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A Book Review: Too Wise To Be Mistaken, Too Good To Be Unkind: Christian Parents Contend With Autism

Asperger’s Syndrome

~For Anyone Who Loves Someone with Special Needs~

Each child is a miracle and every individual life is worth celebrating!
Every angle is unique. Each perspective beholds a different set of wonders, a unique way of looking at the world. Responding to what is observed is a blessing, not a sorrow, and yet may require a little thoughtful adjustment. Special needs give us an even richer, more creative way at looking at our world. Whether you are the parent or sibling of a child who learns in a special way, or whether you, the reader, have differences and challenges yourself or if you know and love others who need a little extra understanding, this article is dedicated to you!

“He’s 10 years old, and he STILL can’t write!”
I exclaimed this to the evaluator who was testing my son. She carefully went through the paces and had him perform many tasks such as balancing on one foot, but that wasn’t going to happen. Writing his ABC’s on lined paper wasn’t either. He turned the paper sideways and wrote down instead of from left to right almost like Chinese letters/characters. She had him attempt to do simple puzzles with only 4 pieces to create common objects like horses, houses and the like, but nope, he could not do that either. Then, she just sat down and talked to him.

He was comfortable, confident and competent in language. He could tell you the names of almost every country on any given continent. He had memorized computer catalogs and a myriad of owner’s manuals and had a mastery of technological information. He also had a huge amount of unexpected information such as the license plate number of every friend we had had in the past 5 years, the exact date of purchases we had made that were of interest to him such gaming devices, and a vocabulary above and beyond any fifth grader I had ever known.

The result of that testing was inconclusive and frustrating. The Occupational Therapist admitted that there were serious issues that needed to be addressed, but she could not help us because our son was home schooled and not a part of the district programs. We asked if we could bring him in at regular intervals, but were declined. We then enrolled him in public school after him having been exclusively home schooled since we had moved to Washington when he was 4 ½ years old, at which time he taught himself to read by listening to me teach his big sister!!!

To School and Home Again
During those four or five months that he attended the local elementary school, his confidence levels plummeted. He could not keep up with certain aspects of the classroom. He could not write in cursive and was given poor grades in subjects that come easily for him such as spelling and math because he could not form the basic shapes that would be recognizable to the teacher. His teacher was a very creative teacher, but somewhat inflexible in some areas and definitely was at a sorrowful loss as to how to teach this boy. She felt terrible about it and tried to learn all she could to better teach him. Even years later she apologized for being unable to specialize the curriculum for just him. To top it all off, the children in the class, for the most part, were hateful and unable to relate to my son who can talk to adults with ease, but did not have the patience for the nonsensical conversations of these pre-adolescents.

The more I thought and prayed about it, the more I realized that my son was flourishing at home and now was being squashed. He was unhappy. His former bouncy joy was all but gone. He was angry and unable to accomplish much. He was learning all right – he was learning to be skeptical, frustrated and disappointed. He was learning how to be sarcastic, unkind and overwhelmed. He was not sleeping well, and he was not feeling well. While at home, he had been full of life and energy, kind, loving and enthusiastically curious about everything and everyone.

After Christmas break that year he did not go back. He came home to reading and watching educational programs. He came home to cooking meals together, swinging in the back yard, taking swimming lessons without rushing there hungry and tired after school. He came back to long discussions about the Word of God on a daily basis and even later participating in an award winning Bible Quiz team and walking away with large portions of scripture flawlessly memorized and applied to his life. He blossomed again. His joy slowly returned. He was somewhat permanently damaged by the exposure to the meanness of his peer group, but is overcoming that still, four years later.

Finally, An Answer
The following spring, after we were told by a school psychologist that our son’s IQ had the biggest discrepancy he had ever seen, and that he would have to be on meds and could not be successfully home schooled because “that NEVER works for THIS kind of child”, we took him to a children’s developmental specialist. She read all of the test results. She talked extensively to him and to me. She performed some evaluations of her own and looked me in the eye and said the dreaded words: “He has a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome (AS).” Was I devastated? No! I was relieved. It was not all in my head. It was not something I had done wrong in my teaching-parenting style, and there were things that could be done.

My son was a bit confused by the diagnosis. We explained gently that he was not “broken” or “damaged”, but that his brain has a unique way of processing information. We took what he knew about computers and analogized the scenario about how it was as if you had stored a file on your hard drive, but did not know how to access it again later. It is there, but you have to create new pathways to get to it! We showed him that The Bible says that he is fearfully and wonderfully made and proceeded to learn about Asperger’s Syndrome, so that we could be of the biggest blessing and help to him with this extraordinary learning style.

