Letters to the Editor
-
What evolutionary psychoneurology has to say...
I see a comment above from JohnnyRaven suggests, as an academic ,you check out the book "origins of consciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind". I would encourage you to do that as well. I would also suggest reading up on the renown veterinarian and high functioning autistic Dr.Temple Grandin from the work "Anthropologist on Mars". Our consciousness is not born fully formed out of the thigh of zeus but is the result of a long process of developement we are only now starting to connect and understand.
As I see a bit of this kind of behaviour in myown family, I have to wonder if being distraught about it doesn't actually worsen the condition's negative effects, whereas being open, understanding and engaging might help bring forward more positive expressions.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. Whatever the solution to the problem is, the broader our understanding the more likely we will be in managing it humanely.
-
The simplicity of faith
Like Ann Bauer, I am an agnostic. Raised with 16 years of Catholic education, seeped in Jesuitical thinking, ready to question and knowing that questions aren't wrong.
But nothing prepared me for my Down syndrome daughter - unable to hear or to speak or to read or to even know that her grandfather had died - signing to me some days after we got the news (the memorial service would come later) that he had died and gone to heaven.
How did she learn of his death? How did she learn of heaven when she had no religious education? Perhaps faith is found in silence, when the mind moves beyond logic. Perhaps that is where her son lives, and the place my daughter has never left.
-
Questions
Nothing is gained by asking questions about God. As Buddha is said to have said when asked if God exists, "The question does not edify."
-
Stop and listen
In the spirit of deep or "real" faith not only or even ever being the warm, encompassing cocoon, but also or instead the experience of many revered spiritual leaders...I find it sad that people still question these parents' road and choices and heartaches through the experience of parenting and knowing and trying to allow her son to be who he is and also be safe in this world with all of its ideas of who we should be...judging others for their struggles of faith or doubts or secular pains is just so the antithesis of what anyone should be doing who claims to be of God or god or universe or spirit.
I don't believe you need to actually experience growing up and growing in and growing out while you grow a child with autism in order to understand what this is like. I do have the experience and it is hard to articulate what a balance it is to refrain from allowing your child to be pathologized by others, to help him have the tools to feel more comfortable in a world that mostly doesn't operate the way he does, to guide him to go through social graces in order to get the intimacy and friendships he cries for, to allow him to retain the amazing, charming, witty, quirky aspects of himself--to honor them (autism is a spectrum...people with autism are not simply remote, removed, emotionless. There is humor, compassion, brilliance, desire, it just goes through different neurological dances sometimes and others it doesn't: inconsistency is the only consistent part of a neurological "disorder").
We (also divorced, but so fortunate to have been able to weather much of this together so far) hold him, love him, discipline him, teach him, value him, worry for him, cry, laugh. We will make mistakes, will we learn, and we will try whatever we can to help with the real pain he feels, the real depression he battles, and all of the other things it is so easy to sit in front of a monitor and judge that someone did wrong. It reminds me of the idea many people have that when a person is dying, he or she will somehow be in a place of acceptance, that there will be a peace washing over it all, that it is somehow going to be easier then. It's not always the case, and how can we expect someone else to suffer through depression or pain or anger or loneliness because we "see" (or think we see) the big, spiritual picture. If they hadn't tried medication, others would be criticizing that they didn't do all they could. It takes everything I have not to use a string of profanity or biting sarcasm at all of that, but then I have other things to worry about, like my own son.
Ms. Bauer, each time I see an article by you, I am anxious and would rather not open it--a feeling I'm sure you understand--but am always so grateful that I opened it and moreso that you wrote it. Thank you.
-
Why did the donkey cross the road?
This story sounds like it's about two issues: the role of medications in the treatment of autism, and the ability to hear God. My son isn't autistic. But I think all children are able to see, hear, believe things that adults often dismiss.
When my son was 6 we were having a bad thunderstorm. He was fine but I was getting nervous. So to calm him-- calm myself, actually -- I told him the only thing I could think of, his guardian angel is watching over him.
He replied, "I know, God talks to me all the time."
After a stunned pause, I asked, "What does he say to you?"
The answer: "He tells me jokes."
An even more stunned pause: "What kind of jokes?"
My son said, "Why did the donkey cross the road?"
By that time I was so floored I didn't have the presence of mind to ask, "What was the answer?" It sounded like an adult's idea of what a child's idea was of what God would say.
Or, it sounded like God communicating to a six-year-old boy who loves jokes.
I'm still not sure to this day.