On The Spectrum

My child was diagnosed with autism when he was two years old. His mother told him the news as if it was anything other than the most mystifying and perplexing news a parent could ever hear. She had no idea so she did not experience any sorrow or the slightest shred of fear. I cried upon receiving the news.

I thought to myself it was ironic that, as a man who had no relationship with his father, now I was also cursed with not having one with my son. Forgiveness is, having nothing to regret. How wrong was I. 

From what I had read about autism, I knew it was the children's version of alzheimers disease. A neurological ailment without cure, mostly pervasive and unknown, characterized by a brain bent on remaining childlike, like a clock stuck on a particular hour, immutable to the passage of time. I had read news that it was making a comeback since the late nineties, especially now that more women were having children later on in their lives. That much I knew, which quite frankly wasn't much.

Initially, I fought against the notion that my son would not get better, that in all probability he'll always be dependent on us and that if he did not show signs of improvement by his seventh birthday, in all likelihood he would not improve much thereafter. But I was and still am a practical and realistic man. So I knew that, sooner or later, I would need to face the facts. 

More than practicality and realism, I had always been stubborn. So not only did I not have great faith (I'm agnostic, bordering on atheist) on modern medicine. It's a business that wants to make you dependent, not cured. But that, too, was ill-advised. While it is true that modern medicine in actuality has tons of drugs, and that whatever ails you has some sort of fix in the form of a pharmaceutical psychotropic ready to be dispensed over the counter, it still does far more good than bad. It just is so good at it that we do not think twice about eliminating the personal responsibility involved in the matter and how our lifestyle choices really make up a chunk of this utmost inherent misery. Instead of telling someone sick that if they make good choices in fitness, nutrition, abstinence, sleep, and adopt habits like regular exercise, meditation, less greasy, salty and sugary foods, then there wouldn't be the need to medicate themselves as much. 

But no one was to listen to living healthier lives. We all want the magical pill that would eradicate the problem overnight even if it means having to take another pill the next day. And the day after that and the day after that. 

So, I was somewhat skeptical about the news. 

I tried a holistic approach. Instead of just resigning myself, I read alternative treatments. The thing about this radical take, oftentimes, is filled with so many hollow promises. There, too, is business in make-believe. Magical potions haven't been ruled out from our medieval upcoming. And isn't a magical spell the equivalent of a placebo effect? The fact that a person thinks that an effective treatment has been administered has an imperative effect on his psyche and may improve the chances a particular drug or therapy might work. But the effect is shortlived and it doesn't work as well on skeptics. 

What Did Work

I encountered several problems that I wanted to tackle on my own. My son, like so many other children on the spectrum, tended to run impulsively, without looking around. He just took off. 

In safe environments like a park, all the kids would just rally around him and even celebrate him. No matter how fast he was, and for his size and at that tender age, he could never run as fast as me. I had given him those speedy genes and up until this day, he still is no match for me. Though he no longer takes off, his stamina is growing to catch up mine, and he does give me a run for my money, stopping as he sees me slow down.

He has, undoubtedly so, given us a few scares. Once in Forest Park, when I was with his newborn brother in arms, and, I suspect, out of jealousy. And another couple of times with his mom and the lady in charge of assisting her. Because, unlike me, her mom cannot catch up to him. And in both instances that he took off successfully, he did so when he saw an obvious advantage. In Forest Park, I was with his brother which made it impossible to run after him. It is a huge park so it was just a matter of finding him which the police department did shortly thereafter. In the other two instances, with his mom, it was her inability to respond to his sudden tantrums and in exasperation, he just took off. He resurfaced unharmed hours later, even asked a lady if she could call his mom. Memorizing cellphones was easy for him, so maybe we should start from there before explaining how I got him to walk alongside me, as he has since three years old all the way up to now, a thirteen year old boy. Those three instances in which he did take off I relegate to being part of a healthy dose of rebelliousness that is natural in all human beings.

I, for instance, while riding my tricycle,  when I was just five years old, took advantage of a moment of parental distraction and took off from the familiar grandparents' terrace to where my parents had recently moved, more than seven blocks away. It was the only time my father hit me. I never hit over anything, let alone something as trivial. 

You show a lack of control when you have to resort to violence. 

2-2

It was a race against time. I remember him being recently diagnosed and the first thing I thought of was trying to teach him to count numbers up to twenty. Surprisingly, it wasn't as hard. I used repetition and number figures which he still collects along with alphabet letters. Nowadays he knows how to multiply, divide like a normal kid and it has something to do with that initial effort. 

