The Matrix

I thought that I would faithfully write about the journey in raising my son. The more I wrote, the more solid I became in my convictions to organize this brain that wasn't mine, to train into it some alien pliable form that was not going to stay on track anyway, and otherwise teach what seemed unteachable. Daily writing brought too much verbal thinking into my own visually-oriented mind to allow me to grasp the world in which my son immersed himself. And so...I embraced my own scattered nature, my own visual and spatial world, and became a part of his world. We were much happier -not that the road was smooth- when I invited my son into our world, slowly enticing him into space, a tentative shared space, between his universe and ours. I hope to share insights from the past, present, and future as I continue to ease the transition of this young man into an adult world. The only proven method I use is ages old -- I honor who he is and help him find people and places who do the same... square pegs fit nicely into soft putty that molds around them...and the push into plasticity is gentle.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Bits and Pieces

I'm sure there will be lots of bits and pieces.

I both love and hate the puzzle piece emblem associated with autism. I live with the 1000 piece puzzle and worry each edge daily, and its often daunting. Some days I'm reminded that some puzzles have two finished pictures, one on each side. I try to ignore the enormity of that, but I shouldn't because my son is twice exceptional, sometimes called 2E, gifted with a physical or emotional or intellectual disability.

While this emblem looks like one of those pieces from large puzzles, pieces with deep cut innies and jutting outies and corners and curves, the feeling what I get from the 'world of autism education' is a vision of a chunky toddler puzzle -- too predictable in nature, too easily shoved or dropped into a pre-set hole in a piece of wood. That bothers me because I don't see any child that way...autistic or not, gifted or not.
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