The Halloween Parade

This was my very first glimpse of David in his Halloween costume.

Oh wait—this is not David, but my nephew who is slightly bigger and eight years older than David showing him that costumes really aren't so bad. On second thought, maybe David was somewhat traumatized by the sausage casing look. I need to give Thomas a great deal of credit, though, because extracating himself from the costume without ripping it was nothing short of a Houdini move.

So, this was my first glimpse of David at the Halloween parade and, as you can tell, he already doesn't look too thrilled. Please note the red shirt peeking out from under SpongeBob because, as you know, we cannot be without our favorite color. His left arm has begun to creep back into the costume to allow for a quick escape from SpongeBob's clutches if given the opportunity.

The parade begins and he's walking, although it is difficult to get a good picture when he is hiding from the camera like a criminal on his way to the pokey.

He's still walking...and still hiding.

And he's made his escape. There it is, Ladies and Gentlemen, he spied his family cheering in the crowd, decided that we had seen enough and he'd had enough. Now there is some strut in that step.

Let's see, I spent $12 for the costume, which averages to about fifty cents a second of wear time. I think that sets a new record for David.

A Change of Seasons

I am not the kind of person who would enjoy living in a temperate climate, sunny during the day, a cool breeze at night, flowers blooming continually. (Okay, maybe it would have appeal during the month of February. I hate February.) Call me crazy, but I love having four distinct seasons. Living in Nebraska, we certainly have weather extremes—sometimes all in a single day.

David, however, hates the change of seasons. I guess I shouldn't presume that. To be more accurate, David hates change—seasons or otherwise—and the change of clothes that accompanies a change of seasons can sometimes throw us into a tailspin.

Getting David to switch from sandals to tennis shoes or shorts to jeans is somewhat comparable to the Middle East peace negotiations. To get David to try something new, there is usually some coaxing, some compromise, a great deal of consternation, then a confrontation followed by a conflagration, but in the end we usually have to resort to flat out bribery.

The weather has gotten cooler and I was trying to prepare David for winter coat season. Of course, we had a coat for him to wear that had been Andrew's, but it was not the favored red, so I caved—I guess that is the compromise part—and bought a brand new red one to make the transition easier. So, on Monday we gave David a choice. If he wanted to go to swimming lessons, he had to be decked in his red and gray puffer coat from Target. Well, let's just say that he wore the coat, but not without a fight. And he was still so annoyed about it when he got home, that he ripped it off and threw it on the floor of the garage as soon as Michael had stopped the car.

Tuesday, I bought David his Halloween costume--nothing like waiting until the last minute, right? David does not like to wear costumes, surprise, surprise, but it was SpongeBob Squarepants, one of his favorite characters. I knew that he needed to see it and hopefully try it on before the big day, so I pulled out all the stops. First I had Andrew parade around in it and then (please HOLD for the bribery part) I told him that if he put it on, we would go get an ice cream cone. He abandoned the costume, left the room and I thought that he had made the decision to stay home until he quickly returned wearing his new red winter coat zipped up to the chin, looking like a puffy red cherub. It was like introducing the SpongeBob costume into David's wardrobe had pushed the red coat one notch up the tolerance totem pole. David still hated the coat, but not as much as he hated the costume.

One of my wise advisors, who in this case just happens to be my 13-year-old nephew, has suggested that I should always just be a season ahead. Tomorrow, I should introduce David to his Christmas sweater, so that he will wear his SpongeBob costume on Halloween. Then by the time I am ready to get David dressed to take Christmas card pictures, I can break out the Easter outfit. By the way, when does Target begin stocking their Easter clothes?

He Ain’t Heavy

Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, I am intimately familiar with the famous quote, "He ain't heavy, Father, he's my brother." It was chosen by Father Flanagan to be the motto of Boys Town, a home for troubled boys that he founded in Omaha in 1917 and later made famous in a movie starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney.

