miyabe in that Millennial way of hers. He certainly was. And I’m wondering about new Chill Nat. Or is it old Chill Nat, who went residential calmly — successfully, at the age of 17? Maybe that really was good for him. Maybe my stupid moment of threatening him was not the fateful moment of separation. Did his time away teach him that taking space was really okay, not a punishment? For in doing so I believe he learned to take a moment — a chill moment — and work it out with us. He learned that he can come back anytime, and so he doesn’t have to.

And a new possibility occurs to me, a phoenix risen from the ashes of all my doubt. The smokey plume of hope, that this empty nest of mine is never completely empty. He can always come home again. Because now Nat and I trust each other.

My children have all crossed the threshold into adulthood. My youngest son Ben is settling deeply into a happy life as an art student in Savannah. He is happier than I have ever seen him, living according to his goals and talents. His art is a wild and wonderful combination of wisdom and wit way beyond his twenty years. My middle son Max is a First Assistant Cameraman living in Brooklyn. He has a beautiful life rich in friends, interesting gigs like feature films and fashion shoots, and the freedom to explore his fullest potential.

My oldest son Nat has, at long last, arrived at his most exquisite opportunity: Full Inclusion in society. Being able to work, play, rest, grow. As a man with autism, this takes a special combintion of drive, patience, and support. Nat has the first two. The support he needs comes from his family and his community. And our government. This support enables his participation in a full life.

You cannot have a full life unless you are included among others in the world. You cannot be included if you do not have the tools to allow you to function among others.

People with disabilities need tools to manage in society. Ramps, canes, service dogs, talking crosswalk signals are some. Other tools are support staff to help someone who has social and sensory, and maybe intellectual impairments navigate complicated systems, be they social, geographical, financial, or otherwise.

These supports are not cheap. But they are necessary or you have huge populations who cannot live safely, work, or learn effectively. They wind up on the street, in expensive dead-end institutions, or in prison. Or sitting in their parents’ homes staring at a television set until their parents are too old to take care of them. Then, it’s onto some state-funded group home, if they’re lucky.

A compassionate and supportive society and government are not new concepts. Jean Jacques Rousseau coined the term “The Social Contract” in the mid-eighteenth century. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The concern that dominates Rousseau’s work is to find a way of preserving human freedom in a world where human beings are increasingly dependent on one another for the satisfaction of their needs.”

Our country was founded on this Enlightenment philosophy among others. Our government grew out of finding a balance between a government large enough to protect vulnerable individuals, and a government small enough to protect individualism. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin — all of them were steeped in it.

Even though our government began with these beautiful, powerful, humane ideals, we have always needed to work to maintain them. We need accurate information, we need to vote, we need to push back on those who would take these away.

The Current Political Climate Threatens Inclusion

People with disabilities and their loved ones need to work even harder to access the fullness of life. That is a difficult reality, but it is a fact. For example, if you find there are endless waiting lists for your adult developmentally disabled loved one, you must press for change at the state level. Or, for example, access to healthcare, regardless of pre-existing conditions, is necessary for the health of people with mental, physical, intellectual, social, sensory, or behavioral challenges. A least restrictive environment during ones school years, one that is free and appropriately supported, is another tool people with disabilities need.

But to have these supports, you must make the effort with your lawmakers, even though it is hard. Find out if your senators and representatives support Medicaid and advocate if they don’t. Make appointments to visit their offices in your state house. If you can’t do that, write a letter, send an email, make a phone call. Get your fellow families to do the same. If you throw up your hands and let people tell you that there’s not enough money for this, for healthcare, for public special education, for job coaches, for well-trained housing staff, you must point out to them that we have a gigantic deficit not because of our public support programs and entitlements but because the current President and Republican-controlled Congress voted last fall for tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations in the country. Not tax cuts for the middle class or the working poor. According to the Newsweek article linked to above, “a new analysis of all Fortune 500 companies found only 4.3 percent of workers will receive a one-time bonus or wage increase tied to the business tax cuts, while businesses received nine times more in cuts than what they passed on to their workers,” Think about that for a moment, and then decide if this is fair. You might get a wage increase, a bonus, or a tax rebate this coming year. But what do the wealthiest get? Nine times more.

If politicians or fellow citizens tell you, “we have to tighten our belts, and slim down our government agencies,” they are overlooking the fact that the wealthiest, the corporations, and indeed many of these politicians themselves, have done no such thing. No, they have received huge increases in their income. They have bloated the military budget beyond good sense. That’s where the money has gone. Not to food stamps or healthcare for the poor and disabled.

