You can stop talking now.

My husband is a heating and air conditioning contractor who runs his own business. But, more importantly, he is a Church of Christ minister and has been preaching at our small congregation for 25 years with the exception of about eighteen months that coincided with Sydney’s adoption and the beginning of Tate’s intensive early intervention. So, our kids have all grown up as preacher’s kids. I say that to set up the stories I have to tell you today.

"Scram. Beat it."

When our oldest son was just a toddler, one Sunday he was standing at the back of the building with me as everyone was exiting. We were usually the last to leave, making sure to speak to every member. I guess this particular day our little guy had been tickled, teased, and patted on the head all he could stand. He’d had enough. As the last of the crowd thinned, and it became very quiet in the back, an elderly lady bent down to speak to our sweet, angelic, precious, little guy and he responded with a growling, “Scram. Beat it.” She was shocked; and she straightened up giving me a polite smile and a nervous laugh. I was horrified and apologized to her while probably turning every shade of red a human can turn. We, of course, lectured our little guy on the way home and his daddy spanked him for being so rude. I knew exactly where the offensive phrase had come from, as Oscar the Grouch was our child’s favorite Sesame Street character.  As awful as that seemed to me on the day it happened, I have come to love telling this story and have shared it with lots of people over the years. “Scram, beat it” has become sort of a term of endearment to me and as the kids get out of the car for school, I often say, “Have a good day. Now, scram, beat it.”

Fast-forward 24 years and several children later. Wednesday evening I was walking down the stairs of the same church building to teach Bible class. I heard Sydney several feet ahead of me, in her best teacher voice, say, “Tate! Don’t be so rude!” I also heard a laugh from an adult in the same vicinity at the same time; not the kind of laugh that comes from hearing a good joke, mind you, but the kind of laugh that comes from someone when they don’t know what to say or how to respond. Let me insert here that our church family is so very understanding of Tate’s lack of social skills. They do not make him feel badly (or his family feel badly) when he is less than friendly, ever. On top of that they go out of their way to help us watch out for him (and Sydney too) always trying to speak to him so they help him practice his social skills. Now, back to the story: I caught up to my two “angels” in our classroom I was barraged with Sydney’s NEED to tattle and Tate’s desire to keep me in the dark. They each got louder and louder trying to drown out the other one. I stopped them both by speaking quietly. It is an amazing thing I have learned. When kids are yelling, they get quiet a whole lot faster if you speak softly than if you holler back. I asked Tate if he would like to tell me what he had said that was rude. He said he would not. So I asked Sydney to go ahead and tell me. This resulted in both talking loudly at the same time again. I wish I could film this sometime because it really is quite comical and is becoming a frequent part of our lives now. Sydney began talking and could only get out one or two words at a time while Tate was interrupting the whole time with, “No. No. No. We don’t want to hear. No. Hey! Hey! No! Stop talking! Quit. Be quiet. No! Our mom does not want to hear this.” Somehow, I was able to decipher. I think. As they were going down to class a grown up had asked Tate a question, trying to strike up a conversation. Instead of answering politely, Tate had a “scram, beat it,” moment. He told the grown up who had tried to speak to him, “You can stop talking now.” Was I horrified? Yes. Yes, I was, but knowing that we were amongst Christian friends who understood made it much less horrifying. I used the first part of our Bible class to discuss manners and hope it did some good. Hope is the key word. I keep trying but autism is so much bigger and stronger than my lessons on courtesy and social skills sometimes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these two instances since Wednesday evening. They were 25 years apart, one with a toddler and one with a young man taller than myself. If I allowed myself to, I could become quite depressed that I am still trying to teach lessons to my 12 year old that he should have learned as a preschooler. Instead I will choose to find the humor, be glad that we have understanding friends, and keep hammering away at the rude behaviors.