Psalm 139:14, 15

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”

We also learned during that time that he has Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, which means that he is great at anything verbal, but the non-verbal tasks were extremely difficult for him. Typically, AS children also have sensory issues and some obsessive-compulsive traits. This was true of Jordan too.

One of the greatest blessings to us at that time and now is home schooling him. We can tailor our day to him. We can spend all the time we want on unit studies that interest him and also life experiences that grab his heart and mind and teach him about new things. This gives him a way to connect all of his experiences together meaningfully and usefully. He can take time off from book work to learn how to repair cars and other vehicles with his dad. He can do yard work for our neighbors with his brother. He can read and read and read to his heart content. He can take time to do exercises designed to connect neurological pathways in his brain, as well as to strengthen and relax his whole body. He can be trained with the consistency that we know is Biblical without mixed messages being thrown at him from every angle. He can be given only wholesome foods and avoid toxic cleaners that inhibit his ability to grow and learn. He can talk to other children and adults without being made to feel like he is a big mistake. Just this summer he completed a full year of curriculum because he wanted to and was able to jump ahead to 9th grade this fall!

From Jordan to Noah
The more we learned about our son and how best to bless him, the more we realized that our youngest son also was on the autism spectrum. Since Jordan’s challenges were so pressing at the time and Noah’s presented in a very different way, and because Jordan was at that time louder and more attention-getting we had not noticed that our quiet, introspective, intelligent little guy was struggling too. Eventually, we took him to the same doctor who had helped us with Jordan, and she confirmed what we had learned. Noah also has Asperger’s Syndrome. Yet, even within this portion of the autism spectrum there is a wide variety of ways it can manifest and we had not noticed a lot of similarities in actual behaviors. We had now come to realize there were intense commonalities in frustrating thought patterns, problem-solving issues, more sensory issues and obsessive-compulsive traits and a bunch of “triggers” that set off or worsened the problematic parts of AS behaviors for both boys.

Living With AS as A Family
We prayed and began to learn together as a family. We removed as many of the offending foods and household cleaners as we could and began supplementing. This has been helpful in our case. Not every special needs family will feel that they see a difference doing these things, but it has worked for us. Both boys recognize a difference in themselves and are great at reading labels, remembering to take their vitamins and are able to discuss strategies at times when we run into a scenario where things are not going well. For us, medication has not been necessary at this time and we have been able to see a big improvement in the boys’ health and impulse control! We are continuing to learn and adjust. It is an on-going process!

We are not looking for a cure. We actually LOVE the beautiful way our boys see life. They notice things we never would. They think of things that no one does. They create amazing ideas. They are amazing conversationalists. Other children have also begun to enjoy the boys. While this is not the goal, it is an encouraging side-effect! Both Jordan and Noah are also prolific readers and can learn just about anything. Noah, who is now 10, has even taken an interest in his dad’s college Thermodynamics textbook and understands a great deal of it!

Most of all, they both love God deeply.
They take sermon notes that bring tears to my eyes. They have learned to be sensitive and caring for others as they have deepened their personal relationships with Christ and they are mindful of striving to be the young men that God has created them to be.

Thoughtful Considerations
When Jordan was almost 11, I blogged about a conversation I had with him that sums up a lot of what I would like the readers of this article to walk away understanding:

This morning I overheard my boys talking… reflecting on their experiences in public school this past year.

Jordan said, “Public school is like being put in a box, one that is even smaller than you are. Home school is like being in a box too, but it’s bigger than you are and you can have room to grow.”
I know he was just being a child and trying to identify his feelings, but I really felt that there was some considerable insight to his statements.
In public school the box size is often not only smaller than the child, but misshapen. They are squeezing square pegs into round holes on a daily basis. They are stating theories as facts. They are taking away the simple joys of childhood and individuality. They are slowing down the maturity process in some areas and speeding it up (inappropriately) in others. They cannot give each child the one on one attention they need academically much less spiritually. They cannot, even in the best of circumstances, give a long-term investment to the child’s character and development.
Home school is so much more flexible. A box can be useful to establish appropriate boundaries, but it needs to be big enough to embrace unique preferences, strengths and weaknesses. It needs to have room for true, dedicated love from a family structure, not just a pseudo-family group of people who have a one or at best two year investment in your child. Instead of bright fluorescent lights, this box is full of fresh air, warm hugs and home-cooked smells. This box can be adjusted and decorated accordingly as the child changes instead of being a one-size doesn’t quite fit all pre-approved scope and sequence that fits some of the people some of the time.
I want to give my children the box that protects them from harsh winds and harsh words, but can have the flaps flung wide open when it is time for them to spread their wings and fly. I want to give them the box that has enough room to invite friendships in, but small enough to keep negative influences out.
What size box fits your child? What will it be made of? What will it be filled with? What color will it be painted?