While it’s often frustrating trying to find some time at our YMCA pool for Charlie to swim in—-because, in the late afternoon and evening, the pools are primarily for the use of the numerous swim teams—-on Wednesday night, Charlie and I found ourselves by the “family pool,” with its water slides and 3 1/2 foot pool. He had asked to swim and then gotten his swimsuit on. At the pool, his eyes drifted towards the big pool. It was filled with lines of teenagers swimming up and down and up and down and (as I had done in the car en route to the YMCA), I carefully explained why we would not be able to swim in that pool.

Charlie sat on a bench for a few minutes with his head down, before taking off shoes, socks, blue coat, and blue sweatshirt. At the far end of the pool we saw some of the lifeguards we knew from swimming in the big pool in the summer and fall. One lifeguard—she just got her teaching degree and is still looking for a position—waved and called out that she was doing some sort of water safety training: Another lifeguard (who’s a very conscientious pool manager, and also recognizes Charlie) was holding onto a backboard; after a moment, another dunked himself under.

Feet dangling in the water, Charlie sat a few feet from them and watched, and didn’t move for several minutes. He watched as each lifeguard took turns pretending to be drowning the water and be lifted up, strapped onto the body board, and their head secured. Aside from two boys, the elder a few years younger than Charlie, no one was in the pool and soon Charlie slid in and started splashing and gliding and grinning his way up and down the water.

The elder boy stood still for a moment, eyes on Charlie. He said something, though I couldn’t hear with the noise of the water and the coaches calling out instructions and all the other noise and voices. Charlie kicked his way down to the shallower end and when the other boy, eyes still on Charlie, was closer to the edge, I mentioned “autism.”

“What’s that?”said the boy.

I’ve never done a great job answering this question to children—always seems like I’ve so and too much to say, and too many words come out. I mentioned, and as quickly explained, “neurological.” The boy listened, looked at Charlie, said “ok” and swam off.

Charlie remained relaxed and swam again near the lifeguards, always staying carefully out of their way. The other boy and his brother went up and down on the slides and splashed and swam, often passing close to Charlie and he to them.

“How did he get it?” the boy suddenly asked me. “How do you get autism?”

“He was born with it,” I said.

“Oh,” said the boy, and paused, and swam.

We stayed for about 40 minutes total, and then Charlie climbed the stairs and I picked up the coats and his shoes and we went to the family locker room, to shower and get dressed and head back home, after swimming in good company.

8-gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps has ADHD: Did he succeed not so much in spite of having ADHD, but, in part, because he does?

Tara Parker-Pope on the New York Times Well blog posed this question. Allow me to rephrase it in terms of autism and (to refer to an oft-mentioned figure), animal scientist Temple Grandin.

Did Grandin succeed not so much in spite of being autistic, but because she is?

And as some will not doubt rush in to point out that Grandin is very “hfa,” I’ll note that some things that can make things very trying for more son—his intensive need for order and his particular, deep-running sensory needs—can be of benefit. I always know where to look for his items and he’s becoming a champion grocery-put-awayer. I don’t think he’d himself be such a swimmer if he didn’t like being–need to be–in the water so.

Six deep-sea divers have been enlisted by the city of New York to repair a valve at the bottom of a 700-foot shaft in Dutchess County, yesterday New York Times reports. The shaft is located in the Rondout-West Branch tunnel, which is 45 miles long, 13.5 feet wide, up to 1,200 feet below ground” and which brings half of the water supply to New York city from reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains. For more than a month, the six divers have to live

in a sealed 24-foot tubular pressurized tank complete with showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop, breathing air that is 97.5 percent helium and 2.5 percent oxygen, so their high-pitched squeals are all but unintelligible. They leave the tank only to transfer to a diving bell that is lowered 70 stories into the earth, where they work 12-hour shifts, with each man taking a four-hour turn hacking away at concrete to expose the valve.

And more about how the divers work:

Three divers at a time climb into the steel bell, an orb that is lowered down the shaft for 20 minutes to reach the pumping equipment in the tunnel. The bell is tethered to a bundle of cables carrying air, communication lines, electricity and water. Each diver works for four hours and rests underwater for eight before returning to the tank at the surface, where 32 more employees of Global Diving and Salvage, the Seattle company running the project, pass meals, clothes and books through an air lock.

