Aspergers and letting people be who they are

Picture the scene...me running up the hill, pink toga fashioned out of a sheet flapping behind me, the imprint from a bejewelled headband implanted firmly on my forehead. I'm out of breath, red-cheeked and sweaty. I burst through our front door, hunt crazily for a piece of red cloth and spend the next 45 minutes stitching bits of red felt off-cuts together to create a sash. I dash back down to school, breakfast-less, to volunteer at my daughter’s Greek day. Ava appears, snaking along the corridor as part of a class-line, en route to the hall to make humous. “Ava,” I hiss as she passes, “I’ve made you a sash.”

This all came about due to the sight that greeted me an hour earlier when I arrived at school to volunteer, having turned Ava and myself into ancient Greeks and Sam into a superhero all before breakfast. I felt quite pleased with my creations, until I got to school. Suddenly Ava’s wraparound sheet, woven belt, laurel brooch and plaited hair looked woefully inadequate next to all of the afore-mentioned PLUS gold and red sashes, laurel headbands, embroided necklines...hence my mad dash home to at least create a sash for poor, under-dressed Ava.

“Nah. Thanks mum but it looks a bit weird,” came Ava’s reply. No amount of coaxing would persuade her to put it on. I twisted the sash around myself instead – it helped muffle the sound of my stomach rumbling!

Later, as I was in the hall tidying up from helping ten rowdy kids make pitta bread, humous, Greek salad and tzatziki, Sam appeared. He was halfway through a super-hero day. He looked conspicuously unsuperhero-like amongst a group of caped, masked and shiny peers. I sneaked over to him (good choice of words, since his chosen superhero persona was ‘the sneaker’!).

“Sam, where’s your cape and your eye-mask?” I asked. “Just a t-shirt with a big S on it doesn’t look very much like a superhero.”

“The cape’s broken,” came Sam’s reply “and the eye mask’s annoying.”

After a few minutes intensive pep-talk, I thought I’d persuaded Sam to at least tie the cape back on (that I’d been up until midnight making). However, emerging into the car-park next to the playground a couple of hours later, there was Sam, cape-less, crawling along (by himself) intensely focused on blowing a piece of rubbish across the ground. Around him boys were playing football, playing tig, chatting, USING THEIR CAPES to pretend to fly. Sam was oblivious to it all, focused, as he was, on that sole piece of rubbish. Not for the first time, I wondered whether there might be a bit of Ethan’s traits in him. Certainly, out of the three of them, he’s the child that’s least like me and most like Ethan.

But, getting onto the point of all this, because there is one...really! It occurred to me that, amidst all my striving to get the kids to wear what I think they should wear and my worries about Sam not interacting enough and Ava too much (that girl is never quiet!), I actually just need to relax. It doesn’t really matter whether they’re wearing a garish yellow cape or not, or whether people think the costumes I’ve created are any good. What matters is that they’re happy, that they’re secure, that they know they’re loved, and that we have fun together and accept each other. All the rest is packaging – to make us look attractive to the rest of the world. As I reminded myself of this in relation to the kids, I realised that I need to accept the same for Ethan. He’s never going to be a natural socialite, he’ll sometimes comes across as brusque and disengaged, he’ll always be inclined to get irritated easily by what seem like little things, he’s not going to suddenly become organised or remember that Sam is doing judo at the sports club this week and not the school hall (even though I’ve told him three times). Of course, sometimes it matters, temporarily, when Sam’s late for judo because Ethan’s been via the school hall, or when I’m criticising him in front of the kids because he’s shouting at them over something tiny. But, in the grand scheme of things, these little irritations don’t matter. They’re part of life, they’re part of who Ethan is and they’re part of who I am (because I know I could handle Ethan’s mini blow-ups and forgetfulness much better than I do). But, despite of all of these things, despite the fact our family is a chaotic and often noisy place, we all know we love each other and that we're doing our best. The next step, mainly for me, is to get better at accepting who we all are and letting each other be ourselves.