Tate and Sydney

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A Look Inside a Black and White Mind

If you know me very well you have probably heard me say that I believe I could almost get an Asperger diagnosis (or DSM Level 4 as it is now called). I have a lot of the characteristics. I was painfully shy as a small child and have never been a people person, although I have taught myself how to behave in most social situations, I still find it very difficult to interact sometimes. I am a visual thinker, thinking in pictures and categories. Ironically, being a visual thinker does not help me in the area of facial recognition. I do not recognize people’s faces until I have seen them several times. I am also a black and white thinker. By that I mean I have a lot of trouble with gray areas. In other words things are right or wrong and there is no in-between.

Many of the people in my life, even those who know me best, say I hide my insecurities in social situations very well. The story of how I learned to “fake it” goes back to my teen years. I had very few friends in grade school. I was in a large school district and very few of the same kids were grouped together year after year thus making it hard for a shy kid to form relationships. I had one friend in second and third grade that I was close to but the school boundaries changed after that and we were sent to different schools.

In the fourth grade I became friends with a girl who I truly loved. A lot of my childhood memories revolve around her. She moved away when I was in seventh grade and I spent the next year in a depressed state. There were two girls that year that got their kicks by bullying me and I had no idea how to defend myself. Then, at age 14, a couple things happened that changed my life. We moved. We moved from a VERY large school district to a VERY small school district. AND, my brother who was five years older than I, and the coolest, funniest guy who was always “the life of the party” told me something that forever changed my life. I told him how afraid I was to start at my new school. I told him how hard it was for me to meet new people. My cool brother, who had dozens and dozens of friends, told me that he was just as introverted as I was. He told me that I had to go into that school and ACT the way I wanted people to perceive me to be. I had to think of it as a play and I was an actor. I remember him saying that I had been a little fish in a big pond at my old school and I would have the chance to be a big fish in a little pond at my new school. I could totally change who I was by how I acted. I had the chance to redefine myself. I looked up to my brother like no one else I knew and I trusted him. I did what he told me to do. Within days at the new school I had made more friends than I’d had in years at the old one. Of course it helped tremendously that everyone at the new school was so welcoming and friendly. Those four years of school were amazing and because of those four years I went off to college well-practiced at making friends and maintaining friendships. I had mastered the art of social relationships, much later than my peers, but I had done it.

I am a visual thinker and categorize everything I learn or see. I had no idea that I think differently than the general population until I read Temple Grandin’s book “Thinking in Pictures.” I read her book when Tate was diagnosed with autism and I learned so much about myself. I knew and had always known I was “different” than a lot of people but had no idea why. I think differently. I did not know that everyone else did not think in pictures. I would still not know this had Tate not been born with autism and had I not needed to educate myself about it. Knowing that I think differently has helped me to understand so many things I had always considered a mystery.

Temple Grandin likened the way she thinks to a video player with clips of video she can pull from files. I would describe the way I think this way: I place the pictures I have and the “rules” I’ve learned in a sort of list and categorize them in a filing system, like a rolodex. I can think quickly through my files and find a picture or a rule that applies in most situations. When I was young my list of rules was shorter and I didn’t have a lot of “files” to draw from so I didn’t know how to act in a lot of situations. Consequently, I appeared socially awkward in new places and around new people. Now that I am older and I’ve had a lot more experiences, my list of rules and how to act in almost any situation that occurs is quite extensive. Everyone learns from their past experiences I know but apparently I am different in that I visualize my list or quickly run through my list of rules so that I can decide what responses will be socially appropriate. It doesn’t just come naturally for me. As a young adult I sometimes misjudged and came up with an inappropriate reaction occasionally. I rarely do that anymore because I have memorized and know how to use most social cues and respond appropriately. Thus, I appear very “normal” to the world. Don’t get me wrong, I feel very “normal” all of the time. This way of thinking and my rolodex works for me. It may be different than the way you think but it works for me. I get by just fine and up until a few years ago I had no idea that my way of thinking was not universal with human beings. HA