When David was diagnosed, it was like my world shifted course. For a long time, I couldn't think of anything else. Obviously now, almost three years later, I can think of other things. I have to think of other things, but not a day goes by that I do not think of autism, even though that thought may not evoke the same feeling in the pit of my stomach that it did originally.

When David was diagnosed, our older son was seven years old. We did think about the ramifications that David's diagnosis would have for Andrew as an adult. Would he need to care for David? Would they live in the same town? Would Andrew need to support David? What we did not originally consider, however, was that Andrew would feel the impact immediately. At the first autism conference I attended, I heard a developmental pediatrician discuss the effect of autism on siblings. The worries that he had heard expressed by siblings of children with autism as young as six, seven, eight or nine years old were startling.

Andrew is an extremely tender-hearted boy, so I knew that he worried about his brother. Last week it all came spilling out. He had just finished reading the book Rules by Cynthia Lord. It is written from the perspective of an older sister, ironically, with a brother named David who has autism. To quote the back cover of the book, "That's where I keep all the RULES I'm teaching David so if my someday-he'll-wake-up-a-regular-brother wish doesn't ever come true, at least he'll know how the world works, and I won't have to keep explaining things."

Andrew is required to read every day for school, and on this particular day he read an extra 11 minutes because he wanted to finish this book. An extra 11 minutes that were so moving to him that he came into my bedroom sobbing. The flood of emotions could not be stopped. All of his fears came tumbling out. "What if David never can be understood by other people? What if David gets lost? What if he cannot be found even with an Amber Alert? What will he do if I die first? Who will take care of him?"

I could not tell him not to worry because, he informed me, he worries about it every day. He worries every single day. Just like me.

What I learned from this experience is that Andrew has wisdom beyond his years. I cannot pat him on the head and tell him everything is going to be okay. I cannot tell him not to worry. I cannot tell a joke and take his mind off of it, coax him out of his concern. He wants to be a partner in this process. He is a partner in this process and he is smart enough to realize that at some point, he may be solely responsible for David. Do I wish that this was not the case? Yes, but I know that Andrew loves his brother unconditionally. Andrew accepts David's autism, even celebrates David's autism as an integral part of who he is. He has often remarked that he would not take away David's autism if he could. So, do I believe that Andrew is up to the task? Absolutely. In fact, we may have a difficult time convincing Andrew that David and (hopefully) his wife and kids do not really want to live with him. Maybe just next door.

Double Standard

Until he started full-day Kindergarten, David stayed at my parents' house on the three days a week that I work. Because my parents have a relatively new coffee table—especially when compared to any of the furniture that I own—my Mom used to cover it with a blanket when David came over to stay for the day. Obviously, she was trying to protect the table from sticky fingers, matchbox cars, spilled milk or any manner of injury that David can inflict. In David's mind, however, it was like she had wrapped it just for him, creating a blank canvas, a platform on which to run his train, assemble a puzzle or line up his DVDs. Soon, David could not be in the house for five minutes without carefully lifting everything off of the table—remote control, magazines, potted mum plant—and then requesting help in covering the table.

Last Friday, David had a day off from school and spent the whole day at Granny camp, as it has come to be known. As soon as we arrived home from the land of the veiled table, he apparently decided that it was a practice that needed to be implemented at home. Did he carefully remove all of my precious treasures off of the table to prepare for the draping of the blanket? Of course not. Instead, he lifted one end of the table and watched with delight as everything slid off the other end into a pile on the floor. Talk about a double standard.

So, last week I also had David's first school conference of the year. I was a little bit nervous just because I have not known this teacher for very long and I wasn't really sure how David was doing in her class. Well, she told me that David has made huge progress. His handwriting is improving. He is doing well with his Touch Math and he is reading above grade level. Stop the presses. David READS? He certainly will not read for me at home. Essentially, David will do everything at school that he respectfully declines to do at home. Once again, the double standard. David performs better for his teacher, than he does for me at home and it couldn't have made me happier.