Of Water, Comfort, and Danger
September 12, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
I haven’t been able to get Christopher Marino and his father, Walter Marino, off my mind; I keep thinking of what was it like to be in the water, treading the water, for hour upon hour? And in the dark, throughout the night, first together via the call-and-response of lines from Disney movies Toy Story in particular)?
And I have to say it: What happened to Christopher—being caught in a rip tide and and swept out to sea—-is something that I have thought could happen to Charlie. Swimming in the ocean is one of Charlie’s most favorite things to do and he’s very often the farthest out. Jim’s always with him, though this year was the first that it became quite apparent that we can’t really keep up with Charlie in the water. I know that if Charlie ever got washed out farther and farther into the ocean like Christopher, Jim—just like Walter Marino—-would be swimming right after him, though we’re both quite sure that Charlie could easily out-swim us.
One reason for this is because Charlie does not (as far as I can tell) feel any alarm to be in the water in general and in the ocean in particular. The same is described of Christopher in a September 11th News Journal Online article highlighted by a friend:
For some autistic children, the sensation of water is as comforting as a blanket.
So what was Christopher Marino feeling during the 14 hours he was swept out to sea last weekend?
“He can’t tell me. I don’t know. I wish I did know,” his mother, Robyn Bishop of Oviedo, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Yet she said his autism — the brain development disorder that blocks Christopher from telling his mom what it was like to be all alone, drifting away from his dad in the dark — might well have helped save him.
Such is the paradoxical nature of autism, say researchers and therapists.
For Charlie in particular, the sensation of water is as comforting as a big fleece blanket. Charlie was 6 or 7 when he started wrapping himself up in a king-size dark blue fleece blanket; this proved to be one of the first things that he did in an effort to comfort himself. He’s insisted on sleeping with a big fleece blanket at night ever since and does prefer that his blankets be blue.
Dr. Richard Solomon, an autism professional based in Michigan, also praised Christopher’s father’s response: “‘The dad was brilliant…….He treated the event as something that was fun for the boy. (Christopher) probably did not have the anxiety about, ‘When are they coming to get us?’” Indeed. Like Christoher, Charlie does not have a lot of language, but Charlie’s extremely attuned to the non-verbal aspects of communication (tone of rhyme, speed, volume, gesture, amy melodic elements, gesture) and picks up on emotions, and especially anxiety, fear, and anger. I’ve been trying to teach myself to at least feign nonchalance when he and I are in a tense and difficult situation in public, lest he mimic my worry.
Christopher is described as unable to “understand the gravity of the situation — and the dangers that lurk beneath the ocean’s surface”; it’s this, it’s speculated, that “might have kept Christopher from desperately fighting the current and sapping his strength.” I do think Charlie would find it at least a little odd to be swimming for so long and certainly in the dark. Charlie does seem to have a supreme and natural confidence in his ability to stay afloat in the waves. He’s not (as his mother would) going to panic if he can’t put his feet down on the sand; he would just keep swimming.
“It . . . speaks to the observation that children with autism are very much at peace — very relaxed — in the water,” said Michael Alessandri, a Coral Gables-based clinical professor of psychology and autism expert. “The situation was likely not exacerbated because the child did not panic — did not realize (the) danger he may have been in — and stayed calm.”
Christopher’s mother said he hasn’t shown any signs that he was traumatized.
He suffered multiple jellyfish stings on his legs and has been limping since his rescue, Bishop said. But that hasn’t stopped him.
Christopher jumped right back into the pool.
There’s jellyfish in the ocean at the Jersey shore where we swim. I’ve seen Charlie reach his hand up across his back to scratch himself just as he’s about to dive under a wave; the sting is strugged off.
Nonetheless, what Christopher and Walter Marino endured reminds Jim and me that we have to be even more vigilant when Charlie’s swimming in the ocean, and to be sure to swim near a lifeguard.
I can’t imagine going through something like that. But I can understand the comfort of water. As a kid, I was in the water every chance I got. Water mutes the sounds when you are under it. And it a wonderful feeling all around your body. And you can so much more in the water like handstands.
And that sensation of floating, even flying!
So scary. I can not even being to imagine how terrifying that would have been.
M also wrapper herself up in blankets and still requests it sometimes.
When she was little she loved swimming but hated baths. We figured out way later that she hated the sound of the faucet since we would often leave it running to do her hair. It was not until watching a video of the bath traumas that I realized that was triggering her to get very upset. It is so hard to figure those things out sometimes when you are in the heat of it.
Thanks for mentioning about the sound of the water bothering M—-Charlie sometimes holds his hands over his ears when the water is running and even when we first went to the ocean he did too.
I love being underwater. I learned to hold my breath for a very long time. Sitting on the bottom of the pool is a favourite.
You described it perfectly
For some autistic children, the sensation of water is as comforting as a blanket.