Do not let anyone make you feel guilty for advocating for supports for your developmentally disabled loved one. Don’t let your town governments blame special education for being so expensive; ask what they spend on sports and all the other academic and extracurricular programs that special needs students often do not participate in. My own town used to do this, and it was common statewide to blame the out-of-district placements like my son Nat’s, when the reality was, my school system refused to create an appropriately structured classroom for Nat. If they’d hired just one specially trained autism teacher for $50,000 and set aside a small room for perhaps a class of only 4 or 5 as challenging as Nat, they would still have spent 25% of what they would spend if each of those students were placed in private autism schools like Nat’s.

While I’m glad that my school system did send Nat to a great private autism school, I lament the fact that he was not included in his town until he joined Special Olympics, until our town strengthened their Parks and Rec program to offer special programs for guys like Nat that were — once again, con brio — funded with public money. Now he has friends but during the school years he had very few. One guy at age 15, another one at 17. Now, dozens. (You will see why further down, below.)

It is public program supports that allow guys like Nat to live as fully and independently as possible — not on the street, not in a psychiatric facility, not in prison. He can put to use his publicly funded very comprehensive education. He can now work, buy things, and generally participate in the economic health of our economy.  He can play sports and compete statewide, he can be the frontman in his rock band. He can volunteer for Meals on Wheels during his week.

But we need the funding and the advocacy to make it happen. And there is no other answer, other than the simple but difficult one: we need to believe in public programs, we need never to stagnate, we need to make sure that in taking care of our more vulnerable citizens, we are open-minded and creative.

What’s more, we need to demand that our country pays its fair share towards this end. It’s the new Social Contract, where society provides the tools for people with disabilities to live out in the light. It’s not a handout. It’s a hand upward, a lifting-towards life. A full life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Here is my latest Psychology Today column, a mother’s take on Game of Thrones‘ portrayal of disability and why Hodor is my hero.

They showed up one evening, at my friend Eswar’s house. He was hosting a bunch of musicians that night, an impromptu concert. He himself was going to play the violin with his son. That in in itself was a good enough reason for us to be there, to see Sri — whom we’d known since he was little, who had befriended Nat because Nat tickled him – play the violin with his dad. Sri has autism, like Nat. This musical ability blew my mind.

I didn’t even know the two women – clearly they were the teachers — were together. Elaine, with a violin tucked under her chin. I knew that she had been giving Sri lessons. The other young woman there also had long black hair, playing on the guitar. Later I learned her name was Miyabe and found a website which showcased most of the guitar attachments I saw her while she was on the podium. She seemed to always have a smile on her face. Even so, I didn’t approach her, I felt shy, in awe. They were so cool. All of them, in that band kind of way. But I knew I would need to talk to Elaine because of what she’d done: she’d taught most of the other musicians, all of them with disabilities that were fairly profound in one way or another, how to make real music. And I wanted to ask if Nat could maybe learn an instrument.

To me the other students were like gods because they were in a band, actually playing instruments. All having so much fun. How did this happen for all of them? I guessed that this is what you could have when you were higher-functioning autistic. You could have an awareness that music comes from somewhere, and that you could actually make it happen with your own hands.

Maybe Nat knew that. But I didn’t think he cared. That’s always been one of the biggest problems of his autism: he didn’t seem to realize that caring, taking an interest, making that effort to understand something or someone, would actually benefit him. As a toddler the behaviorist taught him how to put a doll in a car and push the car around making car noises. Vroom, vroom. But she could not teach him how to enjoy it. He’d dutifully push the car and then stop and wait for the next command.

Maybe he does care but doesn’t know how to show it. Maybe he doesn’t care and that’s okay. I guess what I should say is, I care. I want him to be able to interact with other people and not be alone so much.

Nat sat through the concert, and seemed very interested in all that was happening. And when it was over he stood up with the musicians while the parents were taking pictures, as if he were one of them. And just like that, he was. When I talked to Elaine it was as if she already assumed he was going to be playing with them; I didn’t even really have to ask. I am used to people letting Nat in, tolerating him. I am used to seeing him included, but always as the least able participant. So what, right? Who’s comparing? It’s not a competition. Blah blah blah.

I never in a million years imagined that there would be people — other than family — who would want him for what he himself could do. Who saw his particular contribution, his unique self, as being something they actually needed and wanted.

