Sometimes I'm Afraid to Look

Sometimes I am afraid of looking at pictures of my children when they were younger.  Okay, most of the time I’m afraid.  I’m afraid that I’ll see things now that I should have seen then.  I’m afraid that I’ll they’ll look unhappy.  Truthfully, I’m afraid that Conner will look sad, and that Jackson will look like he was lost in the shuffle.  What I’m really afraid of seeing, is that I was a bad mother.  Maybe I’m still a bad mother, or at least not the mother that they deserve.

But when I let myself look, really look, I have yet to find any monsters lurking in the shadows.  In this picture, Conner has just turned four.  His spoken language was mostly “Mom” and “more” with a few other words here and there.  One of those was ‘(s)whim’.

At this time, Jackson was a toddler and Conner was chronically sleep deprived.  I know, young children often have trouble sleeping.  All of the books on autism were quick to say ‘children on the spectrum may have difficulty sleeping’, but they never said what that meant, or what to do about it. 

Eventually, someone connected us with the  Neurophysiology department at Children’s Hospital to understand what was happening.  Let me say, there is a real Dr. Richard Ferber and I think he may have helped save our family’s lives – or at least some semblance of our sanity.

But in the meantime, left to our own devices we had found a survival regimen, several nights a week, we would drive as a family to the YMCA after dinnertime.  We would swim for an hour, or more.  Then everyone would change into their pajamas, and sometimes the boys would fall asleep on the ride home.

Conner was a capable swimmer.  He wouldn’t tolerate the sensation of touching bottom.  It didn’t matter if it was a pool or a pond.  No Way!  So, before he was three he could swim unassisted.  His form wasn’t going to get him onto the Olympic swim team, but he could get from one side of the pool to the other.  However, we knew that statistics.  Drowning was, and is, a leading cause of death in children with autism.  So, Conner was only allowed to swim when he was wearing his ‘bubble’.

So now, when I let myself look back at this picture I can see how hard everyone was trying.  He was trying to be heard, and we were doing our best to listen.  The family got in the car and we went swimming.  No monsters, just memories of how things were, which was much happier than many families get... with only the faintest shadows left of how they might have been different.