Who Knew

With the coming on of the New Year (and completion of a decade at that), a few thoughtful friends have written reliving events we were involved in together 10 years ago. They referenced us being in the states during Y2K, and I looked at my husband and said, " I totally don't remember this." His reply was something like, "Sure you do, I was brought home for a meeting and we all went to celebrate Christmas and New Year's." Then it came back to me as fresh as yesterday. December 1999 was the year that we learned that our son had Asperger's Syndrome, a form of high functioning autism. We had been living in Thailand at the time and his terrifically sharp 1st grade teacher had noticed that he was just a little bit different - some times in his own world and some times taking all the other students along with him. His fine motor skills were poor, and during clean up time she would often find him under the childsize table examining the colorful scraps of papers left over from art projects. That was the year they started the "Bug Club" in his class; because he was fascinated with creepy crawlies, moths, and butterflies. We had always known that he was unique (as each of our children have proved to be); but he, particularly, had a world of imagination that he could move in and out of and share. Many times when he was imagining, he would run back and forth waving his fingers. We had asked a counselor about this before, but had never been given any reason to pursue it. Anyway, my husband was away at his meeting when I took my son to a wonderful lady psychiatrist in my home town. She confirmed a diagnosis of Aspergers, some thing we had never heard of before. We both googled it in our separate locations and, as at the time the only information available included the most serious and bleak scenarios, began to let the diagnosis sink in. Our responses were very different. I remember feeling some sort of relief like being given a key to better understand, discipline, and care for our vibrant son. I remember my husband broke down as we talked about it on the phone. He was thinking of all the relational experiences that our son would never have. As it turns out (10 years later), some things have been much harder than I could ever have imagined; but most things have been more amazing than we could have foreseen. We have three extremely special, unique sons; with varying and tremendous strengths and some weaknesses, and all have been blessed with great friendships.

Da Boyz Christmas 1999