Asking for Help

Today was an interesting day.  Our oldest is nearly a teenager now.  Life with an autistic son, I am confident we are not ready for this.  We have been dealing with levels of defiance and disobedience for a little while now.  We take it with a grain of salt, every child must go through these stages.  We explained to our other kids just the other day how we have now entered into the stages where mom and dad start becoming dumber by the day.  My daughter was saddened by this, "we don't want to start thinking you are dumb daddy, you are smart."  I had to explain to her that as they get older we will trust them more.  That we are training them to make good decisions, even in the light of the opportunity to make bad ones.  That, as time goes by they will gain more and more of our trust to make good decisions, and, as time continues to go by, that trust will lead them to make bad decisions and we won't know.  As they find they can make more and more decisions without mom and dad knowing what the decisions were, they will begin to think that we are dumber because we don't know that they are getting away with making bad decisions.  I then had to explain to them that when that time comes, it will not be us who are the idiots, but our children who think that the consequences of bad decisions affect us, and not them.  When they finally realize that the decisions they make affect them, and not us, that is when we start looking a little smarter again.  But, they will still have to go through the time when they think that mom and dad are idiots for not knowing what they are doing.

Well, our oldest made one of those decisions today.  Titus was sent home today for taking a knife to school.  He was caught sneaking a kitchen knife out of the front pouch of his pull over sweatshirt.  Timing was not in his favor during this event either.  Just yesterday he felt cornered by a teacher that he has not worked well with all year so far.  In a burst of anger and frustration, our son told this teacher he wished that he was no longer on the earth.  An autistic teens equivalent of, "go to hell!!"  Which can also be taken as,"touch me again and I'll kill you."  So, threatening statements and the next day he brings a knife to school.  What else is the staff to think?

When we got the call from school, our thoughts went to the same conclusions, "what did he think he was doing?" and "where did he get this idea from?"  All of these were the wrong conclusion.

I remember when Titus was quite a bit younger.  We went to our church's Friday Family Night.  They were staffed with childcare for the kids, a gym with all kinds of things to play with, and an isolated room for adults to gather and have an evening of adult conversation.  Half way through the night one of the childcare staff approached our table, squatted next to my wife and I and delivered the words no parent wants to hear, "we can't find Titus."  He had been lingering near a drinking fountain, that was conveniently near a set of double doors leading out to the parking lot.  He was there one second, a turn of the head, and he was gone.  My wife and I went into panic mode.  For the first five minutes of hearing this news we were looking into every dark corner and busy street.  Then our minds came back to us.  Titus is quite predictable, you just have to remember to think like him.  He doesn't like the dark, dark and scary halls were scratched from possible routes, this also eliminated the parking lot that was poorly illuminated.  Busy streets were too far away, and not on his curiosity list.  So, we started looking at the things that would attract his little mind.  Buttons.  Elevator buttons, automatic door buttons, of which our church had a couple that Titus had become quite familiar with their locations over the times of our attendance.  Even split up and on opposites sides of the church, my wife and I found Titus within moments of each other.  Titus had gone out the side doors, around the corner, thru the automatic doors, up the elevator, and down the hall to the gymnasium back stair case.  He couldn't get the doors open, so he sat there waiting.  "You found me!" was his declaration when my wife found him sitting on the stairs.  She went thru the lower doors and there he was.  I was at the top of the stair well trying to figure out how to get the doors open.  Apparently the elevator opens on the inside, I was on the outside.  I tell you this to drive the point that, we panicked.  We went looking everywhere our son wasn't.  Today we also panicked.  We have been trained to conclude that if a kid takes a knife to school, its to hurt someone.  It was a bit odd for Titus to attempt such a thing, quite out of character, but he never ceases to surprise us.  So, we reacted to our unfounded conclusions.


Then there's Titus, stuck wondering what it is that he has done wrong, again. Because, unbeknownst to anyone, Titus lost the key to his locker on Monday afternoon.  His purpose for taking a knife to school was to try and pry the lock off of his locker, or, cut it off if necessary.  The week has been frustrating not having access to it and knives are good for getting into other things, they are made for cutting things.  What else would be a handier tool for cutting a lock off of a locker than a knife?

Many of us "normal" people struggle with asking for help.  We will go thru great measures to try and prove that we are capable of succeeding on our own.  Asking for help is a sign of weakness in the normal every day world we now live in, how much more is this compounded by autism?  I can't help but wonder if it is more painful and outright scarier to ask for help, than taking a knife to school, even when knowing it is wrong.

I am reading a book by Twyla Tharp called The Collaborative Habit.  While describing her experience with a Seattle ballet company she makes a statement that intrigued me.

Connection with others is ... important.  Once upon a time, there was no difference between a bricklayer and a composer.  All work was an offering to [God], and thus, all work had equal meaning.  But, in the twentieth century that changed, and art came to exist for its own sake.

The change is sometimes called modernism.  But let's not get bogged down in language.  The issues is meaning- or rather, the lack of it.  The idea here is that human life no longer has spiritual meaning.  We are not part of a loving society, but rather are all in an ego-driven "army-of-one" each the center of an absurd cosmos, taking such happiness as we can find.  Collaboration? Why bother? You only live once; grab whatever you can.

Now look at this world just described, but from the eyes of someone struggling with autism.  What stands out to me throughout this passage is this, the enemy of this world has done an incredible job of selling us the lie that the individual and the collective must compete against each other.  That, if we are to be individually and wonderfully made specifically and purposely by the hand of God, then we are all only special if we consider ourselves individual and special.  Our brains struggle so hard with the idea that God can look upon us and love us equally and yet love us individually to the utmost depths of his love.  Where our minds break down is that we have a difficult time understanding infinite.   (I'm babbling here, but stay with me, it all comes back on itself)

What I am getting at is, we need help.  We do.  We need help.  And none of us have been trained to ask for it.  We love giving it.  We like helping others.  It makes us feel like we have something to contribute.  But all of us struggle with asking for it, seeking it.  Unfortunately, we also tire of asking for the help we do need only to get rejected, or regular reasons for why it can't be given.  How strange this is.  We need help.  Are uncomfortable asking for it.  When asked, don't really want to give it.  But are willing to help if on our own terms.  Its got to be one of the more paradoxical control issues of the human experience.

My son was sent home from school because he took in a knife rather than ask for assistance in opening his locker.  But he has an excuse that obstructs his reasoning in making this decision.

Today is Good Friday.  The Christian morbid celebration of the death of Christ.  Morbid because its the one death that we celebrate rather than morn.  Its a celebration because our God choose to lend a hand when none of us were asking for it.  Once again, my son has a neurological idiosyncrasy that disallows him from comfortably asking for help.  Yet, too many of us are not autistic, and we still struggle with asking for help.  Too many of us are not autistic, yet struggle with assisting others, unless its on our own terms.  I don't know how to respond to this, yet, because I am just as guilty of wanting that control.  I don't like asking for help, and I don't like giving it when its not on my own terms.  But there is one part of me that has no problem asking for help.  Lord, I am a sinner, and death is an inevitability.  Is there anything you can do to help?