"How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth it is....

...to have a thankless child" - King Lear

Laurence Olivier as King Lear, Alec Guiness as The Fool at the Old Vic, London (1946)

This is a long one, I apologize.

I've written before about how proud I am of my daughter, who, at the age of 2 was diagnosed with autism. Mirror staring, phrase repeating, repetitive behavior, classic autism. I've written about how in many ways it was her own sheer determination and will that helped her break through a good deal of that to the point where she is high functioning and is now under the label of Asperger's Syndrome. I've never written about the part of being her dad that is painful, frustrating and makes me want to run screaming and deny that I am a father to anyone, let alone her.

Today will change that.

First, something to edify those of my readers that don't know what Asperger's Syndrome is.

This is the simplest comprehensive explanation of AS I can find. If you want, read this first, then go ahead. It might be helpful.

My daughter and I are in the middle of a kind of fight this week. Over the Thanksgiving weekend she got into a pretty intense battle with her mother and her stepfather. (To clarify, my ex is not married yet, but her fiancee has lived with them for a few years now so the relationship, while not official, is concrete enough.) My daughter likes digging at my ex wire, as teen aged, early college children are want to do. It went too far, causing my daughter's friends to tell her to back off and my ex wife to break down.

Now to be sure, as events were given to me, my ex was inappropriate a few times and has a tendency to invite this sort of abuse from my daughter without accepting that responsibility. But in the end, my daughter needs to learn when enough is enough. If you've read the link above, you can see how her AS plays into the already troublesome mentality of the late teens/early twenties brain.

Enter me, calmly picking her up on a Sunday before she heads back to school for breakfast and a calm talk about what's going on and how to patch things up. I won't go into detail, but it got ugly at one point when one of the adults lost it and set back my efforts considerably. It was a tough day, but eventually Sarah saw where she had gone too far, felt bad about it and owned up to it. There was peace in the valley, more or less.

I took her to the bus, she hugged me before getting on and thanked me, then off she went.

A little more background. Her mother and I split just before she was diagnosed as autistic. Over several years my ex and I tried to get back together, back and forth back and forth. Long story short, eventually we got smart and gave up.

During the time since splitting up the relationship with my daughter has been complicated for all of us. I alluded to an over possessiveness on my ex's part that created a block between me and Sarah that I didn't have the maturity to understand or work through constructively. The bottom line is that in many ways Sarah and I never got to bond enough in her babyhood. After I moved out, whenever I could come over to begin our weekends together, there would be tears. This was fine and understandable of course, but over time, its difficult to not take this personally.

The AS resistance to changes or shifts complicates this...going to Dad's house for weekends, Grandma's for Christmas, etc...all shifts that are difficult. And because Aspys have trouble with empathy at times, they don't understand the emotional impact of their apparent indifference or resistance. All of this I understand, but in the end, our history while filled with many wonderfuls is also filled with many rejections. Her rejections of me and as much as I get it, it still stings because frankly, its hard not to hear "I love you, dad" once in 19 years. Not because she doesn't love me, but because its just not something she can say. "You too" is the best I can get.

So, honestly, I am somewhat sensitive as a dad. Not one of the most mature aspects of me. But there it is.

Sarah and I had a sort of date this weekend to watch on Hulu from our respective locations, the last episodes of Monk. One of the ways that she and I bond is through the shows and movies we love. It's also a classic Aspy thing and it has made a difference in our relationship. We started to get much closer when I started turning her on to Buffy DVDs when she was 11. It continued with Angel, Alias, Firefly....Monk she found on her own but I was watching it too...and she relates to Monk (guess why).

So, it was something I looked forward to. We made the arrangement last Friday when we were all up at her school to see her ensemble concert. We agreed to watch together over the weekend.

Saturday didn't work out well because it was crazy around here with my roomie's party preparation, so we agreed on Sunday. Sunday was a series of phone calls on my part with schedule issues for her and subsequently me saying, ok..why don't you call me when you are able to watch, even if its not tonight. She agreed.

End of Monday I find on her FB status that she's watched the show and hasn't bothered to tell me directly. Now, I'm less pissed about missing the show with her, though I am disappointed. It's the not calling that gets me.

