My son is Superman

My wife and I recently watched Man of Steel. As super hero movies go, meh. Admittedly, it’s really hard to make a good movie about superman, and it’s better than some efforts, but that’s not what this post is about.

The scene that Julie and I found the most compelling was one relatively early in the movie, showing Clark as a young boy in school. At a young age, still adjusting to his super powers, he is overwhelmed by the number of sights and sounds coming in. The teacher is trying to ask him a question, but he has trouble hearing her over the other kids tapping their pencils, heartbeats, birds outside, and pretty much anything else. He can’t see her directly because he can see everything else all at once.

Young Clark Kent is a kid with autism. There’s no filter to drown out the stuff you don’t need to pay attention to. A kid with autism can’t hear you because of the vent that has a slight rattle you never really noticed, or the slow drip of snow melting off the roof and hitting the car roof, or maybe even the hum of the fluorescent light.

He’s trying to listen, it’s just really hard for him to hear you.

So, in conclusion, our son is Superman. Just without the heat ray vision.

Yet.

Lessons in Parenting

This is a short one, but a couple of quick observations. Alex went to two birthday parties last Saturday, during which I learned several things:

1. Sandboxes can make quite a mess.

2. A moonbounce house is worth its weight in gold.

3. It is surprisingly difficult to get chocolate frosting off of a helium balloon with only a dry napkin.

4. Little girls are gifted at losing their hat when you aren’t looking.

5. Pushing a stroller makes you more approachable. People are more likely to jump out of their car to ask for directions.

6. Seriously, moonbounce houses are amazing!

Lessons in parenting

Which do you think is harder? Feeding a 7 month old, or docking to the international space station?

You can already guess where I’m going with this, but lets lay out some of the difficulties for each, shall we?

When docking to the ISS, the space shuttle moves to within 50 meters of the station, stops, waits for confirmation, then approaches at a speed of .05 m/s until it gets to within 9 meters of the station, stops again, waits for confirmation, and carefully lines up with a black docking target 30 cm above the docking port. Pilot and copilot have to control 6 degrees of freedom to ensure that the shuttle is aligned perfectly so that the two systems slip and hook together for a proper seal.

An exercise that Nasa recommends for young children to learn and appreciate the complexities of the motion is to tie a string between two kids. In the middle of the string, hang a small weight. Next, place a cup on the floor and instruct the kids to insert the small weight into the cup without using their hands. For added difficulty, blindfold the kids and have them do it listening to instructions from someone else.

In other words, it’s a pretty tricky exercise, and one that you really don’t want to mess up. But, now let’s consider some of the things that make it less difficult.

A couple of things that you have going for you are the masses oaf the shuttle and space station. They’re both really big and have an enormous amount of momentum. The forces the pilot is applying with the navigation thrusters is miniscule in comparison, so you aren’t moving in large steps. The docking area is clear of other modules, to minimize the risk of a collision. There is no gravity, so you aren’t at risk of your cargo spilling if you need to roll over to get a good seal. And finally, you only have to dock once.

Compare this to feeding a seven month old. You still have to control six degrees of freedom, but percentage-wise you are moving a much greater distance, and a lot faster. The dock is prone to sudden, unexpected movements when it gets distracted, occasionally turning away just as the spoon is entering. There are also two appendages that often flail about in the approach path, risking collision with every approach. You do have to deal with gravity, limiting your approach options lest you spill your cargo all over the station, yourself, or the floor. Neither you or the station are very heavy, so you really have to police how much energy you expend. And finally, you have to repeat this procedure many, many times.

It may not come with bragging rights, but there’s not a single mealtime I don’t walk away from feeling like I couldn’t handle being an astronaut.

Parenting: the lessons you don’t expect

One of the things that I was not prepared for with Alex, that has since been reinforced with Amelia, is that a small child produces as much, if not more laundry than a full grown adult. Typically Julie handles one or two loads during the week when she has a free moment, and we tackle it together on the weekends. I originally expected our son’s laundry to be once every few weeks, because his clothes are so much smaller.

I did not account for the messes and redresses .

Sure, it’s smaller, but there are a lot more of them. Like army ants.

Kids go through a lot of clothes. They make messes when they eat, they make messes when they go outside, they make messes when they stay inside. They have to wear extra layers to say warm because they have much less thermal mess, and all of that has to get washed. More than once has the kids laundry exceeded the adult laundry, and folding all of those tiny socks takes quite a bit of time.

And it’s all worth it.