That is how it is for my son too. He LIVES in the water from the minute we get to the beach and has to be dragged out.
Charlie definitely likes to be at the bottom of the pool and in as deep as water as possible—wishing we could be at the beach now…….
Water has not been a blanket to me, I guess due to a variety of factors, my Juniors schools idea of a swimming pool was an unheated open air tank accessible over a tarmac playground. We did not even have the luxury of a changing room, the school built only one, and that was reserved for the girls, boys had to change in a corridor.
Well that bad enough, but I was really traumatised for almost all time by a teacher who thought that the way to deal with a kid who was reluctant to submerge himself in such a makeshift tank, was to hold his head underwater.
I only discovered the joys of swimming a year ago, and only today have I been half confidently swimming out of my depth up to the 3 metre mark.
In these latter days I much enjoy the experience, I suppose in part because it relieves the burden of gravity on my body, cos I am one achy old skeleton when I get out the pool.
Twas an excellent method for suicide though, the notion of just wading out into a cold lake and either drowning or dying of exposure is very attractive.
I don’t know about the Polar Bears club, but this is interesting, you can never swim in water colder than 32 degrees fahrenheit it is when you get out of it you will freeze to death.
I am SO happy I went to Ga. Tech, where drownproofing was invented, and got compulsorily drownproofed. As a natural “sinker” (almost-pure ectomorph who can’t float in fresh water) Drownproofing was a Godsend to me. I am quite confident that I can stay alive in the ocean until the thirst gets to me, something eats me, or I get rescued, whatever happens first.
Oh, the engineering solution: (We’re all auties here, right?) You can buy itty bitty strobe lights for fastening to life vests, though I imagine the strobe would really really get on Charlie’s nerves. I know it would on mine. Maybe one of those EPIRB radio beacons would be better. False emergency alarms are punished, though. I wonder if somebody makes a waterproof radio beacon which can be turned on by a transmission from somewhere else
Mein Gott drownproofing indeed when tis my time I shall go under
Heck you now got me I am going to provoke it in adverse circumstances to see what it will take to kill me.
Oh, and P.s. One of the reasons I exist is that my Dad turned down a ride home from Saipan in USS Indianapolis, after she’d delivered the bomb parts. As I reckon most here know, of those not killed by the torpedo and sinking, about half were eaten by sharks or died from drinking salt water.
War stories eh?? and ??
My dad lernt to swim in the army, what good it might have done him during actual service there is no evidence, probably none, well I shan’t repeat the anecdote of his cousin Vic who was merchant navy, another time maybe, but I do recall my dads swimming being of some use back around 62, maybe 63 can’t be sure but the tide was coming in at Tenby and there were some teenagers stuck on a rock, my dad did his stuff to get them back to the beach, lifeguards to hell.
My dad was a strong swimmer.
Well, Larry, I can think of one reason for a soldier to know how to swim. Imagine a bad retreat, even a route. When running away, being able to swim across a river might preserve one’s life, if not his value to the Army. I think Caesar insisted on all of his soldiers being able to swim while wearing all of their armor and weapons. Maybe Frau Doktor La Professora can back me up on this.
Umm, I meant to write “rout.”
Larry, all Drownproofing is, is teaching people to spend minimum energy to stay afloat and alive. It mostly consists of floating face-down like a dead man while occasionally moving just enough to stick one’s face above the surface and take a breath. It also includes tricks like taking one’s trousers off, knotting the ends of the legs, and then inflating them with air and using them to help one float.
Justthisguy got me curious about this–
Theory and technique of Fred Lanoue’s “drownproofing”
Includes photos
H’mm that is interesting, drowning in the UK is a relatively rare event so I guess I wold have to be extremely unlucky or careless to drown in my local pool not that it feels like it when I am in the deep end and the lifeguard is on the telephone.
I am not sure I am a natural floater, I find it harder to tread water than I do to swim, the nervous bit comes when I stop my swimming stroke to make a grab for the side of the pool, similarly I find it hard to make the transition from being vertical to being flat out when I want to swim away from the deep water.
I don’t really have the confidence to swim underwater either.
@justtisguy,
now the trousers thing is something I didn’t know—–
I first read about the trousers thing in an article in Time magazine, in the early sixties, when Time could still be taken seriously. It was in an article about a sailor who had fallen off of his aircraft carrier and remembered his Navy Training, which taught him to tie overhand knots at the cuffs of the dungarees, then sling them overhead to trap air, and lean onto the crotch part. Repea as needed, as the air leaks through the wet denim. We were also taught to button up our shirts to the neck and blow air in there
P.s. Navy Training is pretty good. According to some people I’ve corresponded with on the Internet, Navy Training enables one to bring the reactor up to criticality and steam the ship away, even though covering one eye so as to see only one set of gauges, because of that liberty in Olongapo City which you’ll never remember.