9/52

Do you ever look at kids and wonder how it is that they are a million times braver than you are as a fully grown adult?

All three of my boys do extracurricular activities that require lots of work and commitment and, most importantly, constant failure in front of other people.

I’m in complete awe of my teenager when he swims next to boys a foot taller than he is. He’ll lose a race, shake it off, and just use it as fuel to work harder the next time.

I’m amazed at my two younger ones who go to piano and cello lessons week after week and play for their teachers, quite often failing pretty spectacularly. And don't even get me started on how proud I am of them for the terrifying recitals they do twice a year.

Yes, my little people are brave and amazing and they MOST definitely didn’t get it from me. You see, I’m a product of lifelong debilitating anxiety, which has kept me on the fringes of SO many things I’ve really wanted to do over the years.

I think I would have really enjoyed competitive swimming and I wish my parents had been aware that swim team was a thing in 1986, though I probably would have been too nervous to actually race. I adored gymnastics and I was naturally good at it, but was too anxious to attend the special camps in which I was asked to participate, so I quit.

It's the story of my life. Always avoiding being put on the spot. Always quitting or being too nervous to try in the first place,  torn between being comfortable and taking risks -- yet, deep down, always really, really wanting to try. It’s the kids’ instrument lessons though that truly send me into the woulda coulda shoulda spiral of regret.

I was born into a house filled with music. My dad is a musician and a songwriter -- the real life “piano man” from the Billy Joel song, with a decades-long side hustle playing background music and Frank Sinatra requests at various places around town. He also composed lots of jingles for local businesses throughout the 80s and 90s. I relished hearing them on the radio and being able to tell others kids, "Hey! That's my dad!"

Early on, my mom insisted dad get a “real job" with benefits,  and so, when I was very young, he went back to school to be a music teacher.  Some of my earliest memories are of him using me as a guinea pig for lessons. I remember gleefully clapping out rhythms to silly things like  “Gum-drops, Loll-i-pops, Candy-Coated Peeeeeeanuts!”, learning the lines and spaces on the staff, do-re-mi hand signals, and playing little songs on the piano, sometimes with his hands over mine to help me find the right keys.

I spent long stretches of my childhood happily entertaining myself for hours at places like recording studios, music stores, dad’s music room at school, other kids’ piano lessons, and church music team rehearsals.

He taught me plenty of things on the piano whenever I asked (and sometimes when I didn’t.) I think it’s probably really hard to give your own child lessons of any kind--  especially when that child is incredibly stubborn and just wants to learn things on their own and make mistakes without an audience. Despite my pushback against any formal lessons, I always loved playing and managed okay on my own. He would just wander by every so often and show me how something should sound or how to get through parts I didn’t understand.  

Occasionally, a new music book would randomly appear in the piano bench and I would spend weeks trying to learn it cover to cover.  Some of my favorite times were on the weekends when we would go out together to the music store. There were several nearby and they all knew my dad by name. He would chat up the employees and I got to wander around touching all the instruments and perusing the piano books and sheet music. Almost always, he would let me pick out a fresh, new book to take home.

When I was about nine years old, there was a McDonald’s commercial that aired all the time during Saturday morning cartoons. In it, a little girl nervously fumbled through Fur Elise at her piano recital, and got to go out for a Happy Meal afterward. I was instantly entranced, not with the Happy Meal, but with the piece of music she was playing and I begged to go buy a copy.  My dad obliged and we picked out a fancy compilation book of classical pieces. I can still picture the shiny cover that had a Renoir painting on it of two little girls at a piano. Fur Elise was on page one. 
I came right home, ran to the piano and spent the rest of the day there.  It was my first taste of playing something I thought of as REAL music and I was hooked.

Dad would ask about once a year or so if I wanted to take lessons and I would emphatically refuse.The idea of sitting and playing in front of a teacher seemed to me an insurmountable social obstacle. And a recital? Forget it. Total deal breaker.

Tangled up in all that though there was this small, quiet part of me that wanted to shout from the rooftops, “But you should make me do it anyway. I really WANT to do this!” 