It turned out that Nat could sing. I think that Elaine and Miyabe were almost as happy as I was about it. I say almost because I don’t actually know if it’s possible for anyone to love Nat more than I do, and so how could anyone else be as thrilled about this accomplishment as I was? And yet with Elaine and Miyabe — and soon I realized Brett, the drum teacher was just like them – I wonder. Because the more I saw them with Nat, the more I had this feeling that they were taking a kind of “ownership” of Nat.

Not that any human being can own another. What I mean is they felt a certain proprietary thing for Nat. Not protective. Not patronizing. But a pride and a desire to be with him and bask in his Nat-ness. As equals. Aside from Ned, the only other person who has projected this sense of ownership of Nat is Laura, my sister, who actually attended his birth.

Suddenly people who were not his family and who were not being paid to do so wanted to be with Nat. Not because it was their job. Nope. Just to hang. Brett came a few times for walks with him to get JP Licks ice cream. Miyabe would ask if she could hang out with him, go running around the pond with him. She and Elaine took him to a concert one afternoon and I did not even realize it was happening until later. He came back with a tee shirt and later I saw pics of him as part of the group. It still amazed me to see it but at that point Elaine, Miyabe, Brett, and Max, (another of the instructors) all just took it in their stride. They were already used to hanging out with other students (who are also young adults, like Sri and Stefano, the lead guitarist). They taught these guys but they also had fun with them. The MUSE teachers – Brett, Max, Elaine, and Miyabe, were in charge of the students’ safety, but the only time they were paid was when they were instructing the guys. I wanted them to understand how precious this new existence was for Nat, for me. I wanted them to know what they meant to me. I wondered about paying them. But they shrugged that off. I suspected that it was somehow completely not it. That to accept my money would be insulting to them and to Nat. It would ruin it. It would define their relationship in the wrong way.

Why do I keep mentioning that it wasn’t a job, that no one was pay? Because in our society money defines who and what things are. Money shows appreciation for someone doing a job. So without money, what was the relationship? I was afraid to ask, as if to name it would change it.

So really, what was this kind of thing the four teachers were doing — and now also bringing along spouses and other friends? All of them in their twenties, some disabled musicians, some not. Sometimes parents like Ned and me came along. We were welcome, too, even though we are twice their age. And when we do hang out with them, I feel light and free, and full of potential myself. I still sometimes ask myself why does this happen? Why does this arrangement — MUSE as a group for whom only music and friendship and fun matter — why does it work so well? How can there be so many boundaries crossed? Maybe that’s not even the way to look at it; it’s not that MUSE crosses boundaries. It’s that the MUSE does not see obstacles to friendships.

It’s complicated, and yet it’s the most natural thing I’ve ever encountered.

Don’t Call My Autistic Son “Buddy.”

This is the subject of my latest Psychology Today column, which you can find here.

I had a bike accident a few days ago. I got “doored.” I had just completed a 19 mile ride, my usual summer route, when I decided to finish up riding on a road near my house, parallel to the park I usually ride in. I don’t know what made me change up the route, which took me next to a whole lane of parked cars; maybe just the desire to do something a tiny bit different from the park path.

The driver’s side door of the Mercedes swung out, just like that, and I yelled, “NO!” but there is no stopping the laws of physics. I felt myself moving through space, I heard the crack of my helmet, the slam into the hard road, and I remember thinking, “This is it.” I was going to break up into new pieces, rip away from this life and into some sort of new thing. I felt the deep-belly fear of what was coming, and a strange blankness of simply accepting it.

Then, a split second passed, I lay for a moment on my back, and I realized that nothing hurt. Could I–? Yes, I could: I stood up. No pain, just the small sting of scratches. Picked up my bike. My head felt a little heavy. I gathered my shoe, which had come off and was stuck inside the crankset, and my now-broken sunglasses, my helmet, and its scattered white brim. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry,” the driver said. I could tell he was. We were both shaken up.

Another guy came over and said, “It’s not your fault, you know,” and we both looked at him, not even knowing which of us he was talking to. But as a unit, we felt intruded upon, annoyed that he was interrupting what felt like our moment. I was actually resentful of the guy for turning this into something even uglier, about fault and laws and money. Especially since I was walking. And alive. My driver motioned to him to just can it. I agreed. We just needed to check in with each other.

