That’s Autism with a Capital A

Children are beautiful poems we read and reread to appreciate and love. With each reading, we pick up on a new characteristic that wasn’t there before, a different perspective to ours, and we get closer to the art form of living without comparison or self-doubt.

Children are beautiful poems, but when your child is on the autism spectrum, you read the poem differently. You don’t read; you analyse.

Every word is a question seeking answers to why certain reactions were sparked.

Every stanza is a cluster of behaviours wanting to be calmed, wanting to find the way to be untangled.

Every comma is a step towards finding the next person or method that will step into the poem to give it a cohesive structure.

Every full stop is a therapeutic goal ticked off the list.

Every misplaced couplet, rhyme, and alliteration, is a juxtaposition upon a juxtaposition trying to make sense of an over-sensory world.

When the child is young, the word autism is covered up in the poem. Parents often shove it under the carpet so the child doesn’t hear it. It’s a scary word. It’s one with a double-edged sword—you have to use it to explain to most people around you what is going on and to everyone involved in the child’s development, but you keep it silent when talking to the child.

We used to mouth it to therapists when our son would finish his session. We used to find another word for it when talking to friends while our son played with theirs. It’s a word we have been carrying around for a decade, and now we can say it out loud and, yes, why not, proud. Now our son knows the word is what makes his poem special, he knows it’s why his poem still sounds a bit off, and why it is a little difficult for others of the same age to understand the deeper meaning he brings to everything.

We don’t really analyse anymore. We have set the flow of the poem so it can safely fit within the page and we have given the poet a wonderful pen with all the colours of the rainbow.

And you know what, after ten years I can see that the poem we made and is still being written isn’t meant to fit into any form. You might feel images along the way, you might see a cascade of lashing out of overcharged emotion, you might even see a bit of white space along the way, but you will always see beauty in every, single word.