The one benefit of having felt this way a lot as a kid is that I recognize that small voice in my own children now, especially the oldest one who shares my anxious, overthinking tendencies. Something I’ve learned over the years is that there are those of us in this world who sometimes just really need another gentle soul to see us there struggling in our little circle of of comfort, drag us out, and then hold us there for awhile as we feel terribly out of sorts in that new place. We need someone to keep us from following the instinct to run away.... until finally, it starts to feel ok and then we can breathe again and move forward. With every tiny step out of that circle, we start to learn what amazing things we're capable of.

At fourteen or so, I finally got a tiny bit brave and acquiesced to trying lessons. I had just learned a new piece I was kind of proud of --  a Bach Two-Part Invention with what I thought at the time was some impressive two-handed action. Somehow, even with nerves going haywire and unsteady hands, I managed to play it for the teacher. She said my technique was good and then? She asked me to play some scales.  GAH. Scales? Other than the basic ones, I had never bothered with those sorts of boring details. At the end of the lesson, instead of more fun and interesting pieces to play, she sent me home with a book of scales and arpeggios. Deflated and discouraged, I never returned. (though I still practiced more than any kid I knew who actually took lessons!)

Fast-forward to a couple of years ago. My parents gave us their piano, the same brown Yamaha upright I had grown up playing, with its wonky D key and scuff marks where my brother and I constantly kicked it with our shoes wen we played as kids. I didn’t realize until it was in my house how very much I had missed being able to just sit at that piano and play. One by one, I started trying to get all of my old pieces back. Like old friends, the piano, the music, and I found each other again and picked up right where we had left off. It was like coming home.

At the same time, my youngest child started taking lessons, followed a year later by the middle one. Week after week, I sat in on their lessons and just observed and listened.

My seven-year-old hadn't even been taking lessons all that long when he could already put me to shame by effortlessly playing a bunch of scales I had never bothered to learn. The funny part is that, by being at the kids' lessons, I was actually starting to see the point of learning scales in the first place, along with plenty other little things I had never picked up along my very unorthodox piano journey.

The little voice began to creep back in…. “Just ask,” it whispered. “You know you want to do this!”

I started small, putting my toes in the water by occasionally asking their teacher little things here and there about pieces I was trying to learn at home. How do I play this part? How should this sound? What’s this squiggly symbol? What’s with these tiny notes above the bigger notes?

Just asking those questions at first felt like leaping off of a cliff backwards with my eyes closed. After all, I’m 41 years old and she teaches ten-year-olds who who know more than I do; but she has always been more than happy to answer any question I throw at her. (and trust me, it's a lot of questions) Much to my relief, she has never made me feel stupid or silly or like I'm wasting her time.

Knowing I have someone who can help and encourage me if I get stuck has made me feel like I can finally begin to revisit something that has always brought me so much happiness. I’ve dusted off my unfinished pieces and have steadily been making a list of new ones I want to learn. I recently started trying to learn a Mozart piece that, for me, is pretty ambitious.  I’ve had to ask more questions than usual and get some in-person demonstrations, stealing five minutes here or there from my kids’ weekly lessons.

I’m not sure I can adequately put into words just how daunting this seemingly small thing can be for someone with anxiety -- this putting yourself out there and asking for help. It’s not that I’m too proud to ask. Far from that. It’s finding the courage to even physically make the words come out of my mouth.  “Can you please show me how to do this? I need your help.”

I have more and more questions with every new piece I pick up and, the fact is, I can’t keep stealing from my kids’ lesson time, so the obvious next step is taking lessons myself. It's a huge mental hurdle, but I’m almost there. I’m trying to listen to the small voice more lately instead of the louder, anxious one that is always telling me I can’t do things.

The trick, I think, is learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and nervous and to trust that it will pass. This is all new for me because it’s a feeling I’ve spent my entire life avoiding at all costs... and the costs were often steep because they were usually things I really wanted and gave up on.

I doubt I will ever be as brave as my kids, but I can at least show them it’s never too late to give something a try, or face a fear, or ask for help.  I’m glad, even this “late in the game”, to have found some inspiration and encouragement to hang with the uncomfortable feeling and ultimately make my comfort zone just a tiny bit wider, while learning how to do something that gives me immense joy.

8/52

When my third son came along, I was confident he was the one who would let me finally just sit back and enjoy the ride of being a mother to three crazy boys without constant vigilance and worry. And when it comes down to it, that’s really kind of one of my biggest goals in life -- right behind “raise good people.”  I really just want to enjoy the ride.

