Autism Acceptance Month, Day 3 Emotion is difficult for Thomas on many levels. I should be clear, I do not, for one moment believe that it is impossible for Thomas (or others on the spectrum) to have an emotional life, as is often put forward by autism pundits. Instead, I think that too often, neurotypicals have a tendency to forget that intense emotion can provoke a firestorm of sensory reactions. Just think of how often our descriptions of emotion are grounded in the physical: sweaty palms, butterfly stomachs, beat-skipping hearts. And for someone like Thomas, who thrives on routine, consistency, and expectation management, strong emotion presents a challenge. And goodness knows we have had more than our fair share of emotion of late. For these reasons, we worked very hard to prepare Thomas for his Auntie Emilys funeral. We talked a lot about how he would see lots of people crying. How there would be lots of people hugging, lots of people he cared about feeling sad. We explained, in detail, how the ceremony would unfold. That people would give little speeches, and that they might struggle to speak, they might cry, there might be puffy eyes and red noses, and that it wouldnt be an appropriate time to say someone didnt look very nice, because sometimes people dont look very nice after they have been crying. You get the idea. We were trying to think of every possible thing we could to prepare him. But we forgot something. I was sitting in the front row with my parents, and Jonathan was immediately behind me with Thomas and Ivy. When the first moment of laughter rolled through, I heard Thomas say to Jonathan, in his very straightforward manner that is always just a little too loud than old school rules of social nicety would permit, “Why are they laughing? Why are they laughing? This can’t be funny.” I immediately realized our mistake. We had forgotten to prepare him for laughter. Because of course, when sharing stories and memories, there is always laughter, even in such a moment of profound sadness. This proved very difficult for Thomas to understand. And, while I know that this is a difficult concept for all children, for Thomas, it becomes a point of perseveration, something he can’t let go of, a skip in his mind that he can’t move past until he can smooth it away with logic. When the next laughs came, Thomas was more agitated, and I could hear him say again to Jonathan, “Why are they laughing.” Jonathan replied, “Because they are remembering a happy story about Auntie Emily. It’s okay.” But this wasn’t enough for Thomas, “But that doesn’t make any sense. It’s rude. A funeral is not funny.” And of course it’s not. And there is no logic to provide. We were all laughing through our sadness, just one intense emotion overlaid on another. And for Thomas, opening himself up to one intense emotion at a time is more than enough to bear. Jonathan leaned into him and whispered in his ear, “you’ll just have to trust me.” With this firm direction from Daddy, Thomas relaxed enough to get through almost the remainder of the ceremony before he he had to seek out a quiet place. Jonathan and I both knew there would be questions to come. But this is a part of our role as his parents: to support him in navigating the often sensory-heavy world of intense emotion, even when it doesn’t make sense, even in those moments when were not entirely certain we understand it ourselves.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 01:46:27 +0000
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