I have really been thinking about this different set of standards we have for disabled people.\u00a0 We think that we have to handle our guys with kid gloves.\u00a0 This weekend I was with my family at my childhood home in Connecticut — as enlightened and loving a group as there can be — and I was struck by how it was still difficult for some of the family to address Nat directly about things. “Just ask him,” I kept saying to people.<\/p>\n
People in general are skittish around Nat, and I can’t blame them, he has been volatile in the past.\u00a0 Plus you don’t want to have an interaction that falls flat; it just doesn’t feel good.<\/p>\n
But every day it seems that I am seeing more and more of Nat himself.\u00a0 Nat, without limits.\u00a0 I am seeing him fully, without a barrier of assumptions.\u00a0 Just him and me.\u00a0 I find I explain things to him assuming he understands a good deal of what I’m saying, even though he seldom answers, and if he does, it is with this baby-talk kind of simplicity.\u00a0 When someone is as adorable as Nat, it is difficult not to let that fact take over how you treat him.\u00a0 I keep saying to myself, “He can’t help how his speech comes out.\u00a0 He probably doesn’t feel satisfied with the way he talks.\u00a0 Imagine how that must feel.”\u00a0 So I don’t want to add to his potential unhappiness, by talking down to him.<\/p>\n
When others talk down to him, not realizing what they’re doing, I feel so bad for him now.\u00a0 For people to talk about him in front of him:\u00a0 it makes me want to cry.\u00a0 How patient he is, to put up with that.\u00a0 How frustrated he must feel, to be aware of his difference, his clunky tongue and knotted words, and not to be able to set people straight.\u00a0 To feel compelled to talk to himself, unable to break the habit because it feels so good, but also to know on some level that it sets him apart from everyone.<\/p>\n
The torment of having an autistic child is not knowing what he knows, so you don’t know what level to interact.\u00a0 And you don’t know what to hope for.<\/p>\n
More and more, I am talking to Nat without adapting anything.\u00a0 Yesterday I got him to calm down over something very upsetting to him — my brother in law was wearing a sports jacket, and to Nat this looked like something you should only wear outdoors.\u00a0 I had him sit down next to me.\u00a0 I watched his visible efforts to get this not to bother him, but he couldn’t.\u00a0 He covered his ears, wrung his hands, walked and walked, muttered about “outside,” and was just so unhappy and frustrated.\u00a0 I watched him running around.\u00a0 Other family members watched, too, but I don’t think they understood how I could be bursting with pride.\u00a0 For I could see how he was struggling so hard not to escalate.\u00a0 You could see it in his panicked eyes, his busy hands, his stomping.<\/p>\n
He did not escalate.\u00a0 But he needed help.\u00a0 And I knew that and I stayed with him.\u00a0 Finally I found a photo on my parents’ fridge, of my brother-in-law in a sports jacket at an inside event!\u00a0 Nat relaxed soon after that.\u00a0 And now he knows.\u00a0 Because I talked to him and he understood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have really been thinking about this different set of standards we have for disabled people.\u00a0 We think that we have to handle our guys with kid gloves.\u00a0 This weekend I was with my family at my childhood home in Connecticut — as enlightened and loving a group as there can be — and I […]<\/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-2013","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-wt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","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=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2014,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions\/2014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}