By that time, between my first two boys, I had experienced what I thought was a pretty generous variety of kid issues, worries, and developmental timetables. Late-talker, early talker, early walker, late walker, not eating, colic, asthma, rsv, stitches, ear tubes, dislocated elbows, fevers, colds, that freaky five-day fever I was totally sure was something life-threatening but turned out to just be one of those viruses every kid gets eventually... the list goes on and on. The point is, I had learned a LOT in six-and-a-half years and two kids.  At least, I thought I had. I figured whatever a third child could throw at me, I had probably seen it before and could handle it without even breaking stride.

Looking back, I probably should have realized I was in for a special kind of fun when number three decided to come into the world looking not face-up, not face-down, but face-sideways -- nature’s brilliant foreshadowing of a child who was going to do a LOT of things on his own terms.  

It actually WAS all going quite well in the beginning and I was progressing steadily toward my goal of being that chilled-out mom of three boys in the mental snapshot I had created for myself.

In the span of a year, I hadn’t rushed the new one to the pediatrician for any hangnails.  I didn’t check on him during naps to make sure he was still breathing (often). I didn’t rush to his side when he’d fall or bump his head. I let him try all kinds of things on his own that I never would have let the other ones do at that age. I forgot to write the exact dates of some of his milestones in the baby book or that they happened at all.  I regularly forgot how many months old he was and sometimes had to double check whether I’d even remembered to put him in the car with us.

(Perhaps, with that last one, this is a good time to mention that someone overlooked my nomination for 2010 Mom of the Year?)

One thing I was particularly proud of myself for though was not freaking out when he didn’t start talking on schedule.

“Oh, he’s on his own timetable!” I would tell people. “ I’ve had one of these before. He’ll talk when he’s ready!”

I did well playing it cool, that is, until he reached the age when my first-born son (my late-talker) had said his first words, which were all, of course, painstakingly documented in his baby book complete with date, time and context.

I polled every mom I knew. “Do you think I should call early intervention? He should be saying things by now, right?” Though the most non-alarmist among my mom friends would insist he was probably fine, others would encourage me to call, softening it with things like “He’s a boy and he’s a third child... that’s probably all it is. I’m sure he’s FINE... but maybe you should look into it anyway. You know, just in case!”

Forget actual words, my son was 15 months old at that point and hadn’t babbled so much as mama or dada, or really any other syllable consistently. No matter what books or websites I consulted,  and trust me, it was a lot, I couldn’t find a single one that would tell me it was some variant on “normal”. Not that it mattered anyway because I knew in my heart it wasn’t.

On any given day, he was either completely quiet or whining and screaming out of frustration.  As each month passed with no new sounds or words, the worry began to creep in. I was in new territory, wandering aimlessly without  map or plan -- only a dog-eared copy of “What to Expect :The Toddler Years” that I wasn't finding particularly helpful.

Finally, I broke down and made the phone call to Infants and Toddlers. I can admit now that it took a LOT for me to get to that point. It took coming to terms with the fact that, even the third time around,  I didn’t have all the answers, that I needed help, and that, third time around or not, I was “first-time-worried” all over again.

I don’t remember much about that initial call except thinking the voice on the other end sounded very kind and patient even though I know I probably sounded like a bit of a handful.  After that phone call and some standard paperwork, they were going to come evaluate my son to decide if he qualified for their services.

The women who came to my house were all business from the get-go, grilling me about my pregnancy, my son’s birth, my concerns, what he did and didn’t do. They started throwing around words to each other like "delay" and "expressive language" and "tongue movements". They asked me a flurry of questions like "Does he lick an ice cream cone?" And I couldn't, for the life of me, remember if he could lick an ice cream cone or, for that matter, if he had even HAD an ice cream cone.

They scribbled notes about him on official looking multi-colored triplicate forms and asked him to say and do things that he couldn’t even come close to doing. Their concern was obvious and it didn’t take them long to conclude he was definitely speech-delayed.

Something about all the cold, technical terms being thrown around so casually, particularly the word “delay”, triggered some sort of instinctive and primal mama bear mode in me and I vividly remember mentally shutting down and just wanting them to get out of my house as quickly as possible.

They wanted me to sign off on starting services that day, but I said no, that I wanted to give it a couple months, work with him myself, and see if he progressed. I could tell this wasn’t really the answer they wanted, but they left me with their phone numbers, some tips, and a promise that whenever we were ready, we could call and get things started.

