So you
all know the story of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, basically two personalities in one person. One personality
is of the respectable upstanding Dr. Jekyll, and the other personality is of
Mr. Hyde, who does despicable things.
I named this post similarly because
of the totally different personalities the big guy has for different
situations. His teacher and teachers' aid have read my blog and have laughed
about how I have described him differently when he is at home; you see.... he
is Dr. Jekyll when he is at school, but Mr. Hyde at home. I bet many of you are
laughing or at least smiling right now, but it's true. He is totally different
in almost every situation.
When we had him diagnosed in June
of 2010 my wife and I had been separated for seven months. I would get the boys
every other weekend, and things were different when I had them, so different in
fact that when we went to the big guys’ assessment the doctors gave
me a separate assessment sheet to fill out. One of the things my wife said he
did when he was with her was bang his head on things when he didn't get what he
wanted, he tried it once with me, and I told him no, sent him to his room, and
then went and talked to him after about 5 minutes, which is lifetime to a
child, and he never tried doing that again with me.
Another way he was different at my
house is he would sit at the table and try to eat his dinner, lunch, or
breakfast with utensils, even though he had a hard time. He would always have
the same bedtime while at my house, 8 o'clock, and he would be asleep in ten
minutes.
This is totally opposite from being
at moms. At mom's house, he would hit his head on the floor or wall when he
didn't get what he wanted, dinner time was usually a finger food affair, if he
ate, and bet time was a long drawn out ordeal that would last from 8 pm to
sometimes 10 pm or later most nights.
This is not the only times he acts
differently. He acts differently at a restaurant than at home, and
differently at different restaurants. He acts differently at Nana's house
than at home with mom, different at school and home, different with each of the
therapy people he sees during a given week (though he really loves his speech lady).
So this brings me to the meat of my
post, how he is at home.
I feel so badly for the little guy
because he takes the brunt of the Mr. Hyde attacks, and I think I know why. For
the longest time, everything was his, his TV, his toys, his mommy, his daddy,
his everything. Then mom went away for a week (the little guy was premature and
spent a week in the N.I.C.U.) and came back and had something else that would
scream for her attention.
Mr. Hyde is so viscous with the
little guy. Just last night he slammed him into the bed room door, smacked him
in the face, scratched him on his back, and hit him on his back. All because he
wanted to watch what he wanted on mom's computer. The only real way we have to
control this is to keep them separate. Most of the time the big guy is in his
room watching TV and eating his dinner. The little guy is usually in the living
room watching TV there. We do other things, like go out in the back yard and
play, or swim, go to the park, what have you, and in all these places the big
guy acts differently.
What we were told during his
assessment in Dallas is that it is not at all uncommon for a child with autism
to act completely differently in any setting, to the point that parents wonder
if the child has split personality or something. We know he doesn't have split
personality, we know he's the same big guy no matter who is around, where we
are or what we are doing.
This makes me think he's more real
about things than us "normal" people are. When we go to work we act
one way, we are different with different friends or family members, and when we
are out in public we act self-consciously. Most of the time though, we don't
show people that we don't like them, we act in a civil manner, and mumble as we
walk away, so we really aren’t very truthful with others.
So we may be "normal" but
he is truthful. We pretend most of our lives, while he will tell you exactly
how it he feels about something. While this isn't particularly good
in some cases, you'll never think he's lying to you, if he likes you, he will
let you know, and if he doesn't..... Well, be ready for
his Magneto claw.
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