“It was Great!”
Recently my 7 year old son went to a new summer school and every time he came home I would ask him “How was school?” and he always answers: “It was Great!” That’s all he said. I was dying to learn more, so I would proceed firing questions at him like “Why was it great?” What did you do that was so great?” “What did you do?” etc, etc…but that all I would get. I was reassured by the big smile on his face that he was having a good experience. Yet I was so caught up in my need for more details on the spot that I would press him to tell me more, but being on the high functioning Autistic spectrum with a language delay, that all he could say at the time. So I would spend the next hour trying to prod him to tell me the great part, but in vain. After a couple of weeks, I had to compromise with myself to settled for the “It was Great!!” But I was dying to go to the school for an observation of the class, talk to the teacher and/or his aid but I did not want to seem like a helicopter Mom so I controlled myself.
By the third week I had calmed and stilled myself, then something miraculous happened. I was going about my business at home when I heard him repeated the names of the dinosaurs he has learnt about the week before. I had seen the class work and handouts he brought home. Then he was saying what they like to eat – meat or plants! Most of the conversation was rhetorical statement to himself, and I imagined to whoever else in his universe who cared to hear. I started listening. I listened. I realized that he was actually going over his lesson notes, reciting and mimicking what he had learnt with great enthusiasm! As a professor by training, I also realize this was learning manifesting itself in reality. That’s how we internalized knowledge as a post relevant fact! The more my consciousness and attention presence became aligned with his I got to know about what he had done well after the fact in great detail. Sometimes, to gain favor he would show me his schoolwork and say “Great job, it’s time for cookie” thus telling me that he had done a great job in class and deserved a reward. Week four he was talking to himself about the food chain! And to me as he ate his dinner he talked about which food belong were in the food chain. Prior, he had started refusing he favorite vegetables – broccoli, but now he was back to loving it again and asking for more telling me that it’s a vegetable plant belong in the food chain! I was stumped.
As an academician I also had an epiphany – is socialization marginalizing us into a mob think mentality where conformity and averageness are the only standards to measure intelligence? I have anxiety attacks about how the world will relate and react to my son as he grows into an adult. What will become of him if something happens to me! Although, I have always been an intellectual misfit myself, I was calibrated. There were times when I used to care that I did not belong, was not in the popular crowd, was conspicuous of the fact that I was an outlier, and saw the world it such different ways than most average people. But I was “typical” (in other words “normal”) and could differentiate the ‘acceptable’ behavioral socio-cultural; socio-political and socio-economic norms based on my socialization and could make informed decision choices as to whether I needed to be politically correct or rouge! Yet for my son, a child and/or adult on the Autistic spectrum there is no choice! This cost/benefit calculus does not come naturally, or rather is not “natural” according to our world. They are so ‘primitively’ pure and sincerely innocent in the manner with which they instinctively relate to the world, unbounded by socialization training, teaching, constrains, expectations or boundaries. They do what’s intuitively innate and spontaneously primal.
As I was marinating in this epiphany, I also realized that the irony of it is I have been fighting my school district to provide “social skills therapy” for my son! But now I am not so sure. Do I want him to be socialized into a dysfunctional human being misfit or would I rather he remains an authentic original relic of his parallel universe? I know that in an unaccepting, judgmental conformist world this is suicidal! I comfort myself, “If I were rich, maybe this would be an alternative!” The reality is I am not. But I live in the real world…I like everyone else, am striving for wealth creation. However, because of my son I see all that’s wrong with our “typical” universe and the intolerance and fear that comes with it toward people who do not fit the social norm. NOW I understood why his day was just “GREAT!” He was learning something new and relishing in the beauty of knowledge for knowledge itself. He was knowing and differently connecting the dots of how things related in his universe. I hope for a paradigm shift in how we raise and groom our children, especially those with different developmental abilities, but reality is – It may not be in my life time or my son’s for that matter!
Copyright @ August 2, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro (DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA (Strategy Leadership Institute in Private & Public Affairs); Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.
