Over the years, people have suggested art therapy as a possible way to get Nat to express himself.\u00a0 Back then we were always looking for therapies that would get at Nat and help him.\u00a0 We did years of music therapy (in addition to years of speech, language, sensory integration, and behavioral therapy.\u00a0 We tried a little Floortime and we looked into auditory integrated training, as well as perhaps a week of The Diet.\u00a0\u00a0 Blah blah blah try try try, fail fail fail) but we never did try art therapy.\u00a0 I hated when people suggested it to me the same way I hated it when people say that “autistic people respond well to visuals.”\u00a0 It seemed to be one of those sweeping generalizations that had no bearing on who Nat was. I still get that feeling, like a balloon losing air, when people suggest things I should try for Nat.<\/p>\n
Nat did not like art.\u00a0 We’d put crayons in front of him and he’d scribble, filling every white space on the page with the one color he’d chosen.\u00a0 To me, this felt hopeless, rote.\u00a0 It did not seem like he was expressing himself, or if he was, what was he saying?\u00a0 It was just painful for me at the time.\u00a0 I guess this is because I was judging him by how I would do things:\u00a0 if I had crayons, I’d draw something.<\/em> A woman in a ballgown, a garden, an undersea scene.\u00a0 I suppose I could have said that Nat was more abstract, but it felt like a thin assumption.\u00a0 His scribbling was listless, phoned in.\u00a0 I know when he likes something and when he doesn’t.\u00a0 It just felt like art, for Nat, was not an avenue to pursue.<\/p>\n Today I drove out to Nat’s school with a pile of blue-colored tulle I’d bought at JoAnn Fabrics<\/a>.\u00a0 (I love JoAnn Fabrics because any craft project you want to do, they got aisles and aisles of the raw materials.\u00a0 Walls and rows of every color, every texture.\u00a0 Beads, baubles, brushes, paints, feathers, glitter.\u00a0 It makes a gaudy girl like me want to sing.\u00a0 Or sew.)<\/p>\n
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