Every summer, I get to witness Brandon regress more into his autistic self than he is during the school year. The structure of school helps him so tremendously. I attempt to help him during the summer by doing school work stuff with him at home, yet without fail, he regresses.
He's back to being more non-verbal. We get a lot of grunting, screaming and whining. He'll come out of this for at least part of every day, using verbal language to really communicate. If anything upsets him, though, he goes back into the shell his autistic world provides him. I'm sure it provides some sort of protection for him, even though most of the time, it's not really necessary. It gets really tiring to listen to the tantrums that ensue just because I told him he needed to get dressed for the day or various other small things that shouldn't set him off, but do. It's not like I give in when he tantrums. Autistic tantrums are not the same thing as typical children's tantrums.
Typical children will tantrum, but will stop when they realize that it's not getting them what they wanted. Tantrums from an autistic child are nightmares. They don't end, there's not much a parent can do to help them stop. Brandon pretty much as to just work it out himself. All I can do is make sure he's in a safe area and let him be until he is able to finally calm down. On average they last about twenty minutes; sometimes much longer, sometimes less.
Brandon used to not functionally speak. He had words he would say, but they were just echolalia (repeating what we said). We did a therapy called floortime with him to help bring him out of himself into the rest of the world where communication is necessary. Through play, we helped him to recognize that words actually do have meaning. We would tickle him (something he loves) and then stop, waiting for some type of communication from him. Whether or not we would get that communication, we would start again and then stop, waiting once more. He would finally understand and start to make eye contact with a gleam when he wanted more, then we wouldn't accept that as enough to do it again, we requested words such as "more" or "again". It was amazing to see him come out of himself into our world.
Today was one of those days where he actually came into the real world, bring back floortime techniques. We were at Flip's Gym for Edward's class. Brandon was kinda grumpy about having to sit there and watch. He had hidden himself under a chair to try to hide that he was sucking on his finger (another regression thing). I playfully reached down and tickled him. He looked up at me with bright eyes and made a tickling motion with his fingers. I wasn't going to let him get away with just that since he's fully capable of full sentences now. I asked him where his words were. He kept making the tickling motion and eventually said, "Tickle me." Not a great sentence, but one all the same. I tickled him again and stopped. We did this back and forth over about ten minutes. At the end he was actually asking, "Can I have more tickles, please?"
He's capable of so much. Occassionally, we have amazing conversations. It's just so hard to pull him out of his little world to communicate more than a couple turns of conversation. I often wonder what goes on in his head and if he'll be able to function in society when he's grown. Will he be able to be one of the autists that are able to make a difference like Temple Grandin has done? I don't know and that is scary in some ways.
He's so close to being typical that most people can't tell that he has autism. Most of his autistic behavior happens at home. School still sees it, of course, since Spectrum really knows about autism, but the general public have no clue. This is great, but it can make it all the harder since others will expect more out of him than he may be able to give. Small things can set off the randomness that autism is. I'm so grateful to be chosen to raise this special child, to be trusted in helping him reach his full potential.