It makes no sense to me that a person who thinks in pictures like I do has such a hard time with facial recognition. I am what some call face blind. I recently read almost two percent of people have this issue. I have to meet someone more than once, and usually several times, before I can memorize a face. Then, when I see them in a different setting than I met them in, I am unable to identify how I know them. I often recognize people by their voices though so sometimes if they speak to me that can save me. Sometimes I can tell who a person is by the way they walk. If I see them walking toward me or away from me I might be able to identify them but if I walk up on them then I struggle for to place them. This inability to recognize faces is a real handicap for me and I appear to be a snob often as I walk right past people that I should be stopping to speak to. I honestly do not understand how everyone else DOES seem to recognize a face after one encounter. Unlike people with autism, I do not have any trouble with eye contact so that is not the issue. I think it is that people basically all look similar to me. Oh, there are differences, like hair length, body shape and size, and color too. So that all helps but I see maybe one of a dozen different faces when I meet someone. Weird, I know. If there is something very unusual about a person then I will recognize them after one meeting but otherwise, it is not going to happen. Most of the time when I meet someone I think, “She looks so much like ______.” However, when I mention to someone else that I think the two look similar they usually will not agree. I volunteer one day a week with a teacher friend in our local school and it takes me all year to match the kids' faces to their names. Some I never learn. That is just not "normal." Movies, especially old ones, are a real big part of our family life but I can rarely tell the actors and actresses apart. I take a lot of teasing over that.

I always dread hearing the words “gray area” because I know there is going to be a conflict my mind will have to wrestle with. There are almost no gray areas for me. Gray areas do not fit in file folders. There is no place on the rolodex for gray areas. You see, when you are a concrete thinker like myself, issues are black and white, right or wrong. I recently heard a doctor refer to concrete thinking as “rigidity of thinking.” I thought that was a pretty good way to describe the way I think. There isn’t much flexibility. There is a right way to do things and anything other than that one way, is wrong. And THAT folks, is the reason I can sometimes come off as self-righteous, calloused, or uncaring. My patient husband has taught me to rewrite many of the rules on my mental rolodex. I now can accept that there is more than one way to do some jobs and still get satisfactory results. He has taught me that people who do not do things exactly the way I do are not always “bad guys.” My rolodex continues to expand. So, why don’t I just accept all gray and expand every day? It is not that easy when you are a concrete thinker. Each bit of gray has to make sense. It has to be tried in the courtroom of my mind. If it doesn’t make sense and cannot hold up then it will NOT be added to the rolodex. Many, possibly even most, of the gray things I am asked to consider do not even get a trial date. HA. I am being a bit facetious but this  is sort of how it works for me.

I do not have autism. I have a great imagination, a sense of humor, super eye contact, and no problems with communication, empathy or theory of mind. I do not have any stereotypic behaviors or a lot of sensory issues. I do not perseverate (obsess) on things (although around election time, some might argue about that one.) HA Oftentimes, relatives of a person with autism have some of the characteristics of autism. That would be me.

I am 51 years old and still adding to some of the “rules” I probably should have known for a long time. Moral issues, biblical principals, and God’s commands are extremely easy for me to believe and obey because God’s word is very cut and dried on most issues. It is the social rules and relationships that have always been harder for me. If I wrong someone then it is very hard for me to forgive myself. I spoke in anger to a friend several months ago, apologized, and was forgiven yet I am still ashamed of myself over it. If someone wrongs me or betrays a trust then I will probably never be able to confide in them again. My respect for them is gone. I can forgive them. I can love them. I can be nice to them, but I will not ever trust them again. 

I illustrate my thoughts and feelings with pictures all the time. It is how I think. Following is an example of how I pictured it recently when someone I love did something that hurt me, and others. My mind saw a clean, steel kitchen sink, full of clear water. There was a drain in the bottom of the sink and a stopper in the drain. When my friend did the horrible thing he did, the stopper popped out of the drain and all the water quickly ran out. The water was my respect (not my love, just my respect). It is gone. The sink is dry. I have tried to refill the sink but the stopper just will not hold. Can I try and visualize another stopper and fixing the sink? Oh, I can try; and try; and try again; but there is only so much a concrete thinker can do. Can I change? I've been trying for at least forty years and praying about it daily. If anyone can soften concrete God can so I will keep praying and trying. 