And yes, she's 19 and to some degree this is normal anyway...and combine that with AS its not unusual. But when I email her about it I get scolded for thinking its such a big deal, as if my phone calls weren't a cue that it was something I really wanted to do with her. To her it wasn't important enough because we weren't in the same room or couldn't talk about it during commercial breaks. So it couldn't possibly be important to me.

Ugh. She doesn't get that its rude, she tries to say that I could have called instead of me waiting for her (as if my 5 calls to her 0 weren't enough). It's the same kind of insensitivity that drove her mother to tears only a week ago.

I've spent 19 years enduring resistance, rejections, patching up fights, advocating for her helping her, coaching her monologues, staying in a city I have come to loathe to be near her, suffered financially to some degree for her and continue to do so. All of these things are things that go along with being a parent. And I don't want to play martyr to it, but today I am sick of it. I am sick of the treatment, sick of the life I live for it, sick of the nonsense drama I have had to deal with. Sick of the situations I am stuck in for her. SICK OF IT.

I know in a few days it will be ok...peace will be had...and that this goes along with the territory of being a father of an Aspy, who is 19, who has all the arrogant and stubborn genes of both sides of her family and who is also a spoiled brat (that I blame on the other parent...but it is what it is). It also goes along with the territory of a child who had the strength of will to pull herself from staring at mirrors in silence at the distance of half an inch, to moving to mainstream education, a specialized high school for actors and into college. Yes her parents helped, but in the end it was her will that pulled her through...and its that same will that makes me want to grow my hair back so I can pull it all out and run to California or Georgia or Arizona and forget I was ever a father. Today. Sometime later this week I'll be back to being proud as can be of her for one reason or another.

I just have to keep remembering, this comes with the territory, this comes with the territory, this comes with the territory.

Daughter's ASPerations Part II (Or, Why My Daughter Is A Hero)

After that incident Sarah seemed to slow down. Her passion for reading (book was her first word even before mommy) ebbed, though it didn't entirely disapear, her responses were slower and she began to develop immediate echolalia as she got a bit older. The poor thing would respond to us by repeating what we had just said to her, like "come here Sarah" and then that was it.

In our ignorance, her mother and I thought she was being willful, that being a normal trait in both our families, but it kept up...and my poor daughter would continue to repeat our commands to come here (or whatever it was at the moment) with increasing tears. She knew that a response was in order, but what that response was supposed to be, she could not fathom. Oh the scenes this sometimes produced.

When she was about 2 we enrolled her into the nursery school where my ex wife worked. Right about this time was when my then wife was becoming my ex wife. I'd get phone calls from her saying that something was wrong, our daughter was not doing well in her class as far as she was observing and suspected that she was autistic. I didn't take this very seriously. For one, my ex wife had a tendency to be read about a disorder and then think she had it and she had just recently been reading up on autism. So I poo pooed it. Her boss did as well. But after awhile the two women who were my daughter's teachers began to suspect that my ex was right.

One afternoon I came in early to pick my daughter up for some lunch and as I watched through the window I saw that while the other kids were playing with eachother or toys, my daughter was standing half an inch from the small mirror, staring as if studying something. Her expression was blank and yet had a determined air about it. When I saw this, I knew that my prejudice against my ex-wife's observation was proving a disservice to our child.

A short time later we had her evaluated and she was indeed diagnosed as autistic. We were guided to seek a formal evaluation in New York so that we could enroll her into a therapeutic program for the following year. NYC is good this way in that it is required by law to provide services through the public school system to children with disabilities. And while over the years we were involved with some serious political wrangling from time to time, my daughter's progress would not have been as good as its been. Though as I continue you will see that so much of it is her own work.

(To be continued further....)

ADDitions and Further Distraction

Continuing from yesterday:


8. Easy distractibility, trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or a conversation, often coupled with an ability to hyperfocus at times.

When I was a teenager I would be in the middle of a book, a book I was loving, and realize I'd gone about 2 pages and had no idea what I was reading because I had drifted off onto some thought or fixated on a problem at school or whatever. I'd have to go back and figure out where I derailed.

I don't do this so much anymore because I easily catch the moment when I start to drift, take a breath and continue reading. But it took me a couple of years. My mother used to say "Yeah I do that too" so I thought it was normal. My mother was officially diagnosed with Adult ADHD a few years ago, by the way.

