How My Son With Autism Overcame His Fears to Take This Picture
My son Brock was diagnosed in 2014 with Autism-SPD-impulsivity control issues. He has severe anxiety which makes communicating with people he doesn’t know difficult. This past school year he overcame so many challenges that had left him exhausted and angry at the start of the summer.
He has had a dream of becoming a police officer for as long as I can remember and was able to meet a couple different officers from our local department this Summer.
The first time I saw him truly smile was when I made a stop at the local police station and one of the officers stopped and showed him around the station while I was taking care of a past parking ticket. He answered all of his questions with a patience that is hard to come by anymore, even ones as silly as, “Why do cops have refrigerators?”
The officer spent almost 20 minutes answering my son’s repetitive questions all with a smile. When we left that day my son told the officer he was his hero. It really reiterated his want to become an officer as an adult.
What he really wanted was to get his picture taken with an officer so he could hang it on his wall. About three weeks later, there was an officer responding to a call in my neighborhood and Brock waited patiently for about an hour until the officer was done.
He worked through his fears during that time and started approaching the officer. His nerves got the best of him a few times and he turned around, but then he finally got up the nerve and kept saying, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I’m really doing this mom!”
And he did.
He was able to get a picture with Officer Morgel and his K9 Officer Riko as well. The officer was incredibly patient and truly listened to my son. This doesn’t happen often, as he tends to get brushed off by people sometimes. But this man made my child feel special and he has smiled more in the last few days then I’ve seen in a very long time.
Sometimes the smallest things can make a huge difference in our children’s lives. I’m incredibly grateful that these officers would take time out of their busy schedules (while on duty) to put a smile on the face of a boy who otherwise finds it difficult to do just that.