The Joys in My Life With My Son on the Autism Spectrum

There are challenges that can come with autism. Nobody gains when we deny difficult things are in fact difficult. But the thing is, the difficult and at times exasperating things are sometimes all mixed up with the joyful things and the funny things.

Then I could say there are the heartbreaking things. And in the same breath, I could add, yes, but there are also the hopeful things, too!

Many of the things I love most about my son’s personality can be related to Asperger’s. He simply is who he is. I have always loved his strong streak of individualism, his absolute uniqueness. So much of the joy in my own life is due to the joy he finds in his own. He is so bright, so full of life, so passionate and intense. It can be tiring, but it can also be wonderful. Being involved in his life is like being invited along on some vivid adventure I would never have thought to embark on by myself.

I love his pure excitement over small things. I love that he loves his special interests so intensely. I love to watch his hands flapping with joy as he stares at pictures of pots and pans or more recently, various sea creatures. I love his colorful rubber boots that he is never without. I love his detailed, focused drawings of the same thing day in and day out for months at a time. I love how smart he is, knowledgeable about what interests him. I love the way he interprets things literally, although I do understand this might not always make things easy for him. I love his logical, black-and-white mind. I love his creative imagination. He is a bundle of contradictions.

But I know how hard and heartbreaking and mind boggling-things can get, too. I can struggle with exasperation and impatience on a daily basis. Even so, I see the humor in being asked to read the same bedtime story every night for years when that “story” just happens to be a book of unadorned facts about sea creatures. If I try to leave a fact out in order to get through the book more quickly, he knows. The plus side is that I now know a lot about the various sea zones and the strange creatures that live in each.

I also enjoy his literal thinking. I laughed when I told him he was not to use his hand to slap someone and he stopped, looked at his hands and then in a reasonable, conversational tone, asked “OK. I won’t. But what can I use to slap someone then?”

The things we never imagine needing to explain!

I do know there’s the hard. The things that are no laughing matter no matter what angle I look at them from. There’s the heartbreaking and terrifying. The aggression and self-harm, the meltdowns, and more. Sometimes there is an abundance of the difficult.

But sometimes, I simply cherish the moment. I need to look for the tender or the joy in the midst of the hard. It’s often there, all mixed up with everything else.

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Thinkstock image by Nadezhda1906