What my Autistic Son is Teaching Me About Measuring Results

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Here’s an accomplishment: I’m 34, and already on my fourth midlife crisis.

My wife says it has all been one crisis chained together. She might be right. All I know is I want a Harley, or something less practical for a father of five…

What’s my problem? Oh, just the same old midlife-crisisey stuff, but mostly this: I feel like I’m not where I should be. I have yet to finished a book I’ve been trying to write for five years. I do not have a master’s degree. I have never been picked for “So You Think You Can Dance,” and it’s been like, four years since I have won my fantasy football league.

Results are hard to measure. Success looks so relative. For me, every time I accomplish something, I look up to see a dozen other people who accomplished it ten years earlier, with ten times the results. “Oh you’re blogging? And you’ve got almost 400 followers? That’s cute. I’ve got half a million, and a book deal with Harper Collins.

Stupid twenty-five year olds getting their stupid books published…

But then I look at my son. By almost every societal measure, Jack is years behind his peer group. At seven, he doesn’t talk, ride a bike, tie his shoes, or soap himself up. He has no interest in wiffle ball or show-n-tell.

There are some formidable challenges here that can weigh down on the psyche of any parent. Concerns about the future (let alone the present!) can consume me during rough patches, especially during regressions: awful days of stress and meltdowns. Defeats. However those instances do not create a complete picture of Jack’s progress. If I insist on counting defeats, then I must also count victories. My own intellectual integrity demands it.

For example, in the past two years, Jack has learned:

  • How to initiate play with his siblings
  • How to say “mommy” and “daddy”
  • How to go potty by himself (!!!!)
  • How to stall his bedtime by claiming the potty privilege 3 times an evening. (Isn’t that so NORMAL? I love it!)
  • How to find the Netflix app no matter what folder we hide it in

There are more, of course, and most of them aren’t earth shattering discoveries either. Just real, measurable results. And these simple victories seem to fuel him.

Simple victories. I’ve had a few of those recently, too.

  • I learned to whistle two years ago, and now I rock the Andy Griffith theme like a boss. An old boss.
  • I’ve preached some sermons this year that I thought were decent, and one in March that I was actually quite proud of (because I didn’t say “are you with me?” or “does that make sense?” fifteen times…)
  • I am writing often, and some people are even reading what I write.

    • And then, of course, the bigger victories:

    • I bought a house for my family last fall, and we adore it.
    • I got a beautiful girl to marry me fourteen years ago, and she hasn’t left yet.
    • We made five kids, and all of them like me.
    • I came through a long, hard season, and I did not lose my faith that God is good.

    In order to properly measure success in life, we must acknowledge our wins and not just our losses. Then, we must, like Jack, take at least a little satisfaction in those wins.

    It’s a simple lesson, but it’s sturdy enough to help me laugh off my own fake midlife crises. (Yeah, they’re fake. Mostly.) I might not be as far along as I’d like, but I’m a blessed man with an amazing family. And together, we are moving forward.

    * Photo by Sugar Beats Photography

    Jack and his Bush's Baked Beans

    A Boy and His Bush’s Baked Beans (A Love Story)

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    It was an affair of Hugh-Grant-ian proportions. You’ve seen an aimless youth, lazy and passionlesss, morph into Romeo after a single glance from her? That was Jack. Wandering through Safeway aisles next to his mother without an inkling of how his life was about to change. But one turn around the bend, and there she was. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen. A perfectly stacked display of Bush’s Baked Beans.

    Practically speaking, Jack never cared for beans. To this day, he doesn’t eat them. But there was something about the way the gold gradient glimmered under the florescent lights that he found irresistible.

    He threw a fit when he got home, and we couldn’t figure out why he was upset. He could not tell us, of course. Even though he’s seven, he cannot really speak. His autism usually turns his words into mush, and when we do recognize them, they are either one word requests or familiar nuggets of encouragement from Bob the Builder. But this time, in the midst of his angsty malaise, his words crystalized for one clear instant: “Go to Safeway!” he commanded his mother.

    Well… a three word sentence from Jack should always be rewarded. Into the van they both went, and the moment Sara stepped out with him through the automatic doors, the boy bolted through the store. He knew where she waited. Aisle three! He came home with a can of Bush’s Original Baked Beans, round and true. You’ve never seen a boy so proud. He set his prize on the bookshelf, and flapped in his hands in front of it. His love dance.