The A-word

For those of you who do not know, I might as well make it official. Our son was diagnosed with autism in December.
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Here’s the quick summary of autism for folks whose knowledge on the subject are largely limited to Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Rain Man. Autism is a neurological disorder that limits the brain’s natural development. Research has shown that people with autism tend to have an overgrowth of white brain cells, specifically excess synapses often localized in the logic centers of the brain. That might sound like a good thing, but the running theory is that it crowds out development of the social center of the brain. What’s more, if left unchecked, this premature overgrowth can cause the brain to stop developing early, severely limiting a child’s ability to learn new skills over time. It is, on the grand scheme of things, a relatively new disorder that is still be researched and analyzed. As a result, it goes under a variety of different names, like PDD-NOS, though there are efforts to unify all of the different cases under the general name of Autism Spectrum disorder. Emphasis on the word spectrum. Autism means a whole host of possible things, of which Mr. Hoffman only covered a few. In our case, Alex has had trouble with eye contact, expressing his needs and desires, obsession with things that spin, and not interacting with other kids socially.
Other things in the spectrum that Alex has been blessed to not manifest thus far include seizures, problems with digestion and being unable to express joy.
Reading about autism suggests that it is something of a Rosetta of disorders. There are implications that unlocking the nature of autism stands to reveal a lot of knowledge about other problems people face, including asthma and Alzheimer's. I don’t know why the two examples I can think of both start with A.
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In the short term, what this means is that Alex now qualifies for 20 hours of early intervention services a week instead of the previous 5. This is good news. We’ve only been working with the counselors for a  few months, and he has already made tremendous strides. He can now ask for things very reliably when prompted, and has even begun to ask for things without prompting. He’s become much better at self regulating, and no longer needs to spend long periods spinning a top, playing with a light switch, or growling to calm himself down.
We do not know where he is on the spectrum. Only time will reveal that answer. We do not know what caused the autism to trigger. It is a combination of genetics and environment. I provided the genetics, but we don’t know about the environment part. No one does.
Treating autism is like treating the common cold. The common cold is actually a multitude of different viruses that all manifest similar symptoms, but require different antibodies to fight as they are effectively different viruses. There are a lot of common symptoms, but what works great for one kid may not work at all for another. As such, we’ll probably try most anything once, but with the understanding that our mileage may vary from other people’s anecdotes. For example, one child given a Vitamin E supplement very quickly caught up on their language delay, but that does not mean Vitamin E is a cure for autism, or that it will even help another child who has been diagnosed.
Julie has been reading all of the books by Temple Grandin, a woman with autism born in the late 40’s who was fortunate to have parents who decided to see if treatments could be created rather than simply have their daughter institutionalized. She’s a hero for parents who believe that their child can have a healthy, productive life. That’s the other bit of good news.
Research into treatments has been going on long enough and enough results have been produced that it’s expected to have results, rather than nothing you try ever working. This can definitely be said of Alex. He’s working hard to understand what we’re trying to communicate, and he’s working hard to communicate himself. He’s got the attitude, he’s got a lot of people working hard to help him break down those barriers. I remain confident that he will continue to be successful, and make an excellent big brother.

Musings on fatherhood

Or, everything you know is wrong.
Alex has a speech delay. This is something we can say with clarity. By age 2.5 he should be forming simple sentences and at least able to communicate simple desires like the fact that he’s hungry or thirsty. Not only is he not improving his skills, they appear to have been regressing a bit.
In terms of physical capability, he’s top notch. The other night he was able to descend the stairs while balancing a bowl on his head. What prompted him to attempt to do this, I cannot say, but he has managed to exceed my own physical capacity for coordination at an age that is a full order of magnitude less than my own. After telling him how very impressed I was, I promptly sent him to bed, somewhat envious of his bowl balancing skills.
But when it comes to the speaking (and I guess writing but that’d be cheating) skills, I’ve still got a leg up. More of one than I’d care to have, frankly. I’d much rather have to occasionally disappoint him by denying him something he wants, than to consistently disappoint him by not knowing what it is that he wants.
By itself a speech delay is something that can be handled with more concerted training, which we’ve started doing. But there are a few other odd things. An obsession with spinning things, an strong sensitivity to loud noises and fluorescent lights, a near refusal to make eye contact. All of these symptoms point to the dreaded ‘A’ word. That’s Autism, for those who might be thinking ants, or anteaters, or Applebees. Does Alex have Autism? We don’t know. There is a means of testing him, but the waiting list is months long, so to know for certain will be a bit of a wait. In the meantime, we’re leveraging the state’s early intervention program to get assistance from a speech therapist, and with only a few visits under our belt, and the tips she has shared with us, Alex is already showing improvement.
In the grand scheme of things, there is a whole lot of stuff that’s worse than Autism. A friend and former co-worker’s youngest son has been battling leukemia for several years. Our former pastor’s grandson had a tumor in the brain that caused him to go blind. Worst case, autism is something you can learn to live with.
There are also various degrees of autism. Autism does not necessarily mean Rain Man. Which means I’m not planning a trip to Vegas with my son any time soon. There are plenty of people with autistic tendencies that you would never know they had a problem. A lot of that is because it was caught early and the parents got assistance quickly. I will say right now that I’m happy there’s an early intervention program offered in the state that I live. If other places don’t have one, they should get one.
Saccharine disclaimer: Alex continues to be a gem in my life. No question of that. I’ll never regret becoming a father. And while I’m the first to argue that life is never fair, and people only complain about unfairness when the unfairness is not in their favor, there is that undeniable twinge of anger from wondering why my son has to have a harder time than some of the other kids. Maybe it will help him to build the character he needs to overcome some great difficulty he would not otherwise be able to handle at some point in the future. Maybe it’s giving me the skills to better handle other relationships. Who knows?
Time will tell. Who knows, maybe by them time he’s grown up and contemplating fatherhood, there will be an app for that.