Yes, I sound like he was the victim. Shouldn’t I have been angry? Shouldn’t I have demanded he give me his information so that I could bill him later?

But no, all I felt was this weird bond.

And, how could I have marshalled my senses that way, when I was just so shaken? I felt like I was only partially there. It was like I was floating around us, just going through some sort of post-accident motions, when all I wanted was to get out of there, get away from what had happened. I didn’t care to get his name, the promise of remuneration, his wellwishing. I didn’t want to stand there any longer than I had to to get my bearings and be done with the whole thing.

I actually rode the rest of the way home, which was only around the corner and up a small (but steep) hill. I was holding onto my broken glasses and helmet brim, with my helmet merely sitting on my head, unbuckled. As if I still owed myself the wearing of the helmet, but not really. Again, going through the motions, just to get home. To my husband Ned, to my home, to my bed.

It wasn’t until I got home and sunk down into my family, and my couch, that I started to cry and cry, just burying my face into my sweaty tee shirt collar and roar it out. I rested a lot that day — I actually slept most of the day, whether from doing 19 miles that day and 18.5 two days before that, or from the accident — and woke up feeling great.

I have a lot of bruises and stressed-out muscles but nothing else. Nothing but life and the open road ahead of me when I feel up to it. I am alive and nothing can stop me from living it on my terms.

Scarlett Begonias Rockhopper and me: together through thick and thin, ice and sun.

I am doing my first charity ride, September 1, in an organization called Bike to the Beach. Bike to the Beach pulls autism philanthropies together under their widespread umbrella so that multiple autism causes can come together and raise a good deal of money while networking with each other and raising awareness and giving away mountain bikes for beginners to help promote the advocacy. My team is Team MUSE Foundation. MUSE, which stands for Music, Unity and Social Expansion, is a non-profit that is all about community inclusion and social opportunities through musical instruction and performance.

I joined the board of MUSE in December 2017. I go to every rehearsal because Nat is part of MUSE. Nat started out playing in the rhythm section but as this story goes, one evening practice he heard a song he knew from long ago “Life is a Highway,” and he moved towards the mic. We all said, “Nat, sing!” and he did. Now he is one of the chief singers in the band, The Brookline Buds. There are currently two bands — the other is The Next Big Thing — but MUSE would like to expand to three — we have a loooong waiting list!

I would love it if you, my faithful readers, would consider a small donation towards our ride. Here is the link to my page, where you can find pictures of our MUSE students and instructors, and my donation button. Thank you for reading my blog and for supporting MUSE.

Why down? Why now? No reason on earth. The mind just roams, searching, digging for the reason for the sad, ostensibly to pounce on it, crush it, make it so flat as to disappear it. But — the law of conservation of matter — so that can’t happen. Or is sadness an energy, rather than matter?

Doesn’t matter.

Somehow there is food attached. Or Food, as a big concept. Food I just ate. Food I want to eat. Food I can’t eat. Hours until I can eat again. And then it all falls to that: hours. There are hours worth of what I am supposed to do but really that I can postpone so why do it when I don’t feel like it? But if it’s supposed to get done, why put it off?

My body sighs, knowing that there is nothing to know. It is just this way, has been for my entire life. Well, except when it’s not. Pockets of time. A lot to do but nothing to do. So then it becomes a stretch of time to get through. And then: what a waste of time, of life. And so, even more reason to feel bad.

This is why depression has nothing to do with reason, with logic, with smarts. Depression is about the Nothing. It makes no sense, yet it becomes my entire reality.

To me it looks like a hated stretch of time that I hate myself for hating.

I look around, thinking, eat or sleep? The third is unthinkable.

And then I see the window and the light out there. It is a matte white light because it’s raining. Oh that’s why, many will say. No that’s not why. Because sun doesn’t change it when it’s there. James Taylor said it right, “I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end.” To me that meant they just went on and on and because I was sad while it was sunny that made it worse. Now I wonder if he meant he thought they’d never end, meaning he was enjoying them so much he didn’t have time to realize it wouldn’t last. Actually, that is probably what he meant, but I’ve known that song since third grade and always thought it was a person wishing all the happy sun would just fucking stop because they just can’t.

But still, there’s light, and it’s outside, which makes me realize I could do that: just go out.

But what if that’s nothing, too? Then I’ve tried the one thing that looked positive and it’s also a pocket.

Once again, too much thinking. Just go and see.

