The Hardest Thing My Son Has To Do is Love

It’s always seemed odd to me that an Autistc child is so prone to letting negative emotions out like a hailstorm but the good emotions so easily get lost, deep and buried behind cold lost eyes. No one seems to be able to provide a solid answer but violence, aggression, outbursts… these are normal and even to be expected from a child with Autism, especially the more severe cases. What’s also to be expected is that the child will likely never want to hug you, kiss you or say ‘I love you.’

Now, for those of you reading that has a child or children, and they’re not Autistic, I want you to imagine what that must be like. No hugs good bye, no kiss goodnight. You say ‘I love you’ over and over again and never get it back. But if you tell them no, they can’t have an electric toy in the bath, they’ll instantly go into a tantrum and try to hit you in the face.

Does that make you feel loved?

That’s what life is like as a parent of an Autistic child. Not every single child, but as a general rule, that’s pretty much how it is.

I think, the hardest thing to come to terms with when raising a child like that, is that they do love you, they do want to show you… they just can’t. I compare it to an arachnophobic person being asked to walk into a room with one thousand spiders. Likely, if they really really love you, they’ll do it to prove it… but it’ll be the hardest thing they ever do. I picture my son walking into that room every time he gives me a hug… and he does hug me.

The one thing I’ve learned more than anything over the last 2 years is patience… to have far more patience than I ever thought I could have, even more than I ever thought was possible in a person. You have to find a way to keep reminding yourself, to keep telling yourself that your child not only loves you, but they have a hailstorm of love buried in there… it’s just not coming out like the temper does. But it’s there.

If anything, he may love me even more than he would if he didn’t have Autism… even though he may not understand emotions or know how to express them, I bet he feels them every bit or more than others. I just have to never forget that it’s there.

One night, as I tucked Cameron into bed, I told him that I loved him and he looked at me. So I asked him why he never says ‘I love you’ to mommy or daddy. He just sorta shrugged and so I asked if it made him feel embarrassed and he nodded yes. I asked if it was hard for him to say it and he nodded again. I assured him that it doesn’t make us mad, it doesn’t make us sad… we understand and it’s ok. I think it’s important for him to know that we know how hard it is…

Then he did, as he does quite often… he put his index finger tip around to the tip of his thumb, much like you’d do if you were to do the ‘ok’ sign. Then he put it up in front of his face and looked through it with one eye, and moved it back against his face, still with his eye looking through the opening.

I then asked him why he does that, to which I got no reply. I asked if it helps him to see better, like glasses and he just looked at me… so I asked if it helps him to see me and he said ‘yeah’. So I asked how it helps and he glanced around a bit…  I asked him if doing that helped him to not see the rest of the room and he again said ‘yeah’.

Cameron did this motion, almost ever night, quietly, sometimes completely without my notice, as his way to see me, and only me. Without interference or distraction. It occurred to me then that he had been doing this for quite some time, months… a year? I can’t remember but it’s been a while and it was always something I just thought was something silly he started doing.. like a child looking through the middle of a roll of toilet paper.

But it was so much more than that. I like to think that it’s his way of telling me he loves me…. that… he sees me.