Communication Success - Peace of Autism

Autism can be spectacular.

When we climb a mountain of prompts, hand over hand instruction, small tiny moments of connection, then in an instant, a light switch, and we have success.

When I think of Nixon’s success, I like to think of it as an astronaut who had trained for months and months to walk into a rocket ship. The rocket ship might not launch, but we are all watching waiting to see as we hear a quiet countdown.

When our son was starting to talk, we couldn’t understand a lot of what he was trying to communicate. He didn’t speak much until he was about 3 1/2, which caused a lot of frustration.

I can’t imagine wanting something and not being able to communicate that to someone else. Understanding there was a barrier and not knowing how to change it.

One night Nixon was battling a fever and he was worn out from not sleeping well. The family was sitting down to dinner. I handed Nixon a blueberry muffin. He slowly took the muffin in his hands, and he tipped his head back and shouted, “It’s cake.” Then he took a bite, looked me in the eyes, and said, “delicious.” A big word clear as could be.

The joy this muffin, or in his eyes cake, brought to him filled the room. It was contagious. I laughed until I cried, Nick, laughed a deep belly laugh. We had communication success.

As I began to laugh, a smile formed across his face, he was proud. He knew that I understood what he was saying. That at that moment he loved his cake.

I didn’t know part of the autism package was the amount of joy that can come from a small tiny win. Something as adults we often miss because we are not closely watching.

Autism parents naturally become programmed to watch our children with a magnifying glass. Not only are we continually filling out forms asking about development, what our children can and cannot do.

We watch to know that we all are heading somewhere. To see if our rocket ship will launch even if our count down takes a little longer.