At the playground, Ezra climbs the wooden structure and tentatively approaches the slide. He is overly cautious, always afraid he'll have a feeling or sensation he didn't prepare for. While other kids jump from high platforms and race around on tricycles, Ezra won't even go down the slide alone. Occupational therapists call this "problems with self-regulation." He doesn't feel confident handling the unfamiliar. It's one of the ways his autism presents itself.
"Catch it," he says to me. It's a line from The Wonder Pets, but I know what he means: "Catch me." I hold him lightly under his arms and help him go slowly down the slide.
A boy around four or five years old, a year or so older than Ezra, approaches him.
"I'm going to go down that slide too!" he tells Ezra. His mother smiles at me, but I start to tense up.
"Cheese, cabbage, popcorn," Ezra says back to the boy, quoting again from one of his videos. This is what he usually says to kids who are older than him, I think because in this particular video the girl who reads these words from a book is older than him. It's hard to know why, though. He smiles as he says it. At times like this, I'm glad his speech is so unintelligible. The boy just smiles back and races around to the ladder for the slide.
"How old is he?" the mother asks.
Nothing gets past me when it comes to other people's experiences of my kid.
I look for evidence that she's wondering what's wrong with him, but I don't see any in her expression. Ezra is small for his age, so most people still see him as a baby, which is always a relief.
"He's three," I say. It's not really a lie. He's closer to four than three, but officially he is still three. I analyze her reaction, but it's just a pleasant smile.
"Cute," she says, and I release my breath.
I am just beginning to get a sense of what these sorts of pleasant playground conversations are like for most parents, for parents whose child doesn't have delays. When people ask me questions about Griffin, my typically developing child, who is younger than Ezra, the answers come easily. I don't feel like I have to guard myself. One of the terrible ironies of parenting a child with autism is that, while the child is thought to be unconcerned with other people's reactions, I have become hyper-aware of them. Nothing gets past me when it comes to other people's experiences of my kid. I have learned to quickly remove him from the care of therapists and evaluators who were more interested in him as a case than a person, and I've hurried him away from plenty of strangers eager to make him something easy for them to grasp.
©2008 Kerry Cohen and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kerry Cohen is the author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity (coming in June) and the author of the young adult novel Easy. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her family. |
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