In the saturation control room, Patrick Boyd, a life-support technician, monitors the divers’ air on a panel of screens, one of which reads 2.26 percent, for the amount of oxygen. While underwater, divers often get more oxygen in their mixture to keep them alert. John Lapeyrouse, a dive supervisor who is one of the few who can understand the helium-riddled voices, one of the side effects of what is called “saturation diving,” talked to Mr. McAfee as he worked the other day.

Apparently, the divers can ” request whatever food they like, including steak and fresh salads” but because “the air pressure in the tank dulls the taste buds,” they have to add a lot of “Tabasco, salsa and jalapenos.” And when their work is done, they must “remain in the tank for a week to gradually wean themselves off helium.” Says Robert Onesti, who’s running the project for Global Diving.

“It’s not for everybody. It’s heavy construction work, and it’s deep.”

You can say that again: I’ve come to love swimming thanks to Charlie, but dislike going underwater. Charlie, on the other hand, seems to thrive on being in deep water and, indeed, being under it. Often when we swim at the YMCA pool, he positions himself just where the water is almost over his head, and crouches down under and then propels himself out, and then ducks down under, jumps up out—-repeat, repeat, repeat.

Before he goes to sleep, Charlie always wraps his feet and legs tightly in at least two fleece blankets: Deep pressure seems not merely comforting, but essential, to his system. I’ve said it before, but I don’t know what he, or we, might have done in the past before the invention of polarfleece. And I’ve given up getting potentially scratchy sweaters for Charlie and shirts with stiff cuffs and collars: If he needs to wear those when he’s older for special occasions, he and we can deal.

Who knows but Charlie might, indeed, like scuba diving (I wouldn’t be the one going under with him, that’s for sure)—being under so much water— living underwater for a couple of weeks in a pressurized chamber might (who knows, again) appeal to him.

There’s something out there that any of us, with our diverse talents, can do, even if you have to go to the bottom of the ocean to find it.

Yes, I overparent.

It often seems to me that it’s harder than not to do this when you’ve a child with a disability. In yesterday’s Arizona Daily Star Johanna Eubanks writes about the ongoing difficulties that she, and other mothers of autistic children, have to take time for themselves; to take care of themselves.

Of course, there are marked differences in the overparenting I’m talking about, and the “helicopter”/”hothouse”/”death-grip” parenting parents who aim every effort from pregnancy on to making sure their child will be material for the Ivies as described by Joan Acocella in the November 17th New Yorker. Overparenting is kind of a way of life around here, whether in directing your every energy to taking care of a disabled son whose communication skills are—-while better with each day—-minimal and not always verbal; in writing daily emails to his teacher to explain all the things that he doesn’t; in strategizing how to spend another long afternoon together in a (hopefully) at least semi-productive way.

Again, I’m not sure I could adequately take care of Charlie without being over-scrupulous, closely considering (if not obsessing) about minute details of his education, health, reactions to food and things that happen, sounds, the weather. Like many parents, I simply feel strange and always keep turning around, keep listening for a certain warbler voice, when Charlie is not with me, as if I’ve developed a sixth sense, a radar, that hones in immediately to where he is and how far or near.

One of the few places where I’m able to let that high-intensity parenting state subside a bit is when Charlie’s in the pool. Wednesday afternoon, we’d first gone bowling and—it was just past 5.30pm—-it was already totally dark. Soon after we’d gotten home, Charlie appeared from his room in his swimsuit and told me, with a smile, “black car.” The only other personswimming in the double-laned family/free swim section of the YMCA pool was an adolescent girl who was doing partial laps of freestroke and backstroke while her mother gave suggestions from a bench.

Jim’s often said that Charlie’s safer in the water than on land and this just seems to be more and more true. While I used to have to tail Charlie (so he wouldn’t swim into the lanes where people were doing laps), I usually go about my own business of swimming laps. Charlie likes to take his time to get into the pool and then (of course, there’s always lifeguards watching) do his own thing. So I go up and down and up and down the pool while he’s ducking under the water, backfloating, swimming half the length of the pool in no time at all, all with a kind of effortlessness in his movements.

