What Autism Taught Me, Part 2: Facing Life's Challenges

When our son was six months old, something about his mannerisms felt off. At his doctor's visit I was told I needed to wait until his second birthday to perform in-depth testing. I didn’t tell anyone about my concerns. For 18 months I held my breath.

During those 18 months, I spent a lot of time trying to comfort myself. Maybe he was just slow in developing? Maybe I was just being overly cautious? There were a lot of maybes. Each time I tried to refocus and not worry, my mind, and feedback from those around me, brought me back to reality: Something was wrong with our son.

In a holiday card I mentioned how much he loved stacking blocks. Each side of the block had a different picture and he would spend hours perfecting their order. As he stacked and restacked, he would make sweet sounds we called the “do-do-do” song. Shortly after the holidays I received a letter from one of my friends. Her beautiful handwriting lulled me as I read her words: She gently spelled out her son's story about being diagnosed with autism and offered that I might want to check into it for our son. My heart sank.

I stuffed the letter away and carried on.

Not long after, I picked our son up from daycare and the provider told me something odd had happened at the grocery store. She noticed that when she tried to move the cart in reverse our son would cry. She would purposely push the cart forward, then pull it back, and each time our son would cry. I agreed it was odd behavior but we didn’t discuss it further. I drove home feeling anxious; my secret was getting harder to hide.

The final straw came when we were at a birthday party. A mother came up to me and introduced herself. She knew our daycare provider and had seen our son before. She went on to tell me she worked for the county, leading a program that provides early intervention for children with special needs. She felt our son might be a candidate for evaluation and handed me a slip of paper with her number. I thanked her, stuffed the number in the bottom of my purse, grabbed our boys, and left.

The jig was up.

Fast forward several months, and everything was colliding. Our son was evaluated and re-evaluated by medical professionals. I dug out the number from the bottom of my purse and called to have him assessed for the early intervention program. He was officially diagnosed with autism and moderate mental retardation, and he was accepted into the Child Find early intervention program. At three years old, he was gleefully riding a bus to school and getting the support I wasn’t able to give him at home.

On three occasions I was given feedback about our son. I chose not to act after the first two. It was easier to tamp down the truth than take action. My life was busy and, during this time, I had become a single parent. I was trying to juggle everything, and it was easier to push the warning signs to the side than it was to own them.

Instead of rehashing what I could have done differently, I decided to make three my magic number. I allow myself to hear consistent feedback about something three times before I take action. In the office, if we have three similar customer complaints we assume something bigger is wrong and dig for more facts. If someone has issues with their hardware three times, we replace it. If someone misses work three times, we sit down to talk about what is going on in their life. If I am told I need to be more patient three times, I try to invent new ways to be patient.

You’ll never outrun the hard things in life. Stop running, turn, and face them. The longer you postpone addressing them, because you’re busy, scared, or otherwise, the harder it is to overcome them. Start counting. If you get to three, you need to turn around.

I’m still working on my patience; some things we battle for a lifetime. I still write to my high school friend who sent me the letter suggesting I check into autism. We celebrate how far we’ve come in our 45+ year friendship, and revel in all we’ve learned.

Our son's “do-do-do” song plays in my head each time I reach my magic number: On three, I hear his little voice and I know it's go time.

Edits by Elyse Goldberg