"Ssshhoooooeeeessss!!! SssshhOOOOOOOOeeeeeesss!!!”
he wailed with heart-wrenching panic, red-faced and at the mercy
of the tyrant who would cage him and callously strip him of his beloved footwear.
J-Boy was two years old. I put him down for a nap and started to remove his darling little brown boots. "Ssshhoooooeeeessss!!! SssshhOOOOOOOOeeeeeesss!!!” Motherhood is filled with those “choose-your-battles” moments and I thought to myself, this is weird, but F-it; go ahead and sleep in them.
I know that footwear may be an obvious, if not cliché metaphor for a life’s journey. And maybe I’m stretching, trying to pull a bunch of literal events and incidences into something more figurative, deep and meaningful. But I am trying to come to terms with the reality that
My son is a runner.
Not a track star. Not a 5000 meter Olympian. Not a marathoner or long-distance athlete.
No, he runs to escape “the Now”.
When words won’t come, J-Boy has long used his shoes to express his frustrations. From the time he could walk, it seems he could run. And boy, would he run. I’d be at the mall or the park and without warning or seeming provocation the kid would take off. And he was fast. I’d have to make a split second decision to abandon 4 year old J-Girl and chase after 2 year old J-Boy. I know every parent of 2+ kids has to deal with this, but it got to the point where I just didn’t want to go anywhere alone with them.
I have had the privilege of hearing Temple Grandin speak on numerous ocassions. A great piece of advice she often gives, is to take these seemingly quirky things that kids with autism may focus and perseverate on and figure out how to turn that into a skill that someone else needs; to build on their strengths and interests and turn them into something that makes them employable. I thought this was great counsel, but I was totally off the mark when I signed J-Boy up for the track team.
Yeah, he would run alright--but for the parking lot, or to hide under the bleachers.
Finally I realized that the running was an escape, a coping mechanism,
not a desire to push his stamina and endurance.
File that one under “Duh”!
As he got a bit older, he would throw his shoes to express his angers and frustrations. The bigger the shoes got, and the stronger his pitching arm, well, you can imagine the need to find other ways for him to communicate under duress. In fact, at one point his daily goal at school was just to keep his shoes on, and when they came off he would be sentenced to wearing lace-up high tops the next day as a “natural consequence.”
We continue to work with him on appropriate ways to express himself, to communicate. Baby steps, so to speak. Yelling would be a definite step up from throwing things, and he does go this route at times. His psychiatrist suggested that I Google up “selective mutism” and explore types of language therapy and support groups for children with autism who have the ability to speak but can’t or won’t when anxieties are high.
So, why am I telling you all of this? Because I got a call from the school today about J-Boy running off, and it’s escalating, and for obvious safety reasons it has got to stop. Yesterday when I picked him up from the bus stop he only had socks on his feet, but I was thankful that his shoes were in his backpack.
I was well into this post when it was time to go pick him up from the bus today. He would not talk to me in the car, would not share what had been SO frustrating that he felt running away and hiding under a table in the school library was a good idea. Now he’s draped half on and half off the couch in the livingroom, and BAM, yep, he just threw one of his shoes.
Talk about waiting for the other shoe to drop! *Sigh*. I guess I’d better sign off--before it does.
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