Charlie’s not swimming to practice for any competitions. We swim because we like to. Further, the fact that I can swim is, perhaps, a by-product of (over)parenting Charlie. Before Charlie, I hated swimming and was terrified of being in water over my head. Because of Charlie, I learned to swim in the indoor pool of the town we used to live in. Thanks to Charlie, I can do something, swimming, that I spent the better part of my life avoiding and fearing and that I now not only enjoy, but thrive on.

Maybe it’s ironic, but the pool is, indeed, the one place where I’m not the over-parent, but just another person in the water.

Size 7 1/2.

That’s the size of bowling shoes I got for Charlie on Wednesday afternoon, when we go to a local bowling alley with a group of kids like Charlie and their families. I loosened the laces and pulled out the shoe’s tongue so Charlie could slide his feet in and as he did I remembered how, last week, he’d had to struggle to shove and, really, jam his heels into a size 7—a size that was simply too (duh, Mom!) too small for him. No wonder he’d been on edge last Wednesday, told me “no bowling,” sat unmoving on a bench with his head adamantly down, and swiped at a plate of fries. Too tight shoes and smashed toes and trying to let me know by his asking to leave: I didn’t get it and Charlie’d gotten more and more frustrated until there was some loud loudness and much, too much, unhappiness.

It seems like, oh, a month of two ago that Charlie was a size 6. He likes to wear black suede-y slip-ons, as does Jim—I’d just ordered Jim a new pair last week and couldn’t help but be struck by the size similarity, which is pretty notable from this photo:

Talk about like father, like son. The question for me is becoming not how long will it be before I buy Jim and Charlie the same size shoes (pretty really soon) but how soon will Charlie be wearing, oh, size 13.

With feet where they should be on Wednesday, Charlie concentrated on bowling. He got into a rhythm of choosing a swirly chartreuse ball for his first bowl, and then a neon orange one (which was heavier) for the second. He was careful to insert his fingers in the three holes and throw, I meant roll, the ball with significant force a few times. He knocked over 8 pins one time. He shared a plate of fries and ketchup without incident and was still game to go swimming afterwards.

If the shoe does fit, we go for it.

Tuesday afternoon I got into a long conversation with a friend about race and a sociology class she’s teaching and had to run out to my car. I made it home with five minutes to spare, Charlie looked at me intently through the window as the bus pulled up and the aide said “hurry Charlie time to go and get a snack,” he indeed ate a (large, as usual) snack, we went the pharmacy to pick some things up, we came home and we went to the pool.

Charlie went right to the pool’s edge smiling and stood looking into the water, then sat with his feet in. He often likes to start slow—a change from when he was younger and would hurl himself into any body of water that he came across—and my coaxing, which probably feels more like coercing, is not helpful. So I went to the swallow end and started to swim the length of the pool, back and forth.

Three generations of a family were in the pool. An elderly man was swimming the butterfly in a lane, with powerful thrashes of the water. Three boys of varying ages were at the deep end, and got told not to dive and then whistled at when the youngest started to swim across the ropes setting off the lanes for adult swimmers. Their mother, in a blue swimcap and goggles, hurried over.

Charlie had gotten into the pool and was standing just where the water reached up to his chin. He was jumping and splashing and floating and I called out to him as I swam past; he grinned and twisted in the water. I swam to the wall of the deep end and turned around. From behind me came the mother with the blue swimcap and just as I passed Charlie I went a little to the right to give her room and my foot stopped and I stopped with a bad feeling. I turned in the water and knew I’d accidentally bumped Charlie’s head with my foot.

He cried, softly, and then he wailed. Everyone stopped swimming, the lifeguard blew his whistle and looked at us, everyone was looking at Charlie. I stood and—feeling like a triple times over failed parent—told him that it was my mistake, I was trying to avoid bumping the other swimmer and I made a mistake. I was sorry.

This went on for what seemed like fifteen minutes—Charlie’s voice loud and sad, sometimes saying “I’m sorry”—me trying to speak minimally, calmly, and directly, and sighing at myself. Gradually people started swimming and Charlie swayed a little in the water and started floating about, put his face in the water, dunked himself under. He came up and went under again, blinked the water out of his eyes, put his face in and powered his shoulders and splashed a trail of water behind him.