I was inducted into my high school Hall of Fame today! It was a lovely ceremony, with three other inductees from other graduating classes. The bond we shared was public service and giving back to the community. I feel so honored and honestly blown away by the thoughtful ceremony and the achievements of the others there. By the way, my high school is named after former U.S. Senator Brien McMahon, and so we were the McMahon Senators! You can imagine how interesting that was for me…

Here is the speech I gave today, drawing from certain life lessons of two of my favorite teachers:

“Get out of your culture,” Charlie Wiggins used to shout at us in twelfth grade Anthropology class. He meant that we were guilty of seeing different people through the lens of Americans. We were being “ethnocentric.” Unconsciously judging the world by our experience, our rules and mores, our privilege. Mr. Wiggins was thought of as kind of a hippie, a free spirit, and — even though I did not know the word in those days — a progressive.

I’d never heard of ethnocentricity. Oh, I knew other societies were different — like the French spoke French (and acted it!) Indians thought cows were sacred, the Puritans had avoided any sort of color or joy in life. But in my mind, people were still kind of like Americans, or wanted to be. Until Mr. Wiggins came along, and we studied the peace-loving Pygmies of the Belgian Congo, and also the warlike Yanomami of the Amazon Rainforest. And then we were asked to create a culture of our own. So my class worked for months on the making of Ema, which a classmate said meant “now” in Japanese. The point of Ema was that everything we did was all supposed to be in the present, for the present. Everything came down to just being here on earth.

The climax of the semester was for the class to go on a weekend camping trip where we would try to live in the world of Ema. We chose new names, from nature. I was Earth. My best friend Cynthia was Sky. One girl was Fern Texture.

God, we tried so hard. But the thing fell apart because we squabbled, we made inappropriate jokes, we started secret romances. We were teenagers, basically. And also, because cultures are actually so complex, so intricate and organic, that they cannot be constructed out of whole cloth, even in the greatest classroom environment. And yet in failing to become true Emas, we succeeded in appreciating the heart and soul and wisdom that goes into different cultures. We learned in a visceral way, the value of difference.

Bookending the mindblowing experience of Charlie Wiggins’ class was perhaps the perfect contrast: Stephen Hofheimer’s English class. Mr. Hofheimer, who wore leather pants and saddle shoes was the hippest thing we’d ever seen. Hoff is the guy who usually gets chosen as Favorite Teacher. He’s the one you seek out to autograph your yearbook. Everyone had a crush on him. We idolized him.

But AP English was also serious stuff. This was where we would maybe earn a college credit. This was where we would read The Classics. And maybe most important of all: this was where we would learn that secret formula to getting into a good college: Mr. Hofheimer’s weekly SAT words. We actually had to memorize something like 20 words each week, strange, hard words, like “Jejeune.” Or “Afficianado”. And, ironically, “sesquipedalian.” He would say each word out loud, getting his mouth around the thing like it was a fine dessert. He would give you the definition, and then use it in a sentence. It sounds – and was – boring, and yet. It was the first time I remember feeling the exoticism of words. His excitement, his appreciation for the very taste of a word, settled somewhere inside of me and I fell in love with language. And how to use words with care and precision.

I went off from McMahon and went to Penn, then got married. My husband Ned and I moved up to Boston. I thought I’d be a writer of some sort, and just continued writing novels that are still in my attic — and probably belong there.

Then I had my first child, Nat, and everything I’d ever known turned on its head. This beautiful baby was nothing like the baby books. He did not play with toys, he only mouthed them. Or lined them up. He did not like to be around other children. He would not get out of his stroller at the playground by the time he was 2. He could not answer a yes or no question. But he memorized entire books, talking endlessly from them, in scripts.

My Nat was diagnosed with autism by the age of 3. So not only did I have to deal with heartbreak, and learn about autism (before the Internet), I had to learn who Nat was. And I had to learn how to be a mother where there were no autism mothers around me. I had to learn what it was like to have a child who was very different from every child on the playground.

It took a few years for me to get on my feet. But one night, the day before Thanksgiving at my Aunt Rhoda’s house – she’s sitting right there – my husband and I were talking about how hard it was going to be to take Nat to the big family dinner, when we got the idea to make a book that would tell him exactly what to expect at Aunt Rhoda’s Thanksgiving. I wrote out the words in a way that Nat could understand, I cut up photos, we taped it all together.

