social life
Emotional IQ
Sam and I had the most amazing exchange this morning, one that belongs in some kind of magazine about how mature people should deal with powerful emotions.
First, you’ve got to set a stage for two people completely, utterly and totally misunderstanding each other. We’d both just gotten up — and neither of us are morning people. Plus, I had had only a sip or two of the morning joe, so that’s two strikes against me.
Sam was opening a vitamin jar to get a tablet out and suddenly it just flew from his hand and rolled on the floor. I didn’t see any of this. I just heard him yell “OH!” so loud adrenaline rushed to my nerve endings, so full and fast that it hurt my fingertips.
I thought my reaction was amazingly calm, considering. I turned around, puzzled that nothing seemed to be wrong, and said, “Don’t yell so loud in the house.”
That upset Sam terribly. He left the room.
A few minutes later, he told me that my comment made him feel like a little kid again and brought back bad childhood memories. That brought tears to my eyes. I tried to apologize for the comment, but Sam said we shouldn’t talk about it anymore, since it was about to make me cry.
I told him no, please, I welcomed the chance to say I’m sorry not only for hurting his feelings today, but also for any bad childhood memories and we could talk a little more if he wanted.
Sam said he remembered misbehaving, and it was in the past and it could stay in the past. I told him I thought that was very mature.
Then I said, you know, I didn’t know why you yelled so loud. I thought I needed to call 911 or something. He explained what happened, I told him I understood now why he yelled, and then he said he understood why I felt like I needed to say something about the yelling.
What Sam brought to the conversation that was so amazing was believing me when I said I loved him and never wanted to hurt him. That was part of my apology. I told him that it’s important to me to stick up for myself, and I’ve noticed that when someone sticks up for themselves, it can be hard to do without hurting the other person sometimes.
The whole conversation took all of 10 minutes and brought me such a sense of wonderment. I’m still trying to figure out where this supposed lack of social understanding comes from in people with autism. Sam is so clear-eyed and clear-headed. His father and I could not have had such a conversation early in our marriage. Even later in our marriage, it would take two hours to wade through all the emotional thicket to get to the same place.
I think it’s the opposite. I think the rest of us lack emotional intelligence. We play stupid mental games with each other, and we don’t trust each other.
When Sam doesn’t trust someone, he just doesn’t deal with them at all. How smart is that?
Any girl would be lucky to have him.
The “Empathy Deficit” fallacy
At the risk of falling to the theory of self-reference, I’ve always been skeptical that people with autism lack empathy. I’ve just never seen that deficit in Sam, nor in any other people with autism or Asperger’s that I’ve met.
I got to thinking about that after reading this piece in the Boston Globe, which goes to some length to describe how our kids apparently are lacking it.
Empathy, by definition, means some kind of emotional response to the pain or suffering of another. Babies and children don’t always demonstrate their empathy the way adults do — that’s part of our socialization — but they feel it just the same.
My guess is that some of us not on the spectrum look for empathy to be demonstrated in a tangible way. Then when we don’t see it, we say “a-ha, that person with autism lacks empathy.”
The Boston Globe article even spelled that out with a list of tasks an empathetic person is more likely to do. Most of them, I could imagine Sam doing, but not always for purely empathetic reasons.
For example, “return incorrect change to a cashier” could also be following the rules and keeping things correct.
The next two, “let someone else ahead of them in line” and “carry a stranger’s belongings” requires a person to break a social rule about getting into another person’s personal space. Sam does this all the time at Albertsons because he is a courtesy clerk and it’s expected of him. I’ve seen it generalize.
“Give money to a homeless person,” “volunteer,” “donate to a charity,” check, check and check. In fact, we talk about picking our charitable causes with purpose.
“Look after a friend’s pet or plant,” been there, done that.
“Live on a vegetarian die.” Sorry, we’re in Texas and he’s meat-eater. But butchering day comes with much reverence. We all know where our food comes from.
Sometimes I think we overreact to perceived deficits.
Sam doesn’t hug me. I don’t ask for it. Here’s why. The few times we do hug, there is so much human connection, I can almost feel the nuclear fission begin. Better not to disturb the universe like that.
Billy Bob’s
Last year, Michael discovered that he could get into Billy Bob’s, Fort Worth’s famous honky tonk, on Thursday nights for free.
He and Sam went together this Thursday, sort of an end-of-summer celebration. Both start classes this week. They were lucky this time, Michael reports, because the cover band kept playing. At one point, they played a family favorite, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Texas Flood.
Sam reports that he had fun and would like to go again soon. “People always have fun at Billy Bob’s,” he said. It took a while to figure out what was going on, he said. He danced with one girl.
Michael danced with the same girl.
Considering neoteny
Do you want to be my friend?
Those who’ve read See Sam Run may remember the passage that alludes to Eric Carle’s book, “Do You Want to Be My Friend?” Classic children’s books were a big part of fostering Sam’s language development as a preschooler. That little mouse was persistent, and Sam liked the repetitive language.
Companionship
A child enters your home and makes so much noise you can hardly stand it–then departs, leaving the house so quiet you think you’ll go mad. – Dr. J.A. Holmes
Call it “empty nest,” or as one girlfriend wrote recently, “going out of the parenting business,” most parents look to the day their child moves out with a mix of excitement and dread.
Make no mistake about it, Mark and I all but counted the days we thought/hoped/prayed we’d have our three children launched and we’d have the house back to ourselves.
Mark was killed in a traffic accident two-and-half years ago — so much for that plan.
For a long time after his death, I kept my focus on prepping that launch pad for Sam. Mark and I had learned that it’s often traumatic for adults with disabilities to get to age 40 or 50, having lived with their parents all that time, only to confront their deaths. Not only must those adults with disabilities cope with the loss, they also must learn new life skills in middle age. It’s tough stuff, or so we’d always been told.
About six months ago, though, I began to reflect on exactly what we were still shooting for. Sam moves into an apartment by himself, and I live in this house by myself, and we’re both alone for the next 20 years.
All so that he wouldn’t be hit with a double-whammy when it’s my time to go.
I asked the smartest person I knew whether I was being selfish in re-thinking this, or was my question a fair one — what do Sam and I really get by trading out 20 years of companionship?
Not much, she agreed, as long as I’m mindful that he still needs those skills.
It’s a funny place to be. Sam is taking college classes and working part-time. He manages his own finances. He drives. He helps out a lot around the house and farm. I do wish he cooked more, but we’ll get there. Although far less than what his brother has as a freshman at TCU, Sam has his own social life. (I will blog about this topic soon.)
I’ve been trying to ease us towards a “roommate” way of getting along, at my wise friend’s encouragement. We have a good life where we are right now.
As far as Sam’s launch pad, it’s still there if, for example, he got his dream job (computers at the National Weather Service) and got serious about that apartment he thinks about from time to time (mostly that he’ll have cable TV and high-speed internet, unlike now).
I haven’t lost track of the support he’d need to get out the door, if that’s his heart’s desire. It’s not much different, really, than what his brother and sister would need, just a little more of it.