I assumed I would ever see them again, which, in hindsight, was probably a dumb assumption because you can’t go 500 feet in our town without running into someone you know.

Sure enough, one of the evaluators who had come to our house surfaced at my middle son’s preschool one afternoon a month later. She immediately spotted us despite my best efforts to will myself to be invisible. Better yet, she remembered our names and asked me how my son was doing. I had no choice but answer truthfully that he had LITERALLY done exactly nothing new since last we had spoken.  “I’ll give you guys a call soon!” I promised as we high-tailed it out the door. I really did have every intention of calling. Just not that day...

My phone rang later that afternoon, thwarting my efforts at further procrastination. “Since when are government agencies this efficient?” I thought to myself as I picked it up. The same friendly voice I had spoken to the month before said she would send some people back out to get my signature on the paperwork to start services and then they’d send an early intervention teacher who would start working with my son.

Throughout this whole process, I had never once really known quite what to expect. It was becoming the running theme and continued to be true three weeks later when our doorbell rang.

I opened the door and that’s when Cindy stepped into our lives, like our very own Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins wore Under Armour and carried a Vera Bradley tote instead of a carpet bag.

My son sized her up skeptically from a distance at first while she introduced herself and asked me some questions. He cried a little and climbed up into my lap. Then he watched intently as she pulled a shape sorter from her bottomless bag, balanced a star shape on top of her head and dramatically achoo-ed it off onto the floor.  

He was instantly enchanted.

After a few more achoos, he jumped down from my lap and scampered across the room to get a matching star shape from his toy house across the room, brought it back and did the sign for “please” to ask to her sneeze THAT off of her head too.  I'm fairly sure this is the universal toddler sign for friendship.

That’s the first time Ms. Cindy won.

You see, she warned me she ALWAYS wins. And, as Jonathan and I would quickly learn, she wasn’t kidding.

It wasn’t all fun and games though. The next few months were fraught with battles. Cindy came every other Monday for a little while, and then every Monday; and after the first couple visits, my son decided he didn’t exactly appreciate her winning streak. She didn’t let him get away with anything. She always pushed him to his breaking point in an effort to get him to do just a little more, to sit a little bit longer, to make more of an effort to make sounds and to try to communicate with us. There were many days where all three of us were red-faced and sweating, Cindy and I from trying to contain Jonathan to make him work and Jonathan from fighting to escape.

I began to absolutely dread Mondays. It was hard to watch my child become so frustrated and even harder to see him be pushed to the point of becoming upset. He would scream, cry, and arch his back to escape from his highchair.

She made subtle suggestions that maybe there was something bigger going on than just a speech delay, pointing out how it was a struggle to get him make eye contact, how he would get stuck on certain actions and activities, and host of other random things, most of which I never would have noticed on my own or if I had, I might not have given a second thought to. I knew enough to know what these concerns pointed to and together, they formed a picture of my youngest son that I didn’t recognize,  one I didn’t want to see or worse, be true. I remember telling her over and over again that I was worried she was only seeing him at his worst and would argue that he was different for me.  

I knew deep down though that most everything she was saying was true. Add to that, my son still wasn’t talking and nothing I knew how to do was changing anything. And if it was hard to admit I needed help with him, it was even harder to admit something might actually be wrong.

It would be months before I stopped trying to prove to myself and to his teacher that was nothing wrong other than a speech delay, and started to realize and accept that maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t; but that fighting the work she was doing with him wasn’t going to help any of us.

And the work Cindy did was not just with my son. She challenged me too -- to play differently, actively, attentively, and creatively. I learned SO many ways I had never thought of to use the toys we had to encourage everything from eye contact to motor skills to language. I learned how to engage him in productive games and activities that helped him practice all the things we were working toward.

It became a true team effort and we started seeing results with his speech. First sounds. Then single words. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, full sentences.  He went from throwing himself on the floor and screaming when Cindy would visit, to running to the door to greet her with hugs and asking her what she had in her toy bag that day.

Our family dynamics changed for the better too. Things were less stressful, he became more manageable, less frustrated, more present with us and interested in my husband and in me and in his two brothers.

