Ten years ago, Robert and I were sitting at McDonald’s.  Robert had Big Kids Happy Meal with six chicken nuggets, multiple fries, two containers of sweet and sour sauce, four tiny paper cups of ketchup and, of course, medium size coke.  As it was our (mine really) habit, I kept dispensing fries by two, three or four and asking Robert to count them together. Sometimes I gave  Robert five or six fries at a time and as he was eating them by twos or threes, I asked how many were left.  I didn’t think I had much hope that this activity would help Robert memorize any addition or subtraction fact.  After all, his teachers were doing the same things using cute bear counters for years  with no success.   I guess that I felt guilty for coming to McDonald’s much too often.   Counting fries allowed me to fool myself into believing that I was not wasting  time but to the contrary I was using it productively.  I was teaching.  What could be more productive than that?   I even convinced myself that counting fries was a more promising method of teaching. The edible counters related to real life had more value for Robert than blocks or bears.

I was engrossed by my teaching  mission when I heard, “Bless you, bless you for your work with THIS child.”  I lifted my head and noticed a middle-aged man glancing at me on a way to his table.  Luckily, he passed me rather quickly relieving me from any obligation to respond.  I would not know what to say. I knew he meant well, but his words felt sticky and stale.

Unfortunately, I heard the same phrase, “Bless you” many times more.  I heard it always in a company of my son.

In 2006 in a hallway of the Medfield Middle School, the teacher, whom I didn’t know said almost exactly the same thing, “Bless you for the work with THOSE children”.  She obviously took me for a special ed teacher.

This summer, as I was buying ticket to Plimouth Village and Robert bounced happily while waiting to visit the place he remembered from prior trips, the clerk at the desk  offered to pray for me.  This time, I responded, “Please, don’t.”

Each and every person who wanted to pray for me or bless me, was inadvertently telling me that she or he perceived my son as a  heavy burden. Nothing more.

I did  mind (a little)  being an object of other people pity, but I minded hundred times more that fact that they were unable to notice my son’s deep humanity. It was easier for THOSE people to discharge blessing on me than to say one friendly word to my son.

That is why I had to reject the blessings and decline prayers.

In the fall of 1996, a day after Robert’s opened the door and aiming for the playground ran through the narrow streets and the treacherous parking lot of our apartment complex , my husband installed a latch on top of the door.  Robert quickly understood its function  and sincerely detested it. It was there to prevent  him from going out.  Robert wanted out, out, out.  So a few times a day, he stretched himself along the door’s surface, his head tilted backwards while short, little hands extended dramatically toward the latch.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not.

There were many reasons Robert wanted out.  He wanted to go to the playground, to the swimming pool, to the grocery store to buy more bubbles, and he wanted to admire Louis.

Louis was a black and white cat, living across the street (and the parking lot), who at some point started to spent a lot of time on the steps leading to our townhouse.  It is possible that it was because in the afternoons, the sun warmed up our side of the street.  It is possible. However,  I am convinced that Louis kept coming because he loved Robert and Amanda. He waited for each of them to return from their schools, but he hid between the bushes and the wall of the townhouse  when other children tried to approach him.  Louis  clearly felt pampered and entertained  by Amanda who, pretending to be Isadora Duncan, danced for him with thin shawls twirling around. Louis also accepted gracefully Robert’s dance of appreciation, quick bouncing in place and flapping arms.  So he kept coming to our stairs, and Robert kept going outside.

It was unavoidable that at some point Louis would enter our apartment. And he did.  As soon as Louis entered, Robert shut the door, stretched his arms as high up as possible, and kept repeating,”Close, close, close”.

Suddenly, the latch from a despicable obstruction changed into Robert’s ally. Robert wanted Louis to stay in our home, and the only thing capable of assuring that was, in Robert’s mind,  the latch.

So Louis stayed for the whole afternoon until his owner, Ann, came to pick him up.

I rarely write about skills Robert acquired at one of his schools.  There are two reasons for that.

1. When the school did a good job of teaching, my part was mostly supportive.  I just either followed the suggestions given to me  during home visits by one of Robert’s teachers (when he attended private, ABA driven school) or I provided extra practice based on  the worksheets Robert brought from his collaborative program.  I did not have to think, design a program, or adjust it when it didn’t work.

2.There were long periods, extending into months when Robert was not taught anything new, when so-called “progress reports” although very wordy did not indicate one concrete thing Robert learned at school. So there was nothing to write about the school teaching.

I remember most vividly those attempts to teach Robert which aimed at the skills he was most resistant to learn. The longer I tried, the more approaches I experimented with, the stronger my memory. If I remember how  Robert finally memorized the addition  facts it is because for six years, his school and I tried, tried, and failed. So the final success felt like a miracle, although it was the result of finding a proper approach, as I documented in Looking for Variables.

Sadly, I do not recall as clearly the ways Robert learned those skills that were mainly taught at schools.  I cannot describe, for instance, how Robert was toilet trained.  I did not contribute much time, effort, or thought to that developmental achievement.  It was all the doing of wonderful, although always changing, teachers in Private School, Robert was attending at that time.  I believe that in the process many hours were spent in the toilet, but I am not sure even of that.    This school’s young and dedicated teachers also managed, to my disbelief,  to teach Robert to tie his shoelaces.  I suspect that they wrote a good task analysis and used either forward or backward chaining.  Thanks to them we did not have to search a store after a  store for Robert’s size shoes with Velcro straps.

Most importantly at that school Robert learned to stop when asked to do so.  It was a life saving skill.  Many times Robert managed to wiggle out of my grasps  and run without looking or stopping to the point of getting out of my site and placing himself in danger.  I couldn’t keep up with him and consequently I could take him to park, playground, or store only together  with his sister.  She was five, six, or seven, but she knew it was her role to stop Robert. Two teachers taught Robert to stop when he heard the word “Stop” or his name.  One walked with Robert in a maze of hallways, the other one called Robert from behind.

From what I know now about other programs, collaborative or public, I am sure that neither of them would teach Robert those important life skills.  I doubt if they would even try. That possibility still sends chill through my spine.

Similarly,  I  cannot say, how Robert learned multiplication facts because teaching and learning took place at school and I only supported what the teachers were doing in the collaborative program which Robert attended at that time.

I also don’t know how the occupational therapist in the public school managed to teach Robert to manipulate his  combination padlock to open his locker.

I value greatly those times when Robert learned something with only minimal support from me or without my support at all.  I felt that the world was full of people able to support Robert.  That was a source of great relief and hope.

On the other hand, the fact that I write so much on these pages about Robert’s learning is a very unfortunate one.  I became the main force  and sometimes the only force in Robert’s learning only because I had to fill the terrible void caused by lack of any appropriate teaching at schools. And this is quite depressing.