The Speed of Dark

When you have a child with disabilities–especially developmental disabilities, whether autism or something else–you want to do the absolute most for that child you can.    That child, you feel–or I felt–deserves–needs–a perfect parent.    That child, of all children, shouldn’t have to deal with parental imperfections–he has enough problems already.   He/she is so fragile, so vulnerable, that any mistakes parents make are likely to be the tipping point that makes it impossible for the child to have a happy life.

Then comes the day…you know the day.  The day you lose your temper.  The day you forget something vital.   The day you aren’t perfectly controlled, calm, supportive, firm enough and flexible enough,  diligent in getting through his/her therapies, the house isn’t clean enough, the vital paperwork goes missing.  That day.

Here’s the story of the day I contributed to stunting our son’s initiative.

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Years ago I took a graduate school class in Animal Behavior.   The study of animal behavior had made great leaps forward in the decade before, after pioneer students of animal behavior learned how to analyze animal behavior in detail.   The study of human behavior lagged badly…it’s now catching up, but still bedeviled by the very assumptions we were taught to avoid when studying animal behavior.

All behavior, we were taught, is meaningful–it means something, it communicates something about the subject.  Probably not what you first think of, either.   For instance, most of us interpret behavior in terms of a critter’s conscious intent:  we think of a cow or a horse or a small child as “stubborn” when they don’t do what we want.  We may think they’re “trying to make me mad.”   In autistic terms, we fail to demonstrate a theory of mind–the understanding that reality, to the other person or animal, is not necessarily our reality.

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