Fast forward to a year and a half after we started this journey, and we have a completely different child than the one we started with.  He has some quirks and some social weaknesses, and he can certainly be challenging at times. More than likely, there is something bigger at work that we'll eventually get answers for... but I no longer worry there is something terribly wrong. He’s a happy, funny, social, ridiculously talkative almost-three-year-old. When I think back to 15 months ago when I really wondered if he would ever talk, it’s absolutely astonishing to me how far he has come.

The third time around, I thought I knew it all,  but what I learned is that sometimes the most valuable knowledge you can have as a mom is knowing when you need help and following your instincts. I know I am SO thankful I asked for help and I’m even more thankful that help was there in the form of “our” Ms. Cindy.

When I start to get concerned my son isn't progressing or we hit a particularly challenging phase and I start to worry myself in circles about all the possibilities of what could be wrong, Cindy reminds me time and time again, “I KNOW early intervention works.”

And I can tell you... it really does. My son is proof.

This morning, he asked me to come to his room to play with him, something he didn’t do even as recently as a month ago. We played “bear bed”, a game he invented where he puts all of his stuffed animals to bed and reads them stories, all the while narrating the whole bedtime routine.  While we played, I soaked in the comforting normalcy of it all.

My words of wisdom to the next family who opens their door to find Ms. Cindy standing there? Brace yourself. She really does ALWAYS win.

But in the end, the truth is that we ALL won --  my son, for obvious reasons, our family, and me, because, a big part of what I learned from watching his amazing teacher play with him and laugh with him is how to really just enjoy the ride... even with no map,  some bumps in the road, and absolutely no idea where we are going to end up.

7/52

I watch as the teacher hands my toddler a puzzle piece shaped like a guitar, and obediently, he places it in the guitar-shaped hole. She picks it back up and this time, pretends to strum it. He squeals with glee at this because she has inadvertently hit upon his absolute favorite thing in the world these days. He takes the piece from her and strums away happily. She lets him do this for a minute or two and then shows him a bucket to drop the puzzle pieces into. He cooperates for a couple rounds of this then goes back to pretend strumming.

“See? That’s called perseveration.”, she says matter-of-factly, turning toward me.  “He wants to keep going back to the same activity. You can let him do things for awhile, but when he it reaches the point where his play non-productive, you need to redirect him.”

“He does REALLY like playing guitars these days,” I reply, a bit taken aback by the term “non-productive” play, which, frankly, sounds as absurd as “jumbo shrimp” to me.

“Yes, but did you see how I couldn’t get him to engage in another activity?" she asks.

I nod, my mind wandering now as she continues her work with Jonathan.  I realize I am feeling sad for my baby who is probably confused as to why this lady I let into the house to play with him isn’t letting him strum his guitar anymore after showing him how to do it in the first place.

At the same time though, worry is creeping in and I am remembering another toddler I knew who concentrated on one thing at a time for FAR longer than this one ever did … and still does.

The two are brothers.

When my oldest son, Ben, was just a little more than a year old, I casually mentioned a few concerns to our pediatrician, but, as good a doctor as he was, he was about as non-alarmist as they come. (I nicknamed him “Dr. It’s-just-a-flesh-wound”) I remember him waving his hand at me dismissively and saying it was nothing. I wanted to believe him, so I didn’t bring it up again.

In many ways, my first-born was kind of extraordinary. He stood on his own, without holding on to anything, when he was six months old. He walked just two months later and took off running two months after that, the shortest little thing on two feet you ever saw.

He knew all his letters, shapes and colors before he was two.  He could recognize a piece of music after hearing just a couple of notes. I have to admit, my husband and I kind of thought we either had a genius on our hands or that we, as complete rookies, were pretty much rocking the parenting thing.

There was another side to the story though.

Like his baby brother, he was a late talker -- probably close to two before he really picked up words.

When he did learn words, he would say them over and over again. “Light” was one of his first ones and I started dreading walking by any light switches because if he wasn’t allowed to stand there and flick them on and off for 20-25 minutes at a stretch, he would scream.

“Whoa Whoa” was another, his word for the “round and round” motion a fan makes. I had to explain to friends we had just met that the reason he really wanted so desperately to get into their backyard was so that he could stare at the fan inside their heat pump. There was a period when he was two years old where he would seek out heat pumps everywhere we went. His favorite part of a zoo trip at that age was finding a giant, industrial sized one near the lion exhibit.