I followed him. There were even more people in the pool, mostly parents with children Charlie’s age or a little older or younger. As we went through the water, we could hear parents saying “pull your arm back, back, back!” and “it’s your head…..” or, actually, ni-de tou-tz, as the mother was speaking in Mandarin to her son, who was a few years younger than Charlie. At one point two of the three boys we’d seen earlier were all doing the butterfly stroke beside their mother and Charlie and I paused and sometimes treaded water to stay out of the way. In the shallow end, one mother spoke (in Mandarin) to her son, her voice quick. “You don’t need to race me,” she said. “You should race against your team!” “I don’t have a team,” said her son with a little cry and threw himself forward into the water and started swimming, really fast. His mother stood and sighed. An older woman slowly, methodically swam the breast stroke horizontally past us.

Charlie kept swimming towards the deep end and I found myself doing so many laps that I said to him, I might be too tired to blog later.

It was 7.45 when he asked for the stairs. We changed and went home and I stir-fried vegetables and shrimp and made rice and Charlie asked for YouTube.

As for being too tired to blog—-something about swimming with Charlie, in the pool, in the ocean, wherever, always reenergizes me, reminds me, how lucky I am to be the mother to my lovely, lovely boy. And so:

From October 1st to October 10th, I’ll be a panelist on the Science Blogs Book Club for a discussion about Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure by Dr. Paul Offit. Hope you will join the discussion and would much like to know what you think—my first post appears today and here’s Kev on why Dr. Offit’s book is so important, and Orac on science pushing back antivaccine lunacy. Professor Bob Park, former chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland will also be posting, and Dr. Offit himself, too.

5-year-old Kaitlin Bacile went missing Saturday and was found dead in a pond behind her home Sunday, WPLG reports. Kaitlin had autism and lived in Wellington (FL).

A couple of days ago, AutismParents.net asked if the water rescue of a 13-year-old autistic boy and his father “downplayed the risk of autistic children drowning. Learning to swim is more than necessary, and perhaps all the more so as many autistic children are drawn to water—-the mother of an autistic boy who drowned, founded an organization, Christopher Connections, whose goals include “promoting the important of swimming lessons for autistic children, creates “opportunities for affordable swim lessons for children with ASDs from qualified, certified swim instructors.”

Thinking a lot about Kaitlin and her family.

Muggy and hot on Sunday so—-after a morning of typing and working and Charlie getting up, piling his laptop and a blanket and a couple of old toys and his Leapster on the couch, with a layer of breakfast crumbs underneath, and dozing off so soundly that my vacuuming some of the crumbs didn’t wake him—we packed up the car and went to the beach. In the past, there’s no lifeguards after Labor Day but we’d learned there would be some at certain beaches, so to one of those we went.

Also in the past, we have been hesitant to go to the beach once Charlie has started school. The transition from beach mode to school mode seemed too jarring: Charlie would be excited, would be thrilled, to be back at the beach and swimming and eating his fries and burger. Then, he’d become a little upset when he requested the ferris wheel and was told that it was closed; driving by and looking at the giant, still wheel, led to more nervous sounds from the back seat. But driving away and going up the Garden State Parkway—–Charlie’s distress became loudly, physically apparent.

I still sat in the back seat with him then and won’t ever forget one ride home in early November. I don’t know if the car shook; Jim drove home as fast as he legally could while I tried to hang onto Charlie who was aiming his head at every possible surface and back arching like a gymnast. We got him home and Charlie lay down on the couch and at the mention of the word “school,” everything started up again. In the midst of it all, Jim and I decided, that Charlie was not going back to school the next day.

Charlie never went back to his classroom in the school district of the north Jersey town we lived in then. He stayed home for over a month (my mother had to fly out on short notice to stay with Charlie while Jim and I worked) and many difficult moments followed, including some terse and tense exchanges with the Assistant Superintendent of the school district and the social worker who was Charlie’s case manager. Charlie went back to school in mid-December, in a private autism school where he started, after some unhappy years, to like school again.

But no going back for day trips to the beach, Jim and I sadly agreed. We had heard about Surfers’ Healing some years ago, but because the New Jersey and New York surf camps always seemed to fall around the time that Charlie had school, we thought better of going, until this year.

