14 Mar 2015, 9:29 am
Pi Day celebration
Today is Pi Day, celebrated in honor of the irrational number 3.1415926535... This year's Pi Day is even more special, because it's not only 3.14, it's also 3.1415, which only happens once every 100 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
I guess being a geek myself, Pi Day is something worth celebrating. I'll go pick up some pie later today to celebrate universal roundedness. Just one single pie. I’ll get two pies for June 28.
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Q: What does "i" tell "pi"? Answer: "Be rational!"
Q: What does "pi" tell "i"? Answer: "Get real!"
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OK, let me try to be rational. Having two autistic children is the best thing that has happened to my life. Sometimes I think I am just so lucky. Two happy children, with big smiles. Smart, too.
Every day I would look at them, and wonder why they are so happy. I see most adults and children as having a default state of indifference. But for my daughter and my son, and especially my daughter, it's like their default state is being happy and smiling, all the time. My daughter finds humor in almost everything in life. She has such a positive energy around her, that everyone can notice it: at home, in school, wherever she goes.
I wonder how many families out there with children on the spectrum can say the same thing: having two children on the spectrum being the best thing that has happened to them.
I look back at my childhood, it was not like that. Growing up as an autistic child was tough. Back then, and in that part of the world, people knew nothing about autism. They did not even have a name for it. You got criticized and misinterpreted just because you didn't make eye contact with other people. People couldn't understand your outbursts. And you got tired of people telling you: "you need to change," or, "you need to socialize more, otherwise you'll become a failure in life."
I don't think I ever became the failure that my parents had feared. I have been quite independent and even started to make money since young age. I grew up all right, got an advanced degree, worked, married, and am raising a family. I have not failed by any reasonable measure. Yet, no one around me truly understood me.
When my daughter was diagnosed with autism, my own parents took it pretty hard. But to me, it was an opportunity to finally understand myself. It surely helped that my nephews were diagnosed with autism earlier: we knew exactly where to get assistance and what kind of help was available out there. I don't know how to describe it...so many people found so many wrong things in my daughter, but to me, I did not have difficulties communicating with her. I drew pictures for her, and she love those drawings. Then I gradually realized that, there was nothing wrong with her: she was just developing in a different way. Today, she is fully verbal and fully social, even takes initiatives in approaching people and making new friends. I was not that social at all, when I was a child. Today, I am convinced that lack of social skills is not a hallmark of autistic people. Autistic people can be very sociable. My daughter is a living proof of it. However, autistic children could be limited in realizing their social skill potentials, if parents only focus on developing social skills in these children. Sounds contradictory, but it’s what I have seen in other families with autistic children. It seems as if the more parents are desperate for developing their children’s social skills, the less sociable their children become.
My son was soon also diagnosed with autism after my daughter. A much tougher case. I could communicate with my daughter by reflex: we had the same kind of autism, we resonated with each other. With my son? Zero success. For his first 2.5 years, I couldn't communicate with him. I started to have doubts. I was ready to accept that I might have been lucky once, but not twice.
I was wrong. Around when my son was 2.5 years old, one day I came to understand him. Ah ha, he was visual, too. But he stored information in his brain in the form of processes, not in the form of concepts. My son and my daughter were like Fourier transforms of each other, and that was all. My son simply needed to be communicated through video clips, not static pictures.
After that, I taught my son to focus on static drawings, taught him to read, taught him to verbalized, and now at age 5, he can even draw pictures, write, and type on computers, and is fully verbal. Yes, it took me hard work to communicate with my son and to develop his skills. But I was successful.
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When Mindy and Ivan were younger, my own parents would always tell me what I should do with my children. The kids were not talking, my parents got worried. The kids were not using utensils, my parents got worried. The kids were not potty trained, my parents got worried. Ivan was hyperactive, my parents got worried. Ivan did not make eye contacts, my parents got worried. My parents would make suggestions on what to do.
The day when I understood Ivan, was the day when I understood autism. I realized: hey, there is absolutely nothing wrong with these children. They just have a different path of development. They are not the ones that need change or behavioral correction. All on the contrary, the parents are the ones that need change and behavioral correction. I was worry-free ever since. I knew how to communicate with him and how to teach him.
My own parents worried about so many things...I told them, no, no need to worry about any of that, skills will come, but these kids just needed develop in a different order of events. These kids were visual. Back then, I was ready to accept the sensory problems as something permanent. But today, even those sensory problems are gone. I have learned that, development is the key. The kids are perfectly fine.
Today, Mindy is 7 and Ivan is 5 years old. And my parents completely stopped worrying, too. Why? They could see with their own eyes: their grandchildren are happy and smart. Always smiling.
I, with all my quirkiness and my strange way of raising children, have produced two of the happiest children on earth.
I have made many commercial software products in my life. My wife would laugh and tell me, our children are the two best products I have ever made. Ha ha.
Mind you, Mindy and Ivan are autistic children. Yet they are happier than most typical children.
Mindy not only is happy, she is so sociable. Also, this last week she had academic assessment: her performance was way above district average and school average. She is at the very top layer, academically, in all subjects. And I haven't even really spent time teaching her any math, despite being a scientist myself.
Last weekend I played my first chess game with my daughter. It was not like I wanted to teach her chess: we were at her cousin’s house. She saw the chess set there. She wanted to learn chess.
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People can see the results. There is zero arguing about them. My own parents gradually came to understand their grandchildren. And from there, they gradually came to understand their own son. They now realize that there is nothing wrong with autistic children. They came to understand that there is ANOTHER WAY of raising children. They came to understand that the other way is actually a BETTER WAY.
I would spend hours making video clips for my son. My mother always shook her head at how much time I spent making those video clips. I spoon fed my children until very recently, (and even occasionally today,) to the dismay of most adults and especially our children’s therapists. To me, other people are worried about things that absolutely needed no worrying. While other people were worried that my children were not talking, I did not worry a bit. I taught them instead to read first. While other people worried about socialization, I was putting my energy and firepower to develop my children’s visual-manual communication skills. I did not worry about things that needed no worrying: those skills that other people worry so much about, to me, will come for free or with minimum effort, later in life. But autistic children need to be developed in a different sequence of priorities. Visual-manual skills are the foundation to the brain functions of these children. Verbalization? Social skills? Socially acceptable behaviors? All those will come, almost automatically. Why worry about things that will come automatically (and that our society has full support system for), at the expense of not developing the foundational skills of these children?
I, with all my quirkiness, was supposed to be a failure in raising my children, right? As non-obvious, as irrational that I was in the eyes of my parents, the end results are living proofs that, perhaps, just perhaps, I had a point.
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So I wrote a book and even composed a song at the end of the book. The song is a lullaby, but is inspired from my own father, when my parents came to visit their grandchildren. I dedicated the song to my father. The title of the song is "Lullaby from an Old, Old Man". My father was the Old, Old Man. He had a message for my children, and the lullaby was about his message to my children.
Having two autistic children brought me closer to my own parents. Through seeing their grandchildren, my parents came to understand me. They have all but stopped telling me that I needed to change. Instead, they now say that my children are so lucky to have me as their father.
Having two autistic children brought me closer to my wife. I would give her a lot of credit for living with three autistic people in the house. She was always the one that told me: "It takes an autistic person to understand another autistic person." After I finished the book, she told me: "You know what? Before you wrote the book, I really did not understand you. It was only after you wrote the book that I came to understand you." I asked her: "But, didn't you say that it takes an autistic person to understand another autistic person?" She just smiled and said: "I guess I am becoming autistic, too." That was a most heartwarming moment. Finally there was a person in the world that understood me.
I am closer to my parents, to my wife, and to my children, in a way, all thanks to autism.
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I just have to chuckle to myself, at how much my wife has changed. She understands so much about autism today, that sometimes I am not even sure which one of us is more autistic. And she was the one that was supposed to be neurotypical! She was the one that was always polite and courteous, and she heavily criticized my directness and bluntness when I talked to people. But nowadays, when she talks to other families, she is the one that would open her sentences with: “Sorry for being direct, but you need to do (this), you need to do (that).”
My wife is a living proof that neurotypical people can indeed understand autistic people, and not only that, they can learn to behave like autistic people. And there is just nothing wrong with that. The phrase “Mothers would do anything” comes to mind. Yes, my wife has changed, big time.
While so many other parents have focused on changing their children, I just had to chuckle to myself. In successful families with children on the spectrum, the end result was never that the children have changed, but instead it was that the parents have changed. My wife has changed, I have changed (in how I interacted with my son), and my own parents (at their age!) have changed. Isn’t that funny?
Wasn’t the autistic way of life supposed to be disastrous? Yet, all on the contrary, I now have a happier family, being closer to my children, my wife, and my own parents.
My life has come a full circle. For that, I’ll celebrate the Pi Day.
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My wife used to tell me that not everybody can draw pictures naturally, like I can do with our children. That was a few years ago. Last week, she drew this picture for my son (who was extending his TK from half-day to full day), trying to tell him that today she will pick him up after lunch, but that starting tomorrow he would nap at school, and that Mom would come to pick him up after nap.
After I made an elevator video clip for my son (with some cartoon cow characters), guess what my wife did? She searched all over on-line stores, and found another elevator toy for my son. She assembled that elevator for my son, with all the gears and strings. Not only that, she found some plastic animal toys, some in the shapes of…cows! She would spend hours and hours in all these endeavors. I dropped my jaws when I saw the elevator toy with the cows.
And now she asked me to teach her to make video clips.
A few years back I was the one complaining that my wife wouldn’t learn new skills. And today she is behaving as if she were even more autistic than I am. Mothers would do anything. I guess she was faithful to her words. I am totally impressed. So awesome!
14 Mar 2015, 12:55 pm