    It was a fine discovery for Sara and I. These bean cans have since proved a fine reward for completed sticker charts. In an otherwise dismal summer, Jack has had flashes of strong motivation during “work time.” The Safeway trips have become more frequent, and the cans have multiplied. Original, Vegetarian, and Country Style. We have bunches of them. He lines them up and flaps them. He runs around the house with them. He holds them at night like teddy bears.

    beansdonationThen came our big church-sponsored event. It was an outdoor festival: a concert, kids’ fair and, most importantly, a fundraiser and food collection for the local food shelf. Two cans of food got you in.

    I was on Jack duty that day while Sara took the other boys. Jack is terrible in crowds. Really. He has no sense of boundaries–his or other peoples–or of danger. But on that day, he saw the food donation table, and that was the only place he wanted to be. I wasn’t supposed to be working that station, but I ended up helping take donations for about an hour, while Jack searched the table for any cans of Bush’s Baked Beans. He would find them all of them: short cans, tall cans, cans of every flavor, all golden and glorious. We would hide them, and he would find them again.

    We told him he could choose a can to take home since we brought extra donations, and he took a long time to choose. When he did, his decision left me speechless…….
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    vancamps
    Wait, what? Van Camp’s? I don’t get it either. But like so many other things with our boy, we just shrug, laugh, and go with it.

    “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

    Forgiving Cosmo Kramer

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    In the 90’s, Thursday nights were a high point of my week, because I knew Kramer was going to find another way to explode into Jerry’s apartment, and it was going to be awesome. But then, years after the show, the entire country saw Kramer explode on stage during a stand-up routine, and it was not awesome. To say Michael Richards’ rant was ugly is far too kind. He turned on his audience. The hecklers were black, and his storm of vitriol zeroed in on that fact. It became a racist, almost frightening tirade. Say it aint so, Kramer!

    Richards has pretty much disappeared form the public eye since that disgrace, and I only recently saw him resurface in Jerry Seinfeld’s simple, ingenious little web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” I’m not able to embed the video, but the picture will take you to it. It get’s serious and heavy around 14 minutes in. I’m not ashamed to say I almost teared up.

    I wrote last week about people who demand mercy when they’ve been caught doing something. Brokenness and humility are a pre-requisite to restoration. What struck me most from watching this, aside from the fact that Jerry Seinfeld is an excellent friend, is that Michael Richards is a broken man. He obviously still feels the weight of it every single day. He ruined his career that night, and while he has apologized, he himself has never gotten over it. And I confess, I feel sorry for him. I want to see him restored as a man, and one day, even as an artist. I want him to be forgiven.

    Some will certainly scoff at that. After all, what he did… it was awful.

    Tell me, who needs forgiveness if not the people who sin awfully? Who needs more grace in today’s society than the recovering racist?

    David was an adulterous murderer. Peter was a coward and a backstabber. John was a scheming opportunist. Paul was a religious bully and an agent of violence. Christ came to forgive them of those crimes, and me of my aggressive self-righteousness.

    I realize that Michael Richards did not offend my race. I get that it’s easier for me to forgive than it is for others. But when a person humbles himself, comes to terms with his sins, and does not demand absolution… isn’t that the kind of man we want to see absolved?

    To See Your Thoughts Take Shape

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    I want to trip inside your head
    Spend the day there…
    To hear the things you haven’t said
    And see what you might see

    I want to hear you when you call
    Do you feel anything at all?
    I want to see your thoughts take shape
    And walk right out.

    -U2 (“Miracle Drug”)

    “Waffle! Waffle! Waffle!”

    The word rushes out of Jack’s mouth. He is panicked. We try to calm him down. We offer him waffles, but he turns his head. We know it’s not about the waffles, but we had to try.

    I get down to his level. “What’s the problem, bud? What do you want?”

    He reaches up my shirt sleeves and digs his nails into my arm. “No scratching, Jack,” I snap, a little too harshly. He doesn’t hear me.

    “Waffle! Waffle!”