You might wonder why would I want to write a blog post like this? People will think I am “weird” now. I have a couple of reasons. The first being the usual: to raise awareness and tolerance for people with autism. Sharing some of the same characteristics with Tate, perhaps does give me some insight into how he thinks and feels. Secondly, I have tried to describe some of these things to my family and close friends before and wanted to get some organized thoughts on paper. Hopefully, this will explain a few things.

If you liked this post then these two would be recommended for your reading pleasure: Why does Tate act that way? and Look into my eyes.

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prank phone calls and teaching Tate

I have so many stories to share, but they are not all related to one topic (unless it is just autism, in general) so this is going to be a pretty random post. 

Tate has tried his hand this week at practical jokes. He will tell me in a whisper that he is going to prank someone, usually Levi, and then do something really silly. A few nights ago, Tate dropped a clothes hamper over Levi’s head. Of course, Levi saw it coming and cooperated so Tate could have his fun. 

We found out last night that we would be staying home today for a snow day. Tate became so excited he began to chatter and he became very animated and active. He isn’t usually much of a talker so when it happens we love it. He gets really talkative sometimes when he is happy. A day I will always remember is from a trip to pick out an Xmas tree, in 2011. It was one of the first times he had EVER become a chatter-box for a day. Most days he is pretty quiet. 

Tate’s favorite prank right now is to go find a sibling and tell them that Mom has been calling. Then he follows them into the room and when they ask what I wanted and I look confused, Tate runs and they chase. Last night he did it to everyone, at least once. They are great to play along. Tate has started making up jokes that are usually not funny too. Last night he told one he made up: “Why did the pen not write on the paper? Because the paper fell on the floor!” We usually laugh much longer and louder than is worthy of such a joke because of the kick we get out of Tate telling a joke. Most kids make up their own jokes around age four. I know because I had five kids before Tate that told me hundreds of jokes. I have heard “knock knock” many, many times in the past twenty years!

Last night Tate told me he was going to call his older brothers who live in Tennessee and prank them on the phone. I could hear his end of the conversation with both boys. When they answered, Tate yelled into the phone, in a voice that is cracking due to his age, “Hellooooooo, How can I help you?” Then he said, “I don’t have the wrong number, YOOOOOUUUUU have the wrong number.” He did a lot of giggling. He told one of the boys “Congratulations, you have just won a new foot.” We were laughing pretty hard on this end but I haven’t talked to my boys yet to find out if they understood much of what he was saying. Knowing them, they loved the call. I couldn’t ask for better kids than I have. Tate has a whole family of therapists. For more on Tate's siblings and all that they do, read here: He's My Brother

Totally unrelated to the above: This past weekend we skipped an afternoon of school and went to the movie theater. That is not the real story I want to tell here, but it is a story in itself. When Tate hears the release date of an animated movie or a movie that strikes his interest, he immediately begins to make plans to attend the opening day of said movie. If you are not involved in the life of a child with autism, you probably will not understand the importance of these kinds of things to us here in the Smith family. When Tate makes a plan, if it is not altered or shot down, IMMEDIATELY, then it is set in stone. The mind of a child with autism is much like stone. Plans made are not easily changed. Usually, I am fine with taking Tate to a movie on a Friday after school. He doesn’t ask (demand) that often, maybe every-other month. So, last Friday was one of those times and I had agreed to take him. After about three days of listening to him talk about the movie, my senior in high school, told me that my presence was required at one of her school events. She told me IN FRONT OF TATE, so there was no time for me to prepare myself for his anxiety attack. His face turned blotchy, he began to choke, and he started pacing the floor on his tiptoes. He actually said some pretty hilarious things in his misery. He was trying to talk us out of our alternate plans and saying things to his sister like, “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to attend that game. You’ll be on your own.” The funniest thing he said was, “If your wedding is on a Friday night, we won’t be able to make it.” Tate’s oldest sister came up with the perfect solution. She would take Tate out of school early on Friday and take him to the movie. 

