{"id":1480,"date":"2005-12-13T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-13T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2005\/12\/no-longer-in-the-dark\/"},"modified":"2005-12-13T16:09:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-13T16:09:00","slug":"no-longer-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/no-longer-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"No Longer in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I gave <a style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/\">the New Yorker<\/a> the opportunity to publish a wonderful, moving bit of poetry, but they turned it down. I now give it to you, though it is not truly mine to give. I recorded these unintentionally poetic words <a href=\"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/about.html\">uttered by Nat<\/a> when he was about to turn five (eleven years ago). I came across them again recently. I now know that this was the beginning of his self-stimulatory talk, a common feature of autism, and something that was a huge struggle in our lives for the longest time.  I eventually learned what self-stim talk means to Nat (it is a great source of comfort to him and I believe helps calm him and organize his thoughts) so I no longer cringe at the &#8220;silly talk&#8221; (his name for it).  I cringe when other parents talk about getting rid of their children&#8217;s self-stim talk because I both understand their heartache and struggle, and wish that they knew what I know.  I don&#8217;t mean that to sound arrogant.  I just wish that we parents could learn faster and earlier just who our kids are and love them as they are.  There is, of course, a thin line between loving them as they are, giving them the skills to help them succeed and thrive &#8212; and trying to shape and change them into something they&#8217;re not.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I was and still am struck by the simple beauty, rhythm and emotional content of his words.  If I had extinguished Nat&#8217;s silly talk when it first emerged, I would never have heard this haunting poem.<\/p>\n<p>I call it &#8220;Dark.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dark<br \/>By Nat Batchelder, age 5<\/p>\n<p>Stop crying,<br \/>Dark,<br \/>No crying in the dark.<br \/>Settle down, stop.<br \/>No running away<br \/>And stop running away.<br \/>No crying<br \/>You better stop,<br \/>You better stop crying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I gave the New Yorker the opportunity to publish a wonderful, moving bit of poetry, but they turned it down. I now give it to you, though it is not truly mine to give. I recorded these unintentionally poetic words uttered by Nat when he was about to turn five (eleven years ago). I came [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-nS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}