Before He’s Ready

Reader Laura (the autismfromtheoutside blog) wrote in response to “Work It Out”: “What do you see in his future? Helping sorting in school cafeteria, hanging clothes as a local store, watering plants at a nursery.” She mentions these are jobs she’s seen students trained for, and they all sound pretty good to me for Alex. (Of course, I just got laid off, and they sound pretty good for me, too.)

I remember watching Alex in the isolette after his premature birth (21 ounces, 27 weeks’ G), watching him grip the breathing tube in his silent, tiny determination to some day pull it from his own throat — which he did, more than once, and sometimes before he was ready. Doing something before you’re ready has always been to me a sign of a good spirit. Alex’s, what should I call them?, internal resources have developed a lot over the past year: concentrating on homework, picking up around the house, remembering the precise location of some fun store he’s visited only once. Says Jill, “There’s not nothing going on in there.”

My problem is not what he can do, but what I’m afraid I can’t do. I watched Alex a few months ago, for instance, as he struggled to finish the tougher levels of an IQ test. He pieced together the puzzle smoothly when the solution called for using four and six pieces, for instance, but I could see his progress wind down like an old clock at the eight- and 12-piece levels. To be honest, I couldn’t have quickly done the 12-piecer, either.) Stalled, he looked away, but still he sat there. Then he looked back at the puzzle, touched a piece, looked away, sat in front of the damned puzzle with a look of defeat that probably felt as good in his throat as that air tube.
But here’s the thing: He realized he’d hit a wall, and didn’t like it. A big part of the workworld is like that, and an equally big part is moving on and up (tell me about it). Obviously he’ll do that puzzle someday. Somehow, as long as it never cuts into how much I believe in him, I think that my current fear buys him the ability to do that. It’s a cheap price to pay.
The NYC agency YAI has a new online autism community, and they let me do one of their first blogs. See it and their new community at http://www.yaiautismcommunity.org/blog/