My childhood report cards, without exception, include notes from teachers about how "Johnny is a very intelligent young man, but he has a tendency to day dream...."

9.Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent.

While I might dispute the highly intelligent part, others would support that claim. Creative? Always have been. Not just in the usual ways (being an actor, writer, etc.) but in getting myself out of certain jams.

10. Trouble in going through established channels, following "proper" procedure.

I do tend to hesitate before beginning to go through these sorts of things, but I tend to do alright. It IS a stressful thing for me to do though.

11. Impatient; low tolerance of frustration.

BINGO. Best way for me to lose my temper is to have to wait a long time or feel like I'm doing something too many times to get whatever that something is right...And by too many I mean twice.

12. Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as in impulsive spending of money, changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans, and the like; hot-tempered.

Oh the money thing...that's taken me YEARS to get a handle on. But yeah...I could be very impulsive. I'm much better about that now. Not having any money is good training for not spending it and I seem to have been able to carry that through the slightly better times.

I'm not a big one for changing plans. In fact I hate when plans change. I get stressed out if it happens too much. And by too much I mean twice.

13. A tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; a tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers.

I do worry a lot. While one could argue that all worrying is needless, since worry in and of itself solves nothing, I usually start worrying well before the worry line is crossed. Well before there's an actual real issue. I think it relates to the crisis/stimulation point I covered yesterday. And of course the more I worry, the more there is to worry about. Nice cycle. Sometimes turns to self fulfilling prophecy.

This I've also spent a lot of time working on and when I keep my yoga practice regularly the worry easily and quickly to make room for solutions.

Keep up the practice you say? Well, yes...that's obvious. ADD.

Ok...more tomorrow!

ADDition and Distraction

I've mentioned before that it looks pretty clear that I have ADD and that it's something that I can't believe wasn't obvious to me years ago.



Here's a list of indicators from a very good book I got in New Paltz for 50 cents at the urging of my ex-wife. Well spent half a buck.

A. A chronic disturbance in which at least twelve of the following are present:

1. A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one's goals (regardless of how much one has actually accomplished)

Well that certainly fits me to a tee. I'm in my late 40s and nowhere close to any real accomplishment.

2. Difficulty getting organized

Anyone that's known me for any length of time or been to my apartment knows how perfectly well this fits me...though when I do get organized, its super organized.

3. Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started.

Mhm. This sort of thing does lead to Criteria 1.

4. Many projects going simultaneously, trouble with follow-through.

For years that was an issue. Then I started just trying one thing at a time. Follow through is still tricky. I work best in projects with others. It's one reason I started this blog..A way to have to follow through because there's an alleged audience. (All 5 of you out there?)

5. A tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark.

I used to think of this as sometimes being tactless. It's not a frequent occurrence but I do find lately I am more impulsive and sometimes say or write things I regret almost immediately after. Never things meant to be hurtful, in fact often meant to be helpful, but so impulsively expressed that the words get mixed up and I end up sounding like an insensitive ass when in fact I'm more likely being a sensitive ass. Kind of like the Harry Connick Jr. character in P.S. I Love You:

"Sorry, I have a syndrome. I don't really have a filter. I don't pick up on social cues"

"You mean you're rude"

"Yeah but now it's a disease I can get medication for it"

6. A frequent search for high stimulation.

At first I thought that this doesn't apply. Then I started thinking about things a bit more. A great deal of my life is pretty much one crisis after another with small breaks in between. Now, that's not stimulation like sky diving, or speed boating and car racing; the kind of stimulation one thinks of but it is stimulating. I have to admit that.

This hit me like a hammer to the head this morning as it all occurred to me. And its got my thoughts reeling.

I tend to subscribe to the thinking that we create our own lives by what we focus on. And as I suggested in my New Years post, I tend to worry. Worry breeds the worrisome. Thus...seeking stimulation.

7. An intolerance of boredom.

I always have to have something happening. A movie, music, podcasts on the subway ride. A magazine. A book. I can't ride the subway without something to keep occupied with or I get fidgety.


There's more. I'll continue tomorrow and likely the day after.