A few weeks ago, I attended workshop on issues related to executive function. It was a nice review of the topic I was already familiar with. What was new for me and quite interesting was what the presenter said almost on the margin of the main topic. She remember her former Quaker School which held weekly hour of silence. The oldest children came to the hall first and stayed for the full hour. The youngest came last and remained for only a few minutes.
If this digression caught my attention it was because,that is precisely what Robert needs. Staying a few minutes silently, without moving, without watching TV, without asking for one of the same thing over and over. A few minutes to just look around, contemplate (sort of), and try to be at peace with himself.
Of course I knew that even five minutes of sitting and doing nothing would be too much. Although in the past, I frequently gave Robert a choice, “Robert do you want to study or do nothing?” and he kept answering, “Do nothing.”, he really didn’t mean that. Neither did I. I wanted Robert to leave me alone for a few minutes and Robert wanted to just watch Netflix or DVD.
“Do nothing”,meant that I wouldn’t have to do anything with Robert.
That was by the way one of the most useful phrases I stole from Winnie the Pooh.
So I tried to keep Robert seated for a minute, maybe two. Very hard. For him and for me. I gave up. For now.
Yesterday, after we finished shoveling the snow, I asked Robert if he wanted hot tea. Without really thinking, he said, “Yes.”
So, I made hot tea for the three of us, took it to living room, to drink it together. Not the dinner, where everybody is kept at the table by the abundance of food, but the drink Robert doesn’t even like too much. The drink you sip between periods of light conversation,
or silence. It had to be very awkward for Robert. He ran away a few times, only to be called back. He had many excuses to get up: bathroom, tissue, taking a teaspoon back to the kitchen sink. But for the most of the fifteen minutes he was with us and he drank all his hot tea.

I am quickly approaching my 60tiest birthday and Robert is approaching his 22nd.  In a few weeks he will leave the school and enter  adulthood (by name only) for which he is not prepared. I cannot help but look back and bitterly analyze all those lost days, weeks, months,  and even years that depleted me of energy and destroyed my health without really leading to positive changes in the way my son was “educated” at his schools. I tried to use all the venues: talking to teachers, administrators, school committee members, asking  for the advice the Federation for Children with Special Needs, attending SEPAC meetings, using parents internet lists, complaining to the Education Departments (state and federal), using mediation, filing for the hearing with the BSEA , contacting SPEDEX, and writing to local newspapers.   There were sometimes positive results but there were so miniscule (as I kept accepting less and less) and they never lasted longer than a few months, sometimes just a few days.

Of course, there are those who kept advising me not to look back but plan for the better future.  Unfortunately, the future is dark and cloudy.

It is the result of Robert not having sufficient opportunity to learn being in group, working with a team, learning social skills, and using his not so small vocabulary to communicate with others.  Those are the things I couldn’t teach him at home in one on one setting. So Robert enters the adulthood alone.

It is also the result of the first impression Robert leaves on many people who give him a very little chance to demonstrate his wonderful, rich but complex personality. They place him in an artificially designed category and Robert, ever complacent, remains there and acts accordingly.

As Robert visits, for a couple of hours a week, three different programs (Yes, it is just two hours in each) I feel as powerless as ever.  Rightly or not, I do feel misinformed and, well, manipulated. There are factors used by others in determining my son’s future that I am not aware of and they not necessarily relate to my son’s characteristics.

I cannot really plan for the future when I feel the ballast of lost chances, and very dim lights ahead.

This year, it took me much longer to get back on track with teaching Robert. It was the first winter break in at least 10 years during which we didn’t do any desk (I mean” dining table) work.  Of course with his sister and his grandmother coming for almost two weeks and his dad having a few days off, the house was full of people who could engage Robert.  But, of course, sometimes it took a little nagging.  Anyway, Robert was busy with others and found ways to occupy himself.

His main concern, however, was to clean the dishes, decorations, napkins, and tablecloth of the table and reinstate a few piles of teaching materials on top of it.  He didn’t mind removing textbooks, workbooks, a ruler, a pencil and an eraser from the table and setting it for almost daily celebrations. As soon, however, as the chairs around the table became empty, he returned the table to its main function – place of learning.

But no, Robert really didn’t want to study.  When once I suggested that, he replied, “Later, later.” and disappeared in the den downstairs.  I did not insist.  Besides, Robert helped a lot during that time – washing and folding laundry, sometimes washing dishes, and changing beds when needed.  Reluctantly, he also helped with snow shoveling, following methodically the pattern demonstrated by his father.  He played a new board game with his sister, build gingerbread village and a gingerbread carousel with her.  He went to movies twice and twice he went skiing.  Once to Sunapee Mountain in New Hampshire and once to Killington in Vermont.  That trip included, Robert’s favorite activity, staying in a hotel with a pool.  He went to New York with us.  After he visited Rockefeller Plaza, he went to Polish restaurant in Brooklyn and drove with us to the Kennedy Airport.  Yes, he was busy.

The reason, however, why we did not jump into learning as soon as possible didn’t have anything to do with how busy HE was.  It didn’t even have anything to do with how busy I was.  It had everything to do with my sort of altered state of mind.

I felt lost.

I lost the drive to work.

I doubted if our work was  important.

I was overwhelmed by how much skills Robert still needed.

I was lost.

So although Robert dutifully, cleaned the table after every family meal and put back all educational materials, I took a break.  Maybe too long.  It was harder for me than for Robert to go back to our routines.  But we did it.

Slowly, in short intervals, we resumed our study time.

Because it is important.

Because Robert needs a lot of skills.

Because, if I didn’t do it, who would?

Many years ago, I read a book about psychology of mathematical discovery.  I don’t remember its title.  I read it in Polish translation and have already forgotten most of it.  I think it was through that book that I was introduced to the concept of thinking in pictures or visual thinking.  According to my memory, it was Poincaré who talked about thinking in pictures.  Those were not classical pictures, however, but hard to  describe, vague shapes/spots.  And yet, those hazy smudges led the mathematician to the discovery of a new rule/theorem. The author stated that the hardest part of that process was to find words that would precisely translate those images into theorems.

A couple of days ago, I attended a presentation on modes of learning.  According to the presenter there are four of them: auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and mixed.  The presentation did not have anything with Poincaré and his way of thinking.  If anything it vaguely related to the way people learn new facts and skills.

But it occurred to me, that it might be quite possible that Robert not just learns new things with all kinds of visual support but that he might indeed THINK in images and that those images are impossible to be  translated into concise sentences.

Those images are not depicting new concepts and high level mental operations, but they are dealing with Robert’s environment and his day-to-day observations and experiences. But they are as difficult to express in words as the images that led Poincaré to new discoveries.

Sometimes in the evenings, when he is in the bathtub or his bed, Robert “sings” softly and desolately inarticulate sounds.  Their lonesome melancholy penetrates my conscience and breaks my heart.