Embracing Autism: One Father's Fight for His Wonder Boy

By James E. Strode

This book is about the process and unique challenges that parents of autistic children inevitably go through. In these pages, I have described the enigma of trying to understand the thought processes of my child and the bewildering behaviors that made this necessary. Here are chronicled many anecdotes, a

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jun 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647538385

James E. Strode

James Earl Strode is now a part-time English professor at Cosumnes River College in the Sacramento Metropolitan area. His working career spans six decades in the areas of education, religious ministry, social work, and entertainment as a mime clown. He has three biological children including Jimmy, his autistic son, who was born to him when he was 55 years old. He has three other step children and lives in a bi-cultural home, his wife Beatriz being from Mexico.

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EMBRACING

AUTISM

ONE FATHER’S FIGHT FOR HIS WONDER BOY

James E. Strode

Embracing Autism: One Father’s Fight for His Wonder Boy

Copyright © 2021 by James E. Strode. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021912176

ISBN 978-1-64753-837-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64753-838-5 (Digital)

06.05.21

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Fear of Criticism

Chapter 2 Fear of Making Mistakes

Chapter 3 Bondage to Ignorance

Chapter 4 Seeing Jimmy Another Way

Chapter 5 Hard Love vs. Tough Love

Chapter 6 Anger: Its Cause and Cure

Chapter 7 Loving is Communicating

Chapter 8 Love is Encouraging/Stimulating Growth

Chapter 9 Fear of the Future

Chapter 10 Conclusion

Epilogue

INTRODUCTION

I walked into the kitchen after several minutes of quiet and found Jimmy sitting on the kitchen floor. He was breaking the soda cracker I had just given him into ¼ inch pieces and then smashing them with his thumb on the floor. I was already frustrated because he had been squealing and pulling me by the fingers all around the house, and I could not find out what he wanted. I told him to use his words to no avail. Thinking he might be hungry and following the cues as best I could, I had finally given him the cracker. This was my reward for my diligent sleuthing and perplexity.

He was making a mess. The words, If you don’t want it, don’t play with it, were on the tip of my tongue. I was about to yell at him, but something stopped me. I remembered that when autistic children are stressed, they often use sensory input to focus their attention and handle the stress.

Instead of screaming, I gave him another cracker but led him to the table and had him sit down. At least on the table cracker crumbs would be easier to clean up than the floor. I not only encouraged him to break the cracker and smash it. I gentry pushed his forearms into the crumbs and smashed them more. He loved it. I smeared cracker crumbs all over his arms; he could hardly contain his happiness. Finally, I had him take his shoes off, stand on top of the table, and smash the crackers with his bare feet. His smile was ear to ear and he almost danced on the crumbs until they were pulverized.

What a great shared experience we had together. When he finished, I easily swept the crumbs into the trash can. Jimmy was much more relaxed and happier all evening.

If I had not been free to respond in love instead of being bound by fear of criticism, He’s a bad disciplinarian, fear of failure, What if I do the wrong thing?, or if I hadn’t had enough information about the behavioral characteristics of autistic children, bondage to ignorance, or if I had been insecure about my role as caregiver, I would have missed the opportunity not only to sooth my son’s anxieties, but also to bond more with him.

My Boy; My Wonderful, Terrible Autistic Boy

He’s not like me!

I wish he was.

What is he thinking?

I wish I knew.

He is bright.

But he’s not articulate.

What’s he upset about now?

I wish I knew.

He’s stomping his feet and

Shaking no ringing his hands.

I feel so sorry for him.

He’s looking at his fingers

In front of his face like Spock.

He’s an enigma.

He’s crying, chanting, and humming.

He’s so frustrated.

He’s been running

Around the house for hours.

I’d like to kill him.

What frustrating lights, spiraling orbs,

Gnawing sounds, tingling sensations, Irritating sense impressions

Is he feeling?

I love him.

He looks at me

From the corner of his eye.