Nat loved – and memorized – the book. And Thanksgiving was a success. Suddenly, I knew how to help my son. At my mother-in-law’s suggestion, I composed a brief article that described what we had done with the “Nat Book,” and it was published right away, in Exceptional Parent Magazine. Suddenly other parents wanted to know what I thought, what I’d learned about autism.

What I was learning was that the world was not prepared for guys like Nat. From lack of awareness to lack of funds to lack of empathy. To lack of best practices, fair laws. And it felt like I had to do something about it. I had to educate the world. I wanted them to understand and know Nat, and never ever simply dismiss him. I had to become an advocate, and teach everyone about difference. I have had to show people what an entirely different existence looks like. With my writing, I have tried to gently lead people out of their culture and connect with mine. With Nat’s. In writing my books, and in crafting a 750-word essay worthy of the New York Times or Washington Post, I have had to put myself deeply inside the moments of my life as Nat’s mom, and get other people to care. By using just the right words. Making every sentence count. Because the stakes are too high to fail. This is for my Nat, after all. And for struggling people like Nat. It’s on me to get people OUT OF THEIR CULTURE and open themselves up to difference.

That’s why I do it. And I know how to do it, in part because of this school.

Thank you so much.

Yesterday I had to pick up Nat from his day program so that he could get to his band rehearsal and voice lesson by 6. His usual routine was unavailable because the group home needed the van for an event, so there was no way to take Nat to his practice.

Nat was ready the moment I showed up, of course. Someone is always hanging around the entrance and everyone knows me there by now, so the grapevine gets to Nat before I do. He walked right past me, to the car. I started up with conversational attempts because I have a problem with no talking. I do this, because I think it’s right, too. Even though — or possibly because of — Nat’s difficulty with talking. Ableist mother, right?

Or is it a caring mother who still believes in educating her son — although he is 28 — in the ways of the world?  I’m sure the autism community will decide.  But Nat needs to be as skilled as possible, he needs to work on his social skills. Just like I work on getting through my times of deep depression, when I just want to cancel everything and go to bed. I work on thinking, “this is only now, it will pass,” even though I just do not believe it at that time, even though I have so much evidence that I will find happiness, beauty, and good things again. That’s (some of) the work I have to do as an adult in the world. So shouldn’t Nat have to work on himself as well? If my insistence that he interact with me in the car for two rounds of conversation — is kind and respectfully done, am I still being ableist?

So we drive home in silence mostly, with me making comments here and there about what is going on around us — the beautiful day, the traffic, the stupid drivers, our upcoming weekend. Nat doesn’t answer, though maybe he is responding inside. It is worth doing. I have done this his entire life — talked to him a lot even without knowing where it was going — and one doctor said, “that is probably why he is as verbal as he is,” meaning, if I had not done that, he might not have developed even to that extent.

To me, avoiding ableism is about respecting the person and treating him as an equal. We can help each other be more skilled, more fluent in the ways of world. Any time you correct someone’s pronunciation, or school them in facts vs fiction, you are educating them as long as you are not disrespectful or superior about it.

I take Nat from where he is, and go with that. During his band rehearsal, I watch him in delight and awe. His passion for singing is just a wonderful sight to see. He has this hobby, this pursuit that fills his soul, and it shows. But yes, during the singing, I saw that his cuffs were flapping around and annoying him and I asked him if he needed help with them. He said, “yes,” and I rolled them up for him. I had tried to teach it to him earlier in the car, but he did not understand. So for the sake of expedience, I did this for him, thinking as always, “am I treating him like a baby?”

Once we were back home, we sat in the living room together silently. He was watching me. I had nothing to say to him at this point, nothing left to ask him. I started dozing, when it occurred to me out of the blue that I could offer to read to him. He could always say “no.” But I asked him, and he said, “yes,” immediately, I asked him to get a book, and he got out an old old favorite, Disney’s Pinocchio. I read it, wondering if this was okay. It is a little kid’s book, not an adult man’s book. But he chose it. He wanted it. He sat for it. He filled in the blank when I said, “A little boy who won’t be good might just as well be made of ____.”

“Wood.”

Yay! Either this was because he was reading along, or because he remembered it from childhood! A skill either way. Win-win.

And furthermore, he smiled once in a while while listening. He wanted this. It was not age-appropriate. I know it was the right thing to do, though. It was easy, because I enjoyed it, and he enjoyed it. I met him on his terms. This is how you do it. But still — so happy about the skills he displayed.

I wish it were always this clear. Maybe more Disney would do the trick.