My favorite story from Christmas

Alex had a good year this Christmas. He got quite a haul. Enough that Julie and I have taken several toys and put them in closet to take out when he starts to get bored with the toys he currently has.
But one toy stands out:  an RC train. It has a button that makes the train go forward, and a button that makes it spin in a circle (and a couple that make noise, but that’s just a footnote). We pulled it out of the packaging and tried to get Alex to play with it. Alex, true to form of a one year old, was preoccupied with the very first toy he’d gotten, a little school bus with a flywheel so it keeps going for a long time, and had little interest in any of the other toys around him.
After some cajoling, I managed to sit him down in my lap and get him to start playing with the remote. Alex loves buttons, and the remote had several for him to press. The train was right in front of us.
After several button presses, Alex looked up from the remote and watched the train. Everyone’s attention was solely on him at this point. You could see the wheels turning in his mind. Sure enough, he realized he was controlling the train. The smile and scream of delight that followed made the day for all of us.

Learning from babies

I’ve concluded that the reason we shake our heads to signify ‘no’ comes from people trying to feed you when you’re a baby. You move your face left and right, away from the spoon, with your mouth closed to say “No, I don’t want to eat that!” I don’t know why nodding means yes yet. It is an orthogonal action, which is logical, so it may be as simple as that. But I plan to keep watching Alex for any other insights. Also, if I’m not paying attention he’ll throw his cup on the floor.

Posting and sleeping

This blog was originally created so give myself an outlet when I was having trouble sleeping. With a new child, trouble falling asleep is pretty much at the bottom of the issues list. It also means not a lot of time to post. Good thing I don't have readers, otherwise people might actually be upset! :)
Besides, no philosophical discussions of late. Conversations seemed preoccupied with the weather, what with June in Boston setting a record for rain or some such thing. Good to know I'm part of history by being able to say, "I was there for the wettest June on record!"

Obligatory new dad commentary and update

It's true. It really is worth it. Watching Alex being born is nothing short of amazing. As much fun as it was to parade around a pregnant wife, it's going to be even more fun to parade around my wife and son. His head was shaped like an avocado when born, but that has since settled out. All fingers and toes accounted for.I got to be there for a lot of firsts. First cry, first sneeze, first poop, and first trip to the ICU. Alex had a trouble a couple of times getting enough air while feeding, so they put him under observation for 5 days. Apparently the veins going to lungs are pinched shut during pregnancy, and are supposed to open up once he's born. His did, but apparently not quite enough. Not all that uncommon, but they wanted to keep him under observation. Beth Israel is a fantastic hospital, one that's 1.5 hours away from our house. A single trip for birth isn't that bad, especially when you're doing 80 at 11:00 at night and there's no traffic. But commuting for 5 days was going to be hard. Fortunately, my sister stepped up and let us sleep at her condo in Somerville for the week. Much closer, though the commute still a bit of a hassle when the Red Sox were playing. All in all, it worked to our advantage. We got to spend time with nurses who really knew their stuff, and we only had to stay for 5 days. Most babies in the NICU are there for weeks, if not months. I caught glimpses of babies in other rooms who weighed around a pound. Sad stuff. I don't envy the parents, the babies, or the nurses.Now Alex is home and dictating to us his schedule. All efforts to adjust him to something we think would be a little more reasonable have met with unmitigated failure. I've gotten a crash course in how to hold a newborn, how to hand him off, how to change him, how to feed him, and I've played around with different ways to get him to fall asleep. I've learned how to suppress my swearing when I stub my toe on a bassinet in the dark for the 5th time while carrying him around at 2 am until he falls asleep. I've mostly learned to protect myself when changing him, as little boys apparently decide that's the perfect time to pee. I got to see one of his first smiles. It turned out later to be gas. I later got him to actually smile with a rattle. I can say that was the highlight of the week. It is exhausting, and I sometimes get cranky (ref. stubbing toe at 2 am), but I really can say I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Life reboot complete. God only knows what's going to happen now.