Going down to the beach today was, I am happy to report, not a big deal, and just plain good fun. Charlie was drowsy when I roused him at 1.30pm, then lively and chatty in the car. He ran for the beach while Jim and I were still gathering our things and stopped to wait when I called him. The water was warm, though very salty, with short, choppy, rocky waves (made to order for Charlie) and there were lots of people. Charlie, with Jim beside him, was soon jumping in the waves and ducking under the water and running his hands and feet in the sand, and running excitedly beside the ocean. He was completely covered in sand when we left for a public shower that’s a bit of a drive away; after a couple of no’s, Charlie got under the (cold) shower and I was able to brush some of the sand off of him. (I was able to get more off the back car seat.) He kicked around the gravel while waiting at a picnic table for takeout and expressed his exuberance.

There was a couple with a baby at the next table. “There’s cheese, and bread, and peas, and carrots,” her mother said. A sippy cup and two Coronas were arrayed on the table. At another table, a mother was helping her preschool-age daughter into a pink hoodie. “You know what?” said the daughter. “I don’t want to ever be a big girl. I don’t want to be grown-up, like you!” Her mother was trying to dole out forks and napkins and food containers to the table’s occupants. “Well, you may change your mind when you get older,” she said, eyes elsewhere. “No,” said the girl.

And I so wanted to assure her, this getting bigger business, it’s not to be feared but just lived and then one day (like one hot day in mid-September) you see all the changes and what they add up to.

It’s back to school and we’ve been noting the time and date for Back to School Night (this Thursday), how to explain to the bus aide and driver that Charlie needs a little extra time to get out of his seat after the bus pulls up, what afterschool activities to pursue. Tomorrow’s New York Times has an article about traveling with autistic children on planes, trains, and airplanes, and cruise ships—-one family in particular does what we do, renting a house at the Jersey Shore. The NY Times mentions a couple of places, too, that have programs for special needs kids: Adam’s Camp at Snow Mountain Ranch, in Granby, in Colorado; Smugglers’ Notch Resort in Vermont; and the Autism on the Seas cruises.

We’ve already purchased our tickets to go to California to see my relatives in December. I’m still remembering some discussions from the past summer about autistic kids on airplanes—-for the moment am feeling glad to be home and back in the routine of things.

Hurricane Hanna meant rain and heavy, humid air on Saturday and I suggested a trip to the YMCA pool. There’s a long-running association between changes in barometric pressure and Charlie having “thunderstorm” moments of unhappiness, of seeming unsettled and with a kind of worried, frenetic energy and expression. Just getting in the water has long proven to be a good antidote to all that unsettledness in the sky and in a certain boy, and a little exercise workout does not hurt.

The pool was jam-packed when we arrived and four lanes, instead of the usual three, were marked off for lap swimmers. Four boys were kicking and splashing on the red and blue foam boat; one girl was explaining, with quite a bit of fervor, why nothing else would do for her to play with except the boat and there the stamping of one foot and several noooooooo’s.

Charlie stood just beyond the edge of the pool and needed some coaxing to take off his shirt. “No pool,” he told me. “Maybe just a short swim,” I suggested. My mom and dad had accompanied us and were standing by the deep end. “No,” said Charlie and gave me “a look” so I assented “ok, fine” and walked over the deep end and started swimming. This was a not-so-easy task due to the amount of kickboards and other toys, and children, in the water. I did sight Charlie in the shallow end, his buzzcut head rising above those of the other kids who were moving rapidly around him.

The girl who’d wanted the boat was holding it at one end; she called out something to one of the other boys and went under the water. Charlie walked over and took hold of one end of the boat; the girl reappeared for a moment and was face to face with Charlie and then Charlie was kicking the boat to the deep end by himself. He kicked, he sat on one end and figured out how to move the boat with his legs swinging in the water. The pool emptied and it was just him and me and two skinny blonde-haired boys for awhile, and then another wave of children came in, diving and somersaulting. As it’d been quite awhile since Charlie had commandeered the boat, I suggested that he pass it on to the other kids in a few minutes and he slowly scooted himself off and into the water, and did some swims back and forth across the length of the pool, and got that peaceful easy-feeling glow. (Knowing that he’d shared as requested added to it, too.)

The rain and thunder and lightning started just as Charlie and I were getting out of the shower. The family locker room was packed with parents and children, some crying, who’d had to get hastily out of the pool, due to the lightning: Guess we’d timed our swim right.

(We got soaked running back to the car.)