He approaches slowly.

He climbs on me.

He pokes my eyes with his fingers;

He sticks his fingers in my mouth,

My nose, my nostrils.

He puts his mouth on my nose.

Does he love me?

He hugs me.

Yes, he does.

It was very frustrating; I sat and timed his repetitions of the Sesame Street video introduction: he allowed the video to run 26 seconds! After the first five times he pushed the replay button, I began to be fascinated with finding out the stimulus that triggered his drive to push the replay button at that precise time. I timed the next three repetitions, almost exactly 26 seconds. Then I tried to look at it from his point of view. Why did he stop it at that point? Was there a completed action that he loved to repeat? Were there lights, patterns, or sounds he liked to hear? Perhaps there was something coming next that he was avoiding. He repeated this section of the video about 15 times before he chose to go to another splice of a different video.

The point that I want to make about this behavior pattern is not really what stimulus he was attending to, but that in order to love my son and communicate with him, I must try to see the world through his eyes. Trying to educate him, forcing him to change to a more normal pattern, or punishing him although sometimes appropriate, I believe in this instance would have been counterproductive.

When Jimmy discovered that he could control our DVD player and control what flashed on the big screen in our living room, he began to manipulate it for hours. At first I was very frustrated and wanted him to let the videos continue so that the story line could be completed. There are wonderful educational videos for children that have great lessons and excellent graphic art. They are wholesome and entertaining. I wanted him to enjoy these stories as his older sister and I do. Emphatically, that is not what Jimmy wanted. I remember warning him that I would punish him, take away the DVD, or try to position the controls so that he could not reach them if he continued to interrupt the DVD. I followed through, sometimes slapping his hands, and sometimes hiding the DVD player. Positioning it where he couldn’t reach it didn’t work at all because by the time he was four years old, he could rearrange furniture and find ways to reach anything that I could. I finally had to accept the fact that he did not care if the story line continued uninterrupted. What he wanted to do was manipulate the machine and produce whatever effect he wanted on the screen. We finally bought him a new machine, with a good maintenance agreement, and left him alone to enjoy himself. That is when I witnessed and began to explore what appeared to me to be his world.

When we first learned that Jimmy was autistic, it threw us both mentally and emotionally. We did not know what autism was. We didn’t know how our son got it or what to do about it. Our first reaction was to think that our son was retarded. We cried and were both depressed thinking about the future ahead of us.

We were lucky and our learning curve was steep. Because he was diagnosed at an early age and got into therapy quickly; we had hope that there was a positive future ahead. He was born in 2007 and diagnosed in 2009. By this time, our community in Sacramento was aware of the increasing problem and was well equipped to serve his needs. He was connected with Alta California Regional Centers and began to received speech therapy and occupational therapy before he was 30 months old. Soon after, he was receiving ABA in home therapy for 20 hours a week. He was then assigned to an autistic pre-school and had a longer and more intense learning day than any other of our family who were in elementary school, high school or college. All these services for Jimmy were free to us.

One of our first ah ha realizations was that he was not retarded, but his thinking processes were different than the other children we had raised. He would have special needs and perhaps not learn as quickly as other children, but there was an intelligent mind inside trying to figure out how to adjust to our world. Never-the-less, even if he had been retarded, which is a term that is out of popularity but one that has meaning for normal adults like us with our normal paranoia, we would have to come to grips with it, accept it, and move on as parents of an unusual child. It helped us emotionally, but we really needed to accept Jimmy and learn to help him as any good parents would. That was our first hurdle, but perhaps because we were both experienced parents and I was in my mid-fifties, we were able to accept Jimmy’s condition fairly quickly, get over the emotional baggage, and turn to the tasks ahead of us.

I can almost hear my wife’s whimpering voice as she cried out late one night near the beginning of our odyssey saying, I don’t want to have a stupid boy. And then she cried on my shoulder for about five minutes. This was near the time he was diagnosed when we had already