It wasn't easy. Initially, I thought it'd be impossible. But he showed signs of curiosity from the beginning and it wasn't long before he mastered counting up to ten, then twenty. I wanted to see how he would respond to a number like 22.

He looked at the number puzzled, for a moment, and pointedly said: "two, two". My heart dropped.  He had used associated thinking, typical of children a year or more older than 2, like when three or four year olds call mice "mouses". I have read great literary works in my life that have caused me great joy. But I never felt such joy before.

The Dog Whisperer 

Before we had this marvelous child, we had a dog. The previous owner gave it to us when he was almost a year old. The owner said, and my wife warned me, "He's used to sleeping with us."

Oh, no worries.  I told my wife: the dog will not sleep with us. What's more, I told her, "He's also gonna learn to walk outside without a leash, always next to me, and not bark when people knock on our door." 

I owe my dog's expertise to a TV Series called The Dog Whisperer.  It was about a trainer who dealt with difficult dogs by training not just the dogs but their owners. 

That's how I taught my son how to walk next to me. By being a natural leader, not a follower. Animals like dogs evolved from wolves who always respond to the pack leader. Like dogs, kids need boundaries. Of course, my son is not a dog and so I had to adapt to a very particular set of circumstances and place safety nets like only letting "loose" in very safe environments. Like hectares of park with no traffic in sight such as Central Park or Forest Park. He learned to walk next to me and eventually on his own without taking off. While some of the other kids still relied on a parent or austere figure to lead the way, mine flourished somewhat. He walks by himself, seems aware of his surroundings, knows what he wants. Yet his surroundings are limited and his wants are very much childish. He's very much childlike. 

I was once asked in a school meeting how did I feel about his condition. 

"Parents are always complaining about how children grow so fast" I said. "I guess I'll have mine for longer." 

Little Rascals

We tend to downplay the inherent cruelty of our children. It seems so innocent when Julian, my youngest, a few months old played with his penis, and snapped a liquid snack out of the unsuspecting hands of his autistic cousin, but not his brother's. He'd too torture him by taking his favorite toy and not give it back. It'd frustrate his sibling to exasperation. 

At six years old, Julian would call me on video chat and make his mom's fiance uncomfortable by introducing him to me as his dad in more than one occasion. When he caught up with the notion that it wasn't necessary introducing us again and again, he simply insisted we say hi to one another. And you know what? We did. It wasn't as uncomfortable to me as it was shocking: he understood the social implications underlying that awkward moment. 

Esteban, too, bluntly expressed his desire to have a girlfriend by the year 2020. He's stated so two years ago, in early 2017, when he was a couple of years shy of entering his teens. Way before then, he'd draw rough sketches of teachers and women in his life, including his mom, a neighbor who had been up until recently a close girlfriend/acquaintance/comrade of ours for two decades until having a fallout with his mom a few months ago. Esteban would become physical not just with her but also his mom, even his older brother's fiancee. It was a problematic phase, and so I had to intervene in order to stunt it. It began with his mom when he was seven or eight years old, games she'd foster between them and that I struggled to stop, undermined in part by his mom who'd up until recently insisted on bathing him. He'd reach out for her breasts and she'd initially allow him to by minimizing his intentions, saying he did not know what he was doing and at the same time egging him on by her indulgent attitude towards physicality between them, something I strongly opposed because even though it seemed playful enough, it'd often escalate to the point where she'd have to reprimand the straightforward  advances she'd inadvertently nurtured and could have implicit ramifications in the outer world, as I pointed out and eventually became evident. 

The case worker in charge of the domestic abuse had been made aware that was an issue of grievance and tension among us. That at school my son had become physical with others and that his mom continued to foment said behavior despite my disapproval. It was as if the mere fact that her childish games enervated me the sole reason she'd continue to encourage such deplorable behavior. It made me uneasy seeing her engage him in such way, because of the repercussions it could and did have in his life outside home. She bitterly resented me, especially ever since I flew by myself outside the country and anything and everything she could find to antagonize me was apt for grabs, like assisting him take a shower. 

It was a ritual that'd take place before bedtime,  as she'd innocently tucked him in bed at nighttime. She'd bend over him and subtly smother him with her breasts that. It was out of frustration that I had the impulse to intercede by pushing her aside with my right foot out of the way and away from him. It was a measured use of force, a nonthreatening action that I  immediately regretted and rectified by holding her close and expressing it so. How measured an act? She did not fall to the floor and cried out in pain, as stated in the report. In between the bed, my foot and her upper thigh were a centerpiece table, the sofabed in which my son slept and the twin mattress I laid on. 

