Last fall, I enrolled Kai in a social skills group at the therapy center. It was five spectrum boys working on how to interact with each other in a guided setting, with a concurrent parent support group.
The parent portion of it was mandatory, a fact I discovered when the group director came to the sibling playroom to extract me from the comfy chair I was sitting in whilst enjoying some TMZ on my iPhone, and made me join the group. It also cost $20 per session on top of the cost of the therapy for Kai, which I would have been okay with if the director used that money to buy us food or an occasional box of Target wine, but beyond telling us what the boys were going to do that day, the director would just open the forum up to whatever we wanted to talk about, which for me was pretty much TMZ.
I’m not even sure that the group was all that useful for Kai, either. One of the boys in the group, Justin, has OT in the same room as Kai, and neither boy seem to act like they have any idea who the other one is, this after spending weeks creating friend journals and taking each other’s pictures and interacting through guided activities, if you ask Kai to say ‘hi’ to Justin, he just looks around blankly, even though Justin is standing right there.
The silver lining to all of it was that Ryan and I both made friends out of the deal, another mom named Julie and her daughter, Elizabeth.
Julie and I have a lot in common—we are both parents of spectrum boys and younger, neurotypical daughters. Julie is the only mother I’ve ever met who gets more compliments on her daughter’s hair than I do on Ryan’s, as Elizabeth has a soft mane of bright red spiral curls. Kai and Justin even seem to have a similar brand of autism: speech delay, GenEd classroom, attention problems, sensory seeking behaviors.
So now, when the boys are at OT, Julie and I talk in the sibling playroom, while Elizabeth and Ryan run social circles around their big brothers by playing house or restaurant or smoothie shop. It’s even possible to imagine that we are there for a playdate, that at one point one of us would open a bottle of pinot grigio as the conversation flows like water, that we were there because we wanted to be and not because our boys are there for therapy for their autism.
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As summer was approaching, Julie and I decided to test the boys’ social skills in the real world. We took a few weeks to land on the idea that we would take all the kids to the Children’s Museum.
On the day we met up, I guided Kai through greeting Justin.
“Kai, here’s Justin!” I said.
“Where?” he asked.
“That’s Justin there.” I pointed.
Kai turned to the nearest boy, a black kid who stood a head and shoulders taller. “Right here?” he asked, pointing at the boy.
I groaned. Kai’s known Justin for almost a year and still can’t tell white, blue-eyed Justin, a boy he sees once a week in a therapy room, from a tall black kid he’s never laid eyes on before.
I don’t know what it is about Kai and his complete inability to recognize people. There was a horrifying period of about two weeks when he was three and he kept mistaking another mom for me, and would wail and scream when that woman chose a different by to take home with her. I don’t know what hope Justin has if Kai can’t recognize his own mother, but still.
As it happens, that three second interaction was pretty much the only time Kai and Justin spoke all afternoon. Kai wanted to go to the Tinkering Lab, Justin to the interactive garden. Kai wanted to wait in line to swing on a rope into some pillows at the human wrecking ball exhibit, Justin wanted to bowl with the oversize bowling set. We got both boys into Kidtown, but Kai spent his time their building with blocks while Justin pretend-drove the city bus. Even at McDonald’s, they stared off into different directions, despite sitting at the same table, despite eating the exact same food, despite having spent the last two hours together tinkering and bowling and wrecking and building and driving.
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Before school ended, Kai was asked to write a letter welcoming a new student to his classroom next fall. The new student happens to be a girl with autism.
The assignment was to write a letter to an incoming classmate, explaining what Kai liked about the classroom and what the new kid could expect.
The first draft of Kai’s letter explained the solar system in detail. It probably also mentioned Kai’s enjoyment of math. What it did not do was welcome this new student to the classroom. Kai was compelled by the authorities to write a new, better letter, which he did, though he still mentioned how awesome he is at math.
Apparently, all of the adults involved thought it would be a good idea to pair up the spectrum kids, that Kai would be a good mentor for this girl because they both have autism. If they’re going to be in their own little worlds, went the thinking, they should be there together. Logically, if not practically, they are correct. I mean, who better to guide a spectrum kid through an experience than another spectrum kid? Of course, this presupposes that the child in question even knows what a welcome letter is, or that he is not pervasively, debilitatingly, chronically and profoundly socially dysfunctional.
I told all this to Julie while we waited for Elizabeth and Ryan to take their turns as human wrecking balls and while Kai and Justin ignored each other, and we had a good laugh.
If Kai and Justin were in their own worlds, they were definitely not in the same one. They might not have even been in the same galaxy.
Julie stopped laughing, wiped her eyes and thought for a moment.
“You almost need a kid who is so socially competent that they can draw the other kid out,” she said. “Kind of like what the girls do for their bothers.”
I agreed that that would have been a better option.
“What did the teacher say when you talked to her about it?”
I told her that I hadn’t taken it up with Kai’s teacher at all. I mean, I don’t really care except that it was kind of hilarious.
And then we just stood together, Julie and I, watching the two girls whisper and giggle as the boys played alone, like two negative ions, unable to bond with each other. At least for now. The rest of us bonded just fine.
Later, we all went outside on Navy Pier and rode the Ferris wheel. When we said “goodbye” it was with genuine regret.
For Julie and me, I mean. And for Ryan and Elizabeth, too.
Justin and Kai didn’t seem to notice.
Luckily there’s another chance to connect every Tuesday. Incidentally, I just put pinot grigio on my shopping list.