    That’s when the screaming starts. As a baby, long before his autism diagnosis, Jack had the rare ability to cry like a Ring Wraith (Nerd points to you if you catch that reference and can hear it right now.) He grew out of it, but found it again all of a sudden when he was five. It took us two weeks to discover why: he had been on a Monsters, Inc kick. If you’re like Jack, there’s a lot of fine screaming to emulate in that film. We made the DVD disappear, and he soon forgot about his talent.

    In the last six months, however, the scream has resurfaced. And this summer, he has perfected it. It’s loud, a bit scary, and immensely sad.

    Sometimes his problem is obvious: he is annoyed by the baby’s crying, or the iPad battery died, or he can’t find one of his prized cans of Bush’s Baked Beans. Other times, his cries are a complete mystery. He cannot tell us what’s wrong. The screams are not respecters of setting: they come out in the car, the grocery store, or the backyard. I worry that one of our neighbors might call the police, and not out of suspicion, but out of sheer concern for the boy (“Hurry! It sounds like he’s dying, officer!”).

    Yes, it’s been a long, lousy couple of moths of tantrums and regressions. Not that this is new. Summer is always hard. I suppose if you’re as OCD as Jack, the lack of a routine must be frustrating.

    Sara has caught the brunt of it. I’m at the office for most of the day while she’s at home trying to decipher all of this. She told me tonight she thinks that “waffle” is just his frantic attempt to communicate that something is wrong. Maybe he is scared. Maybe he is hurting. Or maybe something just seems off. So he reaches for a word–any word–and that’s the one that comes. It makes sense since he eats waffles every day.

    I like her theory, if only because it sounds so normal. When stress comes, we all have our go-tos for comfort: Nail biting, griping, eating. Given enough stress and enough habit, those responses can morph into unhealthy addictions. For Jack, maybe just the idea of waffles is enough to fill that comfort gap.

    But that’s the most troubling part. We don’t know why he needs comfort, and he cannot tell us.

    Forgive me. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic. We’re okay. We’ll get through this. I just hate that this wall still stands, four years after his diagnosis.

    I want to see your thoughts take shape, boy. More than anything else.


    Non-Apology Apologies

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    Paula Dean, Anthony Weiner, Ryan Braun, Riley Cooper, A-Rod… Is it just me, or do scandals come in clusters? All of them did something. Said something. Took something. And when the news broke, they crafted carefully worded speeches to atone for their sins, just like thousands of embarrassed celebrities that came before them.

    Sometimes they seem sincere and contrite. Other times, they offer stubborn, ridiculous defiance. Worst of all, some offer maddening, squishy Non-Apology Apologies.

    I recognize these, because I have used one or two of them myself. They don’t work out well for celebrities, and they don’t work out for regular folks who blow it, either. These are really just disguised defenses. Nothing more. And in a court of law, only those who plead “not guilty” are allowed to defend themselves. (And if you’re not guilty, then why are you apologizing?)

    So here they are, for all of us: the top 5 Non-apology Apologies. If you’re saying “I’m sorry” while using these phrases, you’re probably doing it wrong:

    5) “If I’ve offended anyone…”

    You have. That’s why you’re here. And it sounds like you’re still not sure “if” you did anything wrong. If you’re not sure, then stop and listen to the one(s) you’ve offended. Because what you have there is not an apology, son.

    4) “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through…”

    What, this thing that you did to yourself? I’m sure it sucks! And I have sympathy. I really do. But why do you seem to think you are the victim all of a sudden? If you are the guilty party, then by definition, you aren’t the victim. (And for future reference, sin generally does injure the sinner. True story.)

    3) “I realize now I’ve made mistakes.”

    Gosh, I hate to sound snarky, but most of us realized that about ourselves when we were six. And even back then, it didn’t work as “get out of jail free” card. We know you’ve made mistakes. But right now, it’s all about specifics. What did you do?

    2) “I deserve a second chance.”

    Wait, you deserve a second chance? Methinks you are confusing mercy with justice. Nobody in the history of sin has deserved a second chance. We call grace “amazing” precisely because it is undeserved. Forgiveness is only beautiful because guilt is so hideous. If you think you can demand mercy, you are probably not ready for it. (Note to Christians: If you are the offended party, you don’t have much a choice, here. You need to forgive. Jesus was pretty clear on that.)

