Anyway, I thought Tae Kwondo would be good for him, that it would help him learn self