Everyone thought it was funny and quirky.  We even encouraged it, making him a book of fans and lights cut out from catalogs. He slept with it at night.

It wasn’t *just *the obsessions. He also seemed to be ultra sensitive to his surroundings from the time he was just a few months old.  Restaurants were notoriously a nightmare scenario for us. It seemed he just couldn’t handle any situation that was overly loud, crowded or echo-y and would just cry uncontrollably. My husband and I got used to one of us having to take him outside while the other got food boxed up and paid the bill.  

We stopped eating out for awhile.

We didn’t even realize this behavior wasn't normal until we had a second child. Simon could happily sit through dinner at a restaurant or could tolerate a walk through a Yankee candle store or a visit to an indoor pool, all places that made my first son at the same age completely lose control.

Those specific quirks eventually faded, but gave way to others. For instance, there were a few months when he was three where he wouldn’t wear shorts or short sleeves because he didn’t like the way his arms and legs felt uncovered. I have pictures of him playing on a beach in south Florida with sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt on. He wore that outfit the entire trip.

The obsessions continued and do to this day. Periods of time throughout his eight years have come to be defined by whatever he is into at the time. Keys, violins, volcanoes, clocks, space, bugs, fish, cars, Star Wars, math, sharks, maps, flags, money, football... the list goes on and on.

During these phases, he rarely talks about anything else and will often start talking about the topic as soon as his head leaves his pillow in the morning. Often, an unrelated question from someone will be greeted with a random fact about whatever he is into. For instance,  I may ask, “Ben, would you like syrup on your pancakes?”  and get “Did you know that the whale shark is two and a half school buses long?” as a reply. Eventually I will get an answer to my syrup question, but not before learning three more facts about sharks.

Every year at school conference time,  I ask his teacher if I should be concerned -- I’ve asked about the obsessions, about his one-track-mind, about his fear of fingerpaint in preschool, about how he fidgets and gets distracted, how he can't carry on a real conversation. 

Year after year, one teacher after another assured me he was fine, progressing, participating, intelligent, a pleasure to have in class and well-liked by his peers... all the things you want to hear from teachers.

I was starting to feel like a paranoid, crazy mother,  I decided to try to quiet the voice inside that was telling me something was different about Ben because, after all, teachers were trained to spot problems, not me. They’ve seen every issue there is including, of course, the one that was always lurking in the back of my mind and the word every mother these days fears.... autism.

Teachers know it when they see it and they didn’t see it in Ben.  I should have been relieved.

I managed to push it out my my mind for most of first grade. His teacher that year had no complaints about him, he was thriving academically. He seemed to have friends.

Second grade was a different story, I received an email on the second day of school from his teacher informing me that Ben seemed to have trouble sitting still, tapped his fingers and his pencil constantly and was distracted. I immediately lashed out. The second day of school? Really? How could she even know him yet? Why couldn’t she let him stand and work like his first grade teacher had? Or gently remind him not to tap his pencil?

The emails came fast and furious the whole first half of the year… poor organization, his desk is a mess, can’t find his supplies, didn’t finish his classwork, didn’t follow directions, illegible handwriting, had to miss playtime to redo the assignment... every time the teacher’s name appeared in my Yahoo inbox, I internally cringed as i clicked on it.

I feared she was a Ritalin-happy teacher who couldn’t handle little boys and that Ben was just one in a long string of students she wanted to quickly and cleanly slap an ADHD label on. And THAT, for sure, I was having none of.

When I went in for the conference, I was prepared for a fight.  Instead, I found myself sitting in a child-sized chair at 8:30 in the morning, across from the teacher who very calmly told me Ben was one of the smartest children in her class and one of her best readers. She continued, “He has an astounding vocabulary”...  “an amazing mind for mathematics!” The glowing compliments just kept coming. I was confused... why was I here again? What about the 27 emails complaining about how distracted and unorganized he was all the time?

“He’s easily distracted and I think he would really benefit from a checklist to remind him to stay on task.” she informed me.

I breathed a sigh of relief and thought, “Wait, that’s it?” Of course, I agreed to the checklist.

But deep down, I knew that wasn’t it.

