Tag: ‘Autism’ · TangleBones

Bad Ideas in Parenting

Today I was trying to talk to Jared about our plans to go see Wall-E (best movie ever - the God­fa­ther sleeps with Luca Brasi), and he kept inter­rupt­ing to ask when we were leav­ing. I wanted to explain that we were wait­ing to see when my spe­cial lady would arrive and would then go to what­ever the next show­ing was, but Jared just could not stop inter­rupt­ing. So, in my frus­tra­tion, I did some­thing dumb: I spoke Jared-​ese.

Jared has his own way of talk­ing some­times and it’s impor­tant to model good speech pat­terns for him. So I often say things back to him with little cor­rec­tions: “She bringed it.” “She brought it.” You get the point. But his other habit is that he has little rou­tines for how he dis­cusses things that dis­ap­point him. And it’s an even worse idea to encour­age that. But I was frus­trated, and just couldn’t help myself. So as he’s inter­rupt­ing to say, “When are we going to the movie?” I started quickly asking, “Can’t I talk about the plan? Is the plan can­celled? Is the plan over? Is the plan ruined? Do you want to ruin the plan? Are we done with the plan? Why can’t we have the plan?”

And he totally caved. “What’s the plan?”

That’s just going to make it more tempt­ing next time. Bad, bad daddy.

So very wrong

As men­tioned over on Left Brain/Right Brain, in the intro­duc­tion to Jenny McCarthy’s new book about rais­ing her autis­tic son, Dr. Jerry Kartzinel says:

“Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child; then, if allowed, relent­lessly sucks life’s marrow out of the family mem­bers, one by one..”

…which makes my mind boggle. Let’s be clear who we’re talk­ing about. This is what Dr. Kartzinel thinks a soul­less child looks like:

Has this guy ever met an autis­tic? Jared is the hap­pi­est, fun­ni­est, sweet­est bundle of life and joy that you could ever meet. He’s made every­one around him happy for years. Every kid in his school seems to love him, and when they see him, they run to him shout­ing his name as though they were greet­ing a con­quer­ing hero. This kid isn’t suck­ing life’s marrow from anyone. This kid is too busy relent­lessly making life better for every­one who knows him.

So the next time you hear people like Dr. Kartzinel or par­ents like Jenny McCarthy on tele­vi­sion describ­ing autis­tics and autism, think of these pic­tures. Think of that smile. And then give them the finger.

Rookie Mistake

We had a pretty good day at Six Flags Amer­ica today (sorry, no pic­tures), but I did some­thing really stupid. We got off the Roar coaster and wan­dered over to one of those swing­ing pirate ship rides that Jared loves. The ride was run­ning, but empty of people, and there were a couple atten­dants sit­ting at the entrance. There was no sign or chain across the entrance, which was cus­tom­ary for the closed rides we had seen, so we wan­dered through the line, only to be told that the ride was closed.

I fig­ured that if there were atten­dants on duty and the ride was run­ning, they were prob­a­bly just late in get­ting it set up, and it would be open later in the day.

So with no actual knowl­edge of whether or not the ride would run, I told Jared that it would be run­ning later.

Or from Jared’s per­spec­tive: I promised Jared that this ride was going to be run­ning later and that I would take him on it, and that if we didn’t go on it, it would ruin the day, so this was the most impor­tant ride in the park.

Really.

So when we strolled by at 2:30 and they were closed, Jared erupted. He had been beg­ging to go back to the Roar for the last half hour, so I thought that was the ride he wanted to go on, but I real­ize now that he didn’t know the ride of the pirate ship (nei­ther do I, obvi­ously), so he wanted to go to the roar so that he could get on the ship.

The rest of the day was down­hill from there. We went on the Roar, had some Ben & Jerry’s, and left for the day, but not with­out buck­ets of tears and howls of pain.

But like I said, a pretty good day.