Logan had been at school almost three years. We were still searching for a final answer. By this time I was familiar with ARD meetings, parent/teacher conferences, how to diffuse a tantrum, what kind of things would overstimulate my child, and on and on. I was fairly certain by this point that Logan was indeed autistic. When you have a child with behavioral, emotional, and mental challenges, you read. A lot. You look for answers. You search the web. And you draw conclusions.
We were done with the Child Study Center. Our experience there, while providing us with a path to follow, had soured us on ever going there again. Now, allow me to say here that I'm sure there are many families and many children who have found what they were looking for when they walked through its doors. It just wasn't the right place for us.
We ended up finding a doctor through Cook Children Mental Health. The doctor there was much more approachable. She asked a lot of questions but it was more of a conversation than a verbal form we had to fill in. She asked us all about the challenges we faced with our son and decided that he would undergo two days of behavioral testing. They would ask him to do certain things or perform certain tasks, and draw conclusions from that.
This visit with this doctor was a real eye opener for me, and not just because of my son. She took a family medical history from us...wanted to know if anyone had a history of depression, or behavioral problems, etc. We were halfway through this somewhat awkward conversation when my husband looks at me and says, "What about your dad? Wasn't he kind of weird?"
I mean no disrespect to the dead. I loved my father. I still do. But weird is a good word for what he was.
He was brilliant. He was an electrical engineer who designed substations and did some of the designing for Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant. From the time I was very small I remember him sitting at his desk, drawing out a set of plans and every now and then, whooping at the Dallas Cowboys. He loved his work. And he loved the Cowboys.
But there were other things. He liked to drum on the furniture, or the steering wheel. I thought it was because he used to play the drums in high school, but it was a habit he never lost. He buried himself in the tv, computer, and the newspaper. He avoided personal, direct conversation at all costs. Put him in a social situation, ask him about himself or try to make small talk with him, and you would get three answers: "Well", "Huh", and "I don't know". He also mixed his words up on purpose: "Sleeping beauty" became "Beeping Sleuty", for example. He made funny clicking noises or ticking noises. Ask him about work and about what his latest project was and he came to life.
I related all this to the doctor and she laughed. "Well, sweetie, that's significant." And I suddenly realized...this father, who I loved, who inexplicably left our family right after I graduated high school and could never really explain to us why he wanted to go...this father who was so difficult to know and nail down...could it be that he just couldn't help it? Was he so challenged, socially and emotionally, because he had some form of autism or Asperger's that was never diagnosed? He was born in the late forties. Autism was unheard of then...so was Asperger's. A child with these challenges had a hard row to hoe back then. It's hard enough now. Realizing that the issues I had with my father, the frustration at never being able to be close to him, might not be my fault or his was an epiphany I did not expect to receive that day. Listening to that doctor and the questions she asked...suddenly all of my dad's behaviors made sense. I was searching for a way to help my son and I had found the answer to a question that had haunted me all of my life: Why? Why did my dad act the way he did? Why didn't he try to be closer to us? Why couldn't he hold a normal conversation? Why did he make those noises?
It felt like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders that day. I was there for Logan, but I found Dad. And I couldn't help but wish that he was there. I always felt, and still feel, that he would have understood Logan on a different level than the rest of us.
That being said, we still had two days of testing to go through with our little guy, and my husband was the lottery winner for that scenario. And I learned after that testing session that some of what doctors may tell you is true, and some of it is totally bogus. And it's up to you, as the mom or the dad or whatever you are to your child, in the end, to listen to your gut and not take everything people say about your kid as gospel truth.
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