it seems like a great day for a reminder of this day...

 

little birdie loves to fly.

teaching moments with calvary...

over the past week i have been trying to be diligent about taking pictures and making tangible notes about the interesting moments i have with calvary as his teacher.  these moments are easy for me to forget because we move in and out of them with fluidity but yet they are all so profoundly part of what makes calvary so uniquely calvary...i always go back to that egg reading a book because all of our moments with calvary are similar to that one.  we see the world one way and he sees it another.  once he lets me in on how he sees the world, it makes perfect sense...and i can see it...but i would have never thought it before his explanation.  that being said, i kept forgetting the funny moments we were having so i decided that i would try and remember to make a note and go back and take a picture of the moment so that i could tell kyle.

 

so this week we were reading a little story about the seasons creatively titled "Seasons"...i cannot remember who wrote the short story but i will try and go back and include that information later. anyway, we were breezing through the narrative and calvary came to this page:

 

 

 

once he got to this page he just started laughing.  i asked him what was so funny and he responded, "'animals will look for spring'", more laughter, "you can't just find spring!".  oh calvary...it is so interesting to me how deep "literal" thinking stems.  most of the time i think of it in terms of idioms and sarcasm but even this little phrase is a hiccup for calvary.  i had to explain to him that the author meant that the animals will start looking for the signs of spring...not actually spring all bundled up in a package hidden under a pile of snow.  he knew that was a silly idea, but he also thought that is what the author meant.  we had a little laugh thinking about silly animals looking for spring. 

 

 

this next picture still blows my mind because it both amazes me of calvary's attention to detail and it illustrates perfectly how rigid he can be in his thoughts.  i handed him his math work book and told him that he needed to do a few problems and this is one of the problems he was asked to solve:

 

 

he took one look at the problem and said, "i can't do that problem."  i assured him that it was well within his realm of capability and i read the problem to him.  after i finished reading, he looked at me and said, "i can't do this problem because angelfish would never be in a tank with goldfish.  goldfish can't live in saltwater."  well then.  of course.  i am sure that the writers of the first grade curriculum intended for the 6 year olds to catch on to that and answer that the question was invalid.  he kept telling me that "0 goldfish would be in the tank" and i kept assuring him that he just needed to pretend like they could be.  eventually, as is obvious by the completed work, he did actually do the problem. 

 

 

this next one is a little more common for us and a little harder to follow.  but yesterday we were reading in his science book about bamboo.  calvary really likes science and he loves "real photographs" and this selection was particularly interesting to him.  we read through the whole selection and when we got to the caption that reads "some bamboo plants can grow taller than a giraffe" calvary just looked at the two pictures in amazement.  and then he said, "in the dr. seuss foot book it says, '24 feet' but this picture says 25 feet"...

it took me a few minutes to realize how his brain was connecting because seriously, i cannot remember the last time i read the dr. seuss foot book.  but once i realize that the caption sparked his memory to that book i went off to find the book and see what he was talking about. i eventually found the book buried beneath a pile of books in his room (who knows how long ago he last read the book himself) and there it was...

 

 

this picture of some seussian drawing with 24 feet...

 

 

it may not be interesting to other people but my brain doesn't connect like that...across time and subject...but all the information in his brain is just sitting there.  ready to be accessed at any given point.  i find myself awestruck by how remarkable his memory is and also how concrete his language is.  for me, abstraction is a part of life.  i have been trained to analyze meaning and possible meaning in language to the point where i rarely see anything as literal.  yet, calvary has a difficult time seeing anything beyond what is there.  we read a story about a hat the other day.  all these animals were trying to wear the hat and it was either too big or too small for everyone except for the last animal.  on the last page all the animals were dancing and cheering and the mouse was wearing the hat.  i asked calvary all the questions where the answer was written directly in the text and he had no problem answering.  the last question was, "why are the animals happy on the last page" to which he responded, "how do i know why they're happy!?!?!". and then he threw the book and hid under the desk.  he couldn't connect the dancing animals to being happy about the hat fitting the mouse.  yet, he connect the phrase 24 feet and 25 feet across two unrelated books, two unrelated subjects, and two completely unrelated times.  it boggles my mind. 

 

what a gift it is to have a refreshingly new way of seeing the world.  it is not always easy for him as evidenced by his frustration with questions that ask him to infer details about emotion. it is not always easy for me because i know that language and learning only gets more and more abstract the older that he gets and it is my job to help him prepare for that transition.  but, it is a gift.  5 out of the 6 people in this house see the pictures and the question the same way...and he offers a different perspective and it is like scales fall from our eyes and we are able to see the world as a new and different place.  hopefully, i can be successful in helping him also see the world the way that others see it so that he too can appreciate a different perspective...

"high functioning"...

this term is really a wolf parading in sheep's clothing...(this is actually a phrase calvary would have an incredibly difficult time processing and understanding)...but the image actually works here. 
i have been processing my emotions towards all things autism for quite sometime now but this issue of "high functioning" is one that seems to perplex me the most.
i mean, shouldn't it be a good thing that calvary is referred to as "high functioning" to outsiders and casual passer-bys?
i think so.
but why, then, does it bother me? 
i clearly do not want my child to be viewed as having certain limitations.  i want the best for him.  i want a perfectly "typical" life for him. 
but...it really, really, really hits a nerve every time i hear:

"well, he must be very high functioning."
"i would have never guessed..."
"he seems perfectly normal to me..."

i know that everyone that says these things are well meaning.  i know that they are simply stating what they believe that i want to hear. 
but i don't know how to respond...

should i say, "thank you?"
because to me, saying thank you, implies that i would somehow not be pleased if he didn't appear to be "normal".
i don't want calvary to overhear me say thank you and believe then that i wish that he was anything other than what he is. 
when someone says that he doesn't seem autistic and they mean it as a compliment underhandedly insults him as someone who is actually indeed autistic. 

i have worked very hard to help ensure that calvary never sees his autism as a handicap.  i want for him to know that he is awesome. but all of that is undermined when the ability to appear normal is what is his greatest autistic feat. 

the truth is calvary is not normal.
he is smarter than average.
he is more detailed than average.
he has an ability to do things on computer games and video games that most adults cannot.
he sees patterns and puzzles in everything.

i don't want to take that away from him. 
and even though there are some awesomely non-normal things about calvary there are some horribly non-normal things about him as well...
and if i was to be honest, it irks me when that is not recognized as well.
parenting calvary is tough.  it is harder than parenting all three of our other children all together.  it takes more emotionally and financially.  and although he may pass for a typical child there are battles that we have fought that most people have not. 

it somehow takes something away from me when someone looks at me as if we have made a mistake or the doctors (multiple) have made a mistake in the diagnosis.  all of the battles...all of the meltdowns...all of the anxiety (his and ours)...all of the social struggles...all of the moments where communication is completely lost...all of these moments are lost and erased the moment someone looks at me like we are wrong. 

we've worked hard at making social outings successful.  we have worked hard at helping calvary deal with his anxiety.  and even harder at helping him deal with aggression and irritability. 
so, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing to hear that calvary is surprisingly autistic at moments because of course i want for his social outings to be seamless.  but my goal is never to help him "appear normal" as if that is the statue of our limitation...

i am not even sure that this makes sense now that it is written down.  i was hoping that i could make something coherent out of my inner turmoil with the term if i started writing but i am not sure i accomplished that.  but its out at least...right?
sigh.