Second grade was also the year I discovered Ben didn’t understand friendships. He would call other children friends and then I would witness them making fun of him directly to his face. Ben would be completely oblivious. Few things are more heartbreaking to witness. We had one of these “friends” over for a playdate once and the mean things I overheard him say to my son brought tears to my eyes. It became clear to me that there was some kind of social disconnect going on.

He may have been excelling academically, but socially he was floundering...  

My mind stops wandering and I redirect my attention to Jonathan's speech session. The teacher has been doing an artfully choreographed tap dance for the last several weeks hinting that maybe he’s more than just a late talker.  I’ve had enough of the dance.

“Be honest with me…” I hesitate for a moment before I continue. “What’s going on here? What else should I be worried about?” I brace myself for her response.

“Well....” I can tell she is mentally sifting through what she is and is not allowed to say to me. Stupid lawsuit-fearing world we live in. I wish she could just level with me and be done with it.

“There are a few red flags for some things... we’d have to bring in a psychologist to make any kind of diagnosis though.” she replies.  

This is when I decide to tell her. 

I take a deep breath before I begin. I've become used to people telling me my worries are unfounded, but somehow I can tell THIS is someone who might actually hear what I'm saying and give me the answer I have needed to hear, but simultaneously don't want to hear.

“You should know, he’s a lot like my oldest son.” Then, I tell her about Ben. I tell her everything. The fans, the lights, the screaming fits, the obsessions, the friends. She listens, REALLY listens, and offers the occasional careful comment. She also suggests I schedule a consultation with our pediatrician.

It’s surreal to find yourself in the pediatrician’s office without a child in tow. But that’s exactly where I was one evening two weeks later. Since we had switched to this doctor a couple years prior, I had been vaguely hinting at my concern (so Ben wouldn’t catch on) at the well-child appointments. He had encouraged me to schedule a time to come in on my own a few months prior, so my visit came as no surprise.

As he flipped through Ben’s records, I scanned his office. My gaze fell upon family photos lined up on the windowsill. There were pictures of his granddaughters. Smiling, beautiful babies who probably talked right on schedule and didn't freak out in restaurants.

My eyes continued around the room which was so very different from the sterile-feeling, spartan exam rooms where I had sat with my children so many times. It was homey and comfortable. Mounds of papers covered every inch of desk space and on one wall, a shelf was full of thick, important-looking medical books, more family photos, and various knickknacks, probably gifts from patients over the years. I found myself wondering what things he had discussed here with other worried parents today. Did my silly thoughts about my 8-year-old’s social skills seem trivial in comparison?

One look at the sincere concern in his eyes told me they didn’t. 

I fiddled anxiously with my keys and my cell phone, unsure of where to start exactly.
He leaned back in his chair, pen in hand and encouraged me to start from the beginning. So, in the span of about a half hour, I covered almost eight years of worries as he listened intently and took notes.  He asked lots of questions. I cried as I struggled to answer some of them.

“What part makes you tearful?” he asked. I suddenly felt like he was more therapist than pediatrician. “Are you worried about what the tests might show us about Ben?” he continued.

“No. It’s not that.”

I took a deep breath. “I really don’t care what label they put on him. It’s not going to change who he is. And we LOVE the way he learns. He’s so curious and smart and so fun. Every one of his phases is an adventure for all of us because we learn along with him. I just... “

The tears started again.  “I want him to have friends. I want people to understand him and right now, there aren’t many other kids that do.”

The doctor shared his thoughts about everything I had told him and then scribbled down a name and number to call to set up testing for my son. A huge weight instantly lifted. I was actually relieved that he didn’t say it was NOTHING.

FINALLY. 

FINALLY someone had actually heard me.

There isn't an end to this story yet. The testing isn’t until next month and I don’t even really know what to expect as far as what we are dealing with because there are actually lots of possibilities, including, of course, the “A” word.

All I know is, because of genetics, it’s pretty safe to say that whatever is going on with Ben is probably at least part of what is going on with his little brother.  Basically, this means my oldest and youngest sons may very well a lot have more in common than just their poker straight blonde hair and impish grins.

I may not know the outcome, but I do know it will be a happy one no matter what. They are still my babies. They may use their brains in a different way than other children, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are smart and sweet and adorable to a fault.  

And, the world better look out. 

Why?

Because as far as I know, every person who has ever changed this world for the better is someone who was able to see it a little differently than most.