    1) “I’m not perfect. There’s only ever been one perfect man…”

    Do you hear that head banging against the wall? That’s St. Augustine. Even he isn’t buying this one. Yes, all of us have sinned. But right now, we’re not talking about any of that. We’re talking about you. We’re talking about now. Did you do this thing? Because you didn’t have to, and you know that’s true. You’re too powerful to play this card. Don’t do it.

    So there they have it. Five apologies that will actually make it harder for other people to forgive you. And since we are looking for actual reconciliation here, best to stay away from them.

    When King David Ruled the Blogosphere

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    I see him running bloodstained through a dry riverbed. His men, blistered and spent, beg for a rest. He suppresses a sigh, checks the sun, and nods. It’s a terrible time to stop. Would Saul’s men be stopping? Maybe. Probably not. But there was a little distance now. And besides, a rest would give him a chance to write.

    There is a dying tree offering shade over rounded rock nearby. That is the spot. Reaching into his satchel, he pulls out his treasure from a Philistine raid: a laptop computer. It is old, of course, but it does the job. Nothing like what he used in the palace, but that was a long time ago.

    He plugs in a network adapter and signs in. More notifications. He had intended to shut those off months ago. The comments were always the same now. He’s either a hero for the underdog, or a young public menace, leading this rowdy and impressionable generation into rebellion. The truth was less interesting. He was just running for his life. Why couldn’t they see that?

    The comments don’t interest him today. The unfinished post does. He had almost published it the night before, short as it was. His readers loved those visceral, angry posts. The Bethlehem Gazette was especially enthusiastic:

    “As a blogger, David is pithy and controversial, and that’s why I read him. He doesn’t try to tie up his thoughts with cute little bows. The priests may hate him for it, but I say, Rant on, young warrior! We are cheering for you!”

    Of course, that was the hometown opinion. It was supposed to be gushing, wasn’t it? There were just as many detractors, and not just the ones loyal to the current King.

    He squinted at the dim words on the screen:

              “Forty-Three”

              You are God my stronghold.
              Why have you rejected me?

    He had been exhausted when he wrote that. Hungry and afraid. And now, twelve hours later, he still had not eaten or slept after yesterday’s near disaster. The question felt more tangible now than it had in the dark.

    He shakes his head and types in another question:

              Why must I go about mourning,
              oppressed by the enemy?

    It would be yet another in a long line of questions in his head: What had he done to provoke the King? Hadn’t he been loyal to God and to Saul? Hadn’t he obeyed every order, no matter how dangerous? Hadn’t he begged for the chance to kill the giant? Why had Samuel not warned him of all this?

    Life was messy. Samuel had never understood that. Maybe none of them had. The priests. The prophets. His father. Had they ever been hunted by a man they had adored?

    Despair. That was all he knew now. God had deserted him. Just like everyone else.

    And yet, his fingers start to twitch and crawl on their own.

              Send me your light and your faithful care,
              let them lead me;
              let them bring me to your holy mountain,
              to the place where you dwell.

    A prayer? His prayers had run as dry as this river bed, but there it was. His hands continue moving. Faster now.

              Then I will go to the altar of God,
              to God, my joy and my delight.
              I will praise you with the lyre,
              O God, my God.

    He stops to remember the lyre. The songs in the court of the king. Better days. Days long gone.

    But he would sing again, one day. Maybe not today, but one day. And his voice would find the notes without a struggle. They would come easily.

    He looks down over his men stretched out along the rocks, some still panting and bleeding. Loyal men. Good men. Some of them not even men yet, but fierce nonetheless. Time and again, they had stood firm against Philistines and Hebrews without falling back. They were true warriors. And to think Saul had once laughed at “that band of drunkards!”

    David exhales slowly. He has not the strength to smile, but he can exhale at least.

              Why, my soul, are you downcast?
              Why so disturbed within me?
              Put your hope in God,
              for I will yet praise him,
              my Savior and my God.

    His clicks “Publish” and closes the computer, not giving himself time to reconsider.

    The Bethlehem Gazette would not like the upturned finish. They would call the post “trite.” They would say he was losing his edginess. But he did not care. Hope and sorrow… who ever said they could not live together for a time?