My Beautiful Aspergers Boy

April 16th, 2016

I see you there, playing quietly by yourself, only it's not so quiet. You make lots of repetitive sounds and your hands and fingers fly and "walk" and crash into each other in frenzies. They do this along store shelves when we shop and along walls as we walk and under desks as you learn and in the vehicle while we drive. Your version of "stimming". But then you'll turn to me and say the most intelligent and mature things. You reveal my complacency in my knowledge of the world and in my education when you randomly interrupt or interject oddly placed statements of scientific facts or ask me questions about things I don't think I ever even learned in school. You remind me of all the things still out there to learn about. You with your lack of any speech until you were three, who then went right into big words and concepts well beyond your age. My beautiful boy who would break down into a disastrous fit if we demanded you "look at us" when we were talking to you, but willingly comes to us to apologize for ill behavior and poor choices with the maturity and humility that few adults have. You're understanding of "personal space" is very subjective and leans way more into the side of "uncomfortable" and "please get out of my face" than "appropriate", but your quirky sense of humor and love of corny puns keeps us laughing and smiling.

You have always had such a strong sense of justice and fairness, in-as-much as your emotional/mental age would permit you to understand such things. I would watch you struggle to understand how others could look past injustice, and lie and be mean and not have it bother them greatly as it did you. Your black and white view of things, your straight-forward "fact-seeking" thought processes whirring away trying to make sense out of things of this world that will never make sense. And I have watched you grow into a young man that shows endless grace in the face of it all.

Yes, you rant on and on about Minecraft, or black holes, or atoms, or elemental impurities in gemstones and how they are formed in nature, and yes, often these lengthy interjections happen right smack in the middle of our conversations with other people (or with you) about entirely different things, but I'm continually impressed with your drive for knowledge, your ability to retain this kind of information and how well you relay it to others. Your social skills are a little off and you struggle with fine motor skills, but I watch you power through your difficulties like a pro-athlete.

I know the struggles you have dealing with things that others aren't bothered by and often don't even seem to notice. I watch you try so hard to keep it together when things in your environment or others behavior or treatment of your "differences" becomes too much for you to handle and your emotions bubble out causing you to either withdraw from people awkwardly or run off and cry, becoming so embarrassed afterwards. I see you struggle to build friendships when you don't even know how to carry a back-and-forth conversation. My heart breaks when you tell me that kids tell you that you're annoying, cold, weird, or strange. I've even heard adults say it. I see how much it stings you even if they can't. I sit and listen to you try and explain, with great difficulty, how you feel or why. I notice your struggles to read other people's tone of voice and facial expression, asking me often what mine mean, what your dad's means, trying to learn it. I see your emotions and passions running so deep. Sometimes, when those moments come around that I am really able to see your emotional responses to things, I think that maybe you feel things deeper than us "neurotypicals". It's just that it doesn't present the same at all and we misinterpret.

My beautiful Aspergers boy. You do have unique challenges, but you also have a unique mind and I watch you triumph over so many things that I don't think many would. Your individual way of looking at things and seeing things and feeling things makes you exceptional in many ways. You have gifts, passion, talents, heart, and a wisdom that sets you apart. Your strong desire for justice, fairness, and truth, complimented with an ability to show grace and forgiveness that could only come from God through you, makes me so proud of you. I don't view your Aspergers diagnosis as something to be conquered or cured, and I most definitely don't see it as a "disability". You are a gift, a jewel, a sparkling precious stone, whose elemental "impurities" have given you strength, character, color, charm, and worth, far exceeding that of the usual precious stone. I wouldn't change you for the world. God knit you together this way on purpose, for a purpose, and I am so blessed to be your mom.