a year ago when finn got his diagnosis at the ripe old age of 20 months, a lot of me was still in denial. i thought if we threw a whole bunch of early intervention and aba therapy on top of him that this autism thing would go away. in all fairness, he was still so little then that it wasn't unrealistic to think that. some of his quirks and delays could really have been just that. it's hard to tell in a 20 month old sometimes.
but a year later here we are, and finn is 2 1/2 years old. a lot of kids don't get diagnosed until this age. so i'm grateful that we have a whole year under our belt already. but it's bittersweet, because now at 2 1/2 it is much clearer to me that finn is autistic, and in some areas he seems more severely autistic than he was a year ago. he has made tons of progress this past year, but not enough to make him appear developmentally typical. i am so proud of him and how far he's come, but he has to work so hard for every little victory, fight for every inch, and as i see him grow and fight and learn i'm so very proud of who he is.
and it's so very obvious to me that he is finn, and he has autism.
and he will always have autism.
i couldn't really say that before.
i used to dream that i would wake up and finn would just be talking. that one day he would just come into the kitchen and tell me what he wanted for breakfast. like all of a sudden it would just be easy for him. i wanted that so much for him. and selfishly, for me. because there is nothing worse than your little boy being upset and not being able to tell you what's wrong. nothing.
but here we are today, and i sit with finn while he tries so hard to talk. while he holds his hands to my mouth, while he pushes his lips against mine because he wants so badly to match their movement. and i know that it's never going to come easy for him. we're always going to have to work for it. (and i will always, always, be working just as hard right there with him.) this is a devastatingly heartbreaking reality for me, but at the same time, i can't tell you how proud it makes me.
that finn is who he is and he is a fighter. and he doesn't give up when it doesn't come easy.
there are lots of thinks that i love about finn's autism and lots of things i hate about it. ultimately, it's part of who he is, and we take the good with the bad.
i love that it makes him see things differently than me. one of our favorite things to do is try to see things from his perspective. things that are glaringly obvious to him can easily go unnoticed by people like us. like a shadow on the wall. and things that are glaringly obvious to us can easily go unnoticed by him. like a person talking right in front of you.
we were at "my gym" yesterday and finn, as usual, did not want to sit at circle time. the kids all had orange traffic cones to play with and the teachers were instructing them to do different things with their cones (pretend your cone is a hat, pretend your cone is a fire hose, bla bla). finn lasted for about 20 seconds of this and then ran to the back of the gym. there's a back hallway with a bathroom and a water tank and it turns a corner into somewhere i couldn't see. finn ran to the end of the hallway (never out of my sight) and kept looking down the corner and then back at me. we were doing a stare off (come back to the circle... no come to the hallway... come back to the circle...) and finn won and i went to meet him at the end of the hallway. where he promptly took my hand and threw it towards the part of the hall i couldn't see from the circle... (look mom)... and there lies a huge storage area with the entire stockpile of traffic cones and ten million other awesome things.
it's moments like those where i think, my kid is a brilliant genius, and all your sweet little kids at circle time are just sheep. (ha!)
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i took him and cole for a run on sunday, and halfway through finn started bawling. i thought he had bitten his tongue or something, but try as i might, i couldn't find any reason for his sudden explosion of tears. nothing i could do would help. i tried all my tricks. i sang songs, i held him, i gave him my phone, i played his favorite youtube video, nothing made a difference. he sobbed uncontrollably until i let him down and he wandered around a field next to the road sobbing, unable to get a handle on himself. it was awful. i have never felt more helpless. i ended up putting him back into the stroller and running back to billy's parents house as fast as i could to put him in front of a windmill that lights up. it helped for a few minutes, and then he started sobbing again. it was so bad that i took him to the doctor. i prayed that he had strep throat. or an ear infection. that it was something i could put my finger on and touch and treat and make go away. that it wasn't a sensory thing or an autism thing or something in his world that i couldn't reach. but he wasn't sick. and that night, without explanation, he was himself again.
it's moments like those that terrify me. that he's falling down this pit of autism and that one day he's going to be 17 years old and i'm going to be chasing him crying through a field unable to save him from what i can't understand.
i could never imagine finn as a teenager or an adult who was severely autistic. i hope that he will talk one day. i hope that he will be able to communicate with other people and get along in our world without too much trouble. and i think there's a really good chance of that. i think we're doing all the right things and he's working so hard, and i think there's a really good probability that he will be able have a somewhat independent life. but for the first time now, i have let myself look down the road of him not. of his speech never progressing beyond "ba ba ba" and of him making weird sounds and flapping his arm and all that looking much stranger coming out of a 17 year old than it does coming out of a 2 year old. i don't like looking down that road. but i think it's important that i can now, and that i'm okay with it.
i saw a girl at target with her mom this week, and she was doing those things. she was probably 20, and she was trying so hard to get ahold of herself, but she clapped her ears when the carts banged together, and she made loud embarrassing noises, and i knew that one day 17 or so years ago her mom must have looked at her baby girl and hoped that she would talk, and sing, and grow up and drive a car and go to prom and get married and do all of those things and it looked like maybe she would, but then she didn't. and maybe that sucks. but i bet they have a really happy life. it's just a lot different than they thought it would be.
people ask me all the time how finn is doing, and honestly, he's doing so great. he is great with baby cole. he doesn't pay much attention to him, but he'll give him a kiss when i ask him to, and he always makes sure i hear him when he's crying. he has never been anything but gentle with him, and he'll even snuggle him a little if we're all in bed together. i know that one day they'll have a really special friendship. no matter what kind of classrooms they're in.
i don't think that finn is going to wake up one day and be "normal" and honestly, i don't want him to be. i hope that all of the therapy we do and classes we try help him learn skills that will make him proud of himself and help him to communicate and feel understood. and i am so glad that we have friends and family who love and accept him for who he is.
because he's pretty great.