She did not fall to the floor because A) the force exerted by my foot was enough to brush her aside as I remained spread out in a bed sideways to her position B) my legs are the strongest part in me, I pull three times the weight I bench with my arms, and a malicious kick, as stated in the report, would've had catastrophic consequences,  and C) there was no space to fall in to, as everything in the tiny apartment that we inhabited up until recently was cramped up. Isabel didn't even sit on the centerpiece table with the force I used and she cried out of relief as I comforted her, all her ramped up frustration vanished as she felt pampered in my arms, like a child caught in the act of hurting his/her own self and crying when comforted by a grownup.  

It was a pampered crying, not a cry in pain. She's cried in the exact same manner, adopting a fetal positioning as I hold her close. Her cry was prompted as recent as the last meeting we had at the visitation center when I asked our son how things were going. It was a coded gesture aimed at her because we aren't supposed to talk but I know things are harsh for her right now and I feel impatient at my inability to help. 

She's fallen in the last step of the stairway due to snow (I fell a flight of stairs down once due to the same conditions and simply worked it off) and she was in bed for days; and once or twice at work (she hasn't worked since our 13 yrs old son was born): in both instances, bruised easily. Had she been hit the way in which the report claims, she would've had a bruise. Had she had an actual bruise, it would've been documented. It was the first thing and not the last that the case worker checked for: signs of physical evidence which she did not find.

The case worker report says we were having an argument in the bedroom, when I suddenly "kicked her off the bed and she fell violently to the floor". That was a made-up elaboration. As stated before, Isabel wasn't in bed next to me, I slept alone as I had for months on a twin bed in the livingroom, with my son next to me on the sofabed, when I saw her engage in the reproachable act of bending over him as she'd tuck him bed, having him aroused by proximity as she'd talk in a lavish tone in Spanish what he often repeated later on in school and at home, even in writings, the colorful adage: "Teta, no" (TRANSLATION: "Not the tits"). He'd reach out for her breasts with his hands but having been sternly reprimanded in the past for it, he'd just lean forward and tilt his head in a symbolic gesture, almost as if he were an overgrown baby breast-feeding off her. 

It was a gross exaggeration to suggest in the petition that I had forced her to have sex. We haven't had sex in almost a year ever since she found out I had seen an ex of mine while in Rome, Italy. We used to have sex with a disproportionate frequency for a couple who'd been together for as long as we have and it was our way of easing up tensions between us. That was the factor that the case worker, too, failed to clue in. Never in our history have I had to force sex, it was effortless and fortuitous an act.

Circus

If you were to look at her when we met or even a year ago, before this all started, she always looked younger than her age. At the time, I thought she couldn't be more than just a few years older than me. It was much later that I learned she was almost ten years older than me. 

It's amazing how stress can accelerate the aging process: in the course of three months since this proceeding began she's visibly snowing her age nowadays. She falls asleep in the visitation center waiting until the 45 minute weekly reunion with my son is over. She's been through so much this year: her mother died, her relationship with me of more than 20 years has been irreparably broken and as of now on hiatus; the home attendant and all other social services were taken away, and as if that weren't enough, almost simultaneously after I was taken out on a civil case of domestic abuse, she was charged with the crime of asking for help when I was living with her. They even had her detained so as to have her confess. She went around asking for help to hire a lawyer but none of the friends who up until that point had counseled her and not one among her family members telling her to move on her own came to the rescue. I did promise her to help her pay back what she stood accused of. No "I-told-you-so's" about it. Family and friends did not mean anything by their refusal; no one really had money to.

For a while, even my son's health insurance was taken away. But that was fixed recently. A bit of calm and reason to hope has brightened her face now. She told her family court assigned lawyer to retrieve the order of protection that forbid me from coming near her, adding she hadn't requested in the first place. Both of us at the courthouse appeared shocked upon the revelation that our autistic son had said he'd rather see me at the visitation center. In a courtroom full of people, no adults in her side. Her lawyer said she wasn't going to retrieve the order of protection and that she was only willing to moderate it once the judge was back. When the judge returned,  they had us show up to court separately and no measure of moderation was allowed. Instead her lawyer insisted I take a batterer accountability course. According to my lawyer, it doesn't mean I'm guilty of anything; it's just to win over the judge. The whole process was just about the lawyers on all side, except on mine, talking. Even the judge had its say and at no point was I asked anything directly. 

All talk, and no substance.