PUZZLES & CAMO BY SHELLY HUHTANEN
A child with special needs may need to try to do a skill 100 times to get it right as opposed to a typical child that may take three times.
It’s official. Summer has arrived. Our pool bag is permanently placed in our kitchen nook for easy access full of sunscreen and swim goggles. Our lawn furniture is placed strategically in the backyard for get-togethers in the evening once it cools down. Hayden has already attended a summer camp and has started training for the cross country team in the Fall.
Yesterday was a picture perfect summer day in Georgia. The moms were soaking in the sun around the pool discussing beach plans while the kids were playing in the pool in front of us. Hayden, Broden’s brother, is a fairly strong swimmer so I have a tendency now to be more relaxed at the pool and I find myself taking my eyes off him more and more. This sense of relaxation at the pool is new for me. A mom to my right asked, “Where is Broden?” The other moms gazed over to listen to my response. I told them Broden was at clinic until 3pm. They responded, “Oh, Broden is at a camp? Which one?”
Now of course, I was the politically correct mom by telling them that Broden was at ABA and he would attend through the summer to fight regression, work on life skills, academics, and social skills. Yes, that was the politically correct answer. However, that was not the answer that was swimming around in my head as I left the pool early to pick Broden up from clinic and left Hayden to play at the pool with his friends.
What I wanted to say was a little more harsh and real. I wanted to tell the moms at the pool, “No, my son is not at a camp to play. Broden is at work. He continuously works at trying to be someone he is not because in our world, it’s not acceptable. Broden is continuously corrected for doing things that make perfect sense to him. He has someone, a para, on him just about every minute of the day while he’s at clinic taking data on every skill he completes. He has to practice how to eat lunch since food is generally unappealing, he is consistently reminded that he has to speak to get what he wants and he’s even told how long his sentences have to be because he’s not allowed to ask for things in one word utterances.”
Broden is not the only child that lives this way. A child with special needs may need to try to do a skill 100 times to get it right as opposed to a typical child that may take three times. With only so many hours in the day, special needs
kids don’t receive a lot of breaks. They don’t have that luxury because if they do, it is time wasted. Time that could have been used to work on a skill that could help them get that much closer to their typical peers.
I told my friend, Nikki, who is also a BCBA that Broden is a recluse. After clinic, he will get out of the car, walk into the house with his iPad and climb up the stairs to his room. He’ll slam the door and I do not hear a peep out of him. I’ll follow him upstairs some days to try and connect with him, but he will push me away and tell me to leave. Nikki shed some light on why I needed to be more empathetic to my son’s routine, “How would you feel if someone was on you all the time, every minute of the day telling you how to spend your time? Wouldn’t you want to run upstairs and be left alone? He is a boy first, who just happens to have autism.”
I had to think about what she said. Sometimes as Broden’s mom, I forget that Broden is a boy first. He’s tired at the end of the day because he works so hard to be what everyone else wants him to be. He must feel so frustrated to realize that, when he masters a skill, after the short celebration there is a new skill added to his probe that he has to master.
Broden is quite the tough and resilient child because even though he knows he will be waking up the next morning with a full day of hard work while typical kids around him are still asleep, he still does it without a fuss. Broden will still sit down at his table to work knowing that he will be corrected or challenged an infinite amount of times that day until I pick him up that afternoon.
I may not have the child who is the most athletic, smartest, tallest, or the most charismatic in the bunch. I may not parent the child who is the strongest swimmer or the child who will be taking accelerated classes next year, but I know for a fact that I have the hardest working child on the block. •
PUZZLES & CAMO
Shelley Huhtanen is an Army wife with two children, one with autism, whose husband is currently stationed at Fort Benning, GA. She is an autism advocate and currently the parent liaison for the Academy for Exceptional Learners.
