"I'm too smart to think!"

 Having a teenager is an adventure. Having an autistic teenager is an epic adventure. 

   Timothy was born in 1999, back when people worried about the shape of their abs, Y2K, and the cost of land-line long distance calls.  Thankfully, those issues pretty much fizzled out over the last 13 years. Tim is a new and interesting worry almost every day.

First day of Seventh grade.

   Tim is very vocal about his likes and dislikes. In fact he talks a lot. Repeating favorite phrases almost like a mantra. He seems to think if he says something as often as possible, as emphatically as possible it will become true.
   "I want to lower the eligibility to drive age to 14," is something I hear at least three times a day, if not more.  He has opinions on what he thinks he should be allowed to do (everything) and is not afraid to talk about it as loudly as possible.  So getting him to quiet down and listen is a tough job.  How do you explain why it's not appropriate to ask girls at school if he can look at their bare feet, when he's shouting, "I want it to be appropriate!"

Looking up "interaction" in the dictionary.

   Often, repetition is not only the symptom, but also the cure. Or at least a treatment. Tim at least knows what I'm going to answer his statements with, because I'm careful to make it the same every time. The repetition of my answer has at least helped him in remembering what that answer will be. That does not mean he doesn't still make his statements. Or that he has changed his mind from his original beliefs. Just that he understands what Mom's answer will be, when he drags the statement out again.
   This also does not mean he won't argue his point. He will defend his ideas, in the most bizarre and convoluted ways. At least, they seem that way to me. I'm sure they make perfect sense to him. That's really the whole problem. He thinks so differently.  Not wrong, just different. Sometimes I think of it like this. My thought paths run along straight lines most of the time. Picture a street map of downtown NY City.

   Tim on the other hand, is more like, say a street map of downtown Boston. If you want to get from point A to point B of the map, you can do it. The streets connect, but it may not be as straight forward a path as it would be for me.

   So understanding the way he thinks is an uphill battle. Getting him to understand something the way I think it is something like this:

   What seems straight and simple to me confuses him, because it doesn't follow the paths his mind has defined the world by.  What seems redundant or backwards to me is perfectly clear to him, because he has shaped his thinking around how he sees the world, which for him has connections in places I just don't see.
This doesn't mean we can't communicate. Just that sometimes we have to re-think how we communicate.

A literal XD if I ever saw one.

   Laughter sometimes bridges the gap. Often something I say seems hilarious to him. He'll laugh and laugh at what I might see as a lukewarm joke.  Often he'll say something in complete seriousness that sounds so off the wall that I can't help but laugh.  So while driving around last night with him babbling next to me shotgun, I hear all kinds of things about his newest obsession. Space and Time. More importantly, Tim's ideas about new stars he has "discovered" (completely made-up) and how long people should live. So this star he's talking about is supposedly "halfway to forever, according to the cosmic clock that will strike midnight at the end of the universe." After a half dozen repetitions of this phrase, I ask him to "think about it in your head without saying it with your mouth."

   "Oh," he says "I'm too smart to think." Instantly my annoyance is dissolved into amusement.  I think about what he says, and how it effects not only me, but the rest of his family, people around him, schoolmates, teachers, strangers.  I should find a way to share this, the hard times, and the laughter. Not only as a record for him to read someday when he's older, but with friends, family, and anyone else who wants a peek into a slice of life with a teenager with autism.

   And this blog was born.