My husband and I are the sometimes proud, sometimes mortified parents of a four-and-a-half-year-old boy, Jonah, who has autism. Jonah is a bright, mischievous, caring and challenging boy. We love him and are handling our somewhat unusual lives quite well. With autism, however, everything can seem like a challenge: mealtimes, bath time, car rides, birthday parties, you name it.
Among other things, Jonah doesn’t speak and doesn’t understand normal social cues. He will walk up to a stranger in the park and look in his picnic basket. He will climb down a playground slide without noticing if any child is about to slide right at him. Every time he hears the song “Happy Birthday to You,” he marches to the place of honor, ready to blow out the candles and smash the cake. When he is hindered, distracted or diverted from these activities, the likely result is a tantrum. And when the tantrum is in public, there’s usually the added fun of stars, glares, and disapproving looks from strangers. I could go on… but this article is not about what autism is, or how difficult it is, or why its occurrence has reached epidemic proportions. It is about the advantages of autism. And really, there are several.
I have to admit from the start: I’m only being half funny when I say that we intend to take advantage of any and all emerging abilities of the sages, like in the Las Vegas scene of Rain Man, but that doesn’t mean it seems probable since they say that only 10% of autistics have these abilities. Oh good. I guess making ridiculous amounts of money counting cards isn’t everything. The good thing is that there are other things we can enjoy right now.
One is innocence. While other kids his age have “grown over” to superheroes and swords, our son still loves bubbles and blocks. While his peers have discarded traditional children’s songs for pop music, Jonah still happily requests “Wheels on the Bus” and does all the hand movements too. He doesn’t watch commercials and then demands whatever toy, gadget, or breakfast cereal is advertised. He doesn’t understand the concept of Christmas or birthdays, at least not the way other kids do, so he’s perfectly happy with some toys and something nice to eat.
When our son is enjoying himself to the full, no one is so uninhibitedly delighted. A joyous Jonah is a beautiful sight. He is never embarrassed or self-conscious about what he is doing, and it shows. What you get is a child who is largely unaffected by most of the things that can’t help but affect other children’s consciousness: bad news on TV, anxiety about dad leaving for work, fear of the bogeyman under the bed. In a sense, autism shields you from many of the normal worries, apprehensions, and insecurities of a nearly five-year-old.
Plus, people have told us that it’s especially entertaining to watch, and we can see why; the way he interacts with his environment is undeniably interesting. We find it an advantage to have a child who sees the world through a different lens. He puts his fingers to his eyes to capture an interesting image or tilts his head to the side and looks at things from an angle. He loves kaleidoscopes, spinning toys, and flashlights, and he seems to see them in a way the rest of us can’t. He teaches us to stop, look and listen to things in a way that has never occurred to us before.
There are advantages, even, in its silence. While we’d love for him to learn to talk and we’re doing everything we can to help him learn to communicate verbally, it’s nice to know he’s not going to start yelling obscenities at the mall or call the police and tell them our house is being shot at. You can persevere at the light switch flipping it on and off a thousand times, but we’re never subject to endless replays of movie quotes, nursery rhymes, or some random snippet of something you heard on TV.
In fact, we’ve found that for every challenge we face with Jonah, we’re presented with an unexpected, precious, and often hilarious gift. Gifts are what keep us going, as with everything in life, they balance out the bad and show us our child and our situation in a beautiful and ever-changing light.
And perhaps that balance really is the greatest gift of all.