I told that story to tell this one: At the theater, a young man in a wheel chair was taking tickets. Tate got right in front of him and even crowded him and said to me, “Hey, what’s wrong with him?” I was totally taken back. I had no idea what to do. I knew I needed to use the moment to teach but what was the proper way to handle the situation? I had no time to decide. I said to Tate, “You can ask him, why he needs to use a wheel chair.” Tate said to him, “What’s wrong with you?” The young man said, “I have a disease.” Tate said “Oh” and walked away. I hung back to explain to the young man that Tate was lacking in manners because he has autism and doesn’t have many social skills. The guy replied that he could tell and he was very gracious, although we were both embarrassed. As we got settled in our seats and waited for our movie to begin I talked to Tate about how impolite it is to ask someone what is wrong with them if they are sitting in a wheel chair. He seemed to understand. A few days later, Tate asked a person with a blemish on their face, what was wrong with their face and I had to repeat the lecture. If that person had been in a wheel chair, he wouldn’t have asked them perhaps but I hadn’t covered acne.  If you think about it, etiquette is very hard to teach. It is okay to ask a friend who shows up to school with a broken arm, what happened to their arm, but very rude to ask a stranger in a wheel chair what happened to their legs. Typically developing kids just learn these things from watching and absorbing the examples around them. Kids with autism have to be taught everything they know systematically. They have to file away each little lesson and each little variance to each rule so they can know how to act. When something new comes along that they have not seen before, they don’t know what the proper response should be. They don’t mean to be rude. They just have no idea what is acceptable and what is not. These kinds of unwritten rules are often referred to as “the hidden curriculum” in schools. Teachers don’t have to teach the hidden curriculum to the typically developing kids but the kids with autism do need to be taught all the unwritten rules. I feel so badly sometimes when I hand my special needs kids to their teachers. I’m asking them to give more and do more for my kids than their job descriptions ever called for. I don’t think that colleges give a lot of instruction to their teaching students on the hidden curriculum. Special needs students, fully included or not, require so much more work than the other students. They are also much more expensive to educate, due to the need for para support, other services, and modified materials and equipment. I cannot sing praises loud enough for my kids’ teachers. 

A little bit more about hidden rules that Tate cannot learn without systematic instruction: One day this week when I dropped Tate off at school, I watched him walk into the building as usual. A girl much smaller than him was holding the door, waiting for Tate to catch it. A boy much smaller than Tate was right behind him, waiting to enter. Tate pulled the door open, slipped through and dropped the door. The little boy behind had to reopen the door because Tate had not pushed it open wide enough for him or held it that extra second it would have taken for him to grab. These kinds of things come so natural for the rest of us. Tate is not mean. He just doesn’t think about others, their thoughts, their feelings, their plans, or their motives. That part of his brain isn’t working. He cannot help it. If we teach him the “rule” for holding the door for the kid behind him then he will hold the door next time…. But then there will be variances of that rule that come up. What do you do if you are in a crowd and there are a lot of people behind you? What do you do if the person is on crutches or pushing a stroller and you need to move out of the way a little while you hold the door? All these things would leave Tate confused about what to do. I asked Tate’s teachers to help me teach Tate about holding the doors. The teaching opportunities for social skills abound at the school. Tate’s classmates are often involved in teaching new skills. I appreciate them so much. 

If you liked this post, you might also like this one: What is Autism?

Find me on Facebook at Quirks and Chaos. Like what you read? Want to become a follower? Click on the Google Friend Following gadget on this blog. It's over on the right side and asks you to subscribe. Or you can add the URL (the web address in your search bar) to your Reading List. You can do that by clicking the plus sign in front of the URL. Thanks!