Family
By Dan Coulter
Who’s in your family?
It may be larger than you think.
My wife, Julie, and I recently went
to her annual “Johnson family reunion.” We showed a video there
that we’d produced about several generations of family history using
interviews and old photographs. We included a story about
great-grandfather Rommie trying to drive his new Model T Ford for
the first time. When it abruptly started forward and he couldn’t
remember how to stop it, he clung to the steering wheel yelling,
“Whoa! Gee! Gee! Haw!” as if he was driving one of his mules. His
oldest son jumped up on the car’s running board and got it stopped.
The older members of Julie’s family
grew up together. As children, her father and his cousins spent
their summers together working on family members’ farms. They love
telling tales about the work, play and shenanigans they shared. It
makes some of them wistful when younger members of the family, who
didn’t grow up with their cousins and don’t feel the same sense of
kinship, don’t put as high a priority on attending family reunions.
This is probably an inevitable result
of a mobile population, in which extended families can live great
distances away and rarely see each other. The older members of my
wife’s family are close because they understand one another. They
speak the same language. And they’re always ready to help and
support each other.
If you’re lucky enough to be close to
your extended kinfolk, that’s great. But you don’t have to be
related to people to feel a sense of family. Parents with children
who have special needs such as Asperger Syndrome or autism can feel
very alone. Especially if their extended family lives far away and
may not recognize what they’re dealing with on a daily basis.
This is when contact with others
dealing with similar situations can be a lifesaver.
Like the mother I know of who rescued
another mother taking her developmentally delayed autistic son to a
“Thomas the Tank Engine” exhibit at a transportation museum. In the
museum’s gift shop, 11 year old, 150 pound Aaron flopped down on the
floor and threw a tantrum in the midst of the other, mostly two and
three year-old, Thomas fans.
Desperately trying to deal with the
situation and purchase the new “Thomas” DVD her son had picked out,
Aaron’s mom, Lynn, felt someone grab her shoulder. She thought to
herself, “If you say one word I’ll…!”
But she turned to find a woman who
said, “Give me your stuff and give me your money and I’ll pay for
it. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. I have a son with autism.”
Lynn managed, with a struggle, to get
her son to her car. A short while later, the woman and her daughter
appeared to deliver the DVD and Lynn’s change. The rescuer gave
Lynn a hug and said, “Sometimes this is all we can do.”
Then the daughter said, “You should
have seen my mom.”
“What did she do?”
“The security guard was having a
problem and said ‘they shouldn’t let kids like that in places like
this.’ And she looked him straight in the eye and said ‘If you’ve
got a typical child, you go home tonight and pray to God you never
have to go through anything like this.’”
Lynn said it touched her deeply that
someone else knew what she was going through.
Those of us with children on the
autism spectrum are sometimes in the best position to give each
other the help and support we need. We know what it feels like. We
speak each other’s language.
We’re family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dan Coulter is the
producer of the videos, “Understanding Brothers and Sisters with
Asperger Syndrome” and “Understanding Brothers and Sisters on the
Autism Spectrum.” You can read more articles on his website:
www.coultervideo.com
Copyright 2008 Dan Coulter Used By
Permission All Rights Reserved
