Life’s Journey-Part 2 by Eustacia Cutler
Well whatta you know! After they’d read the book, mothers sent me things they’d kept in their pocket so they’d remember who they were. Small china objects, a sea shell from the bay of Apalachicola, a string of little red beads from India. Later I learned they were worry beads.
Mothers weren’t the only ones who worried. At a recent conference, a strapping Texas dad, 6 ft., 200 pounds, struggles to tell me about his half-grown son and bursts into tears. He’s so overwhelmed by his boy that he no longer feels he’s the honorable man he thought he was. Stammering incoherently, he begs me to give him a hug. We hug and in that strained moment he becomes– what? A shame filled child asking for forgiveness? A self-absorbed adolescent who wants out? My guess is the hug is an S.O.S. He aches to leave his family so hecan reclaim his honor, but he knows the unjust toll it will take. He may jump ship anyway, but if he does, he will leave damaged.
Siblings, too, will be damaged. It’s not just that they’re reduced to being little helpers—and that happens—they’re deprived of a sense of their own emotional growth and they’re too young to understand what they’re losing. An autistic child is praised extravagantly for achieving or even approximating behavior that’s expected from siblings; but no one thinks to praise the sibling. (including me) At school games autistic kids can be bad sports; they equate game winning with the praise they get for good behavior. So when they follow the game rules and don’t win, they’re furious and vent. The siblings stand by silent and mortified while their little friends snicker. They can’t speak up for fear they’ll look disloyal. Nobody praises them for their loyalty, or even notices it. Meanwhile the autistic kid has discovered that tantrums get him what he wants. Since siblings haven’t lived long enough to understand the unfair advantage of this, they accept the role of “smoothing the path” without understanding its cost. The helper role can become their identity.
Read and enjoy my second book “Autism and Us: A Social History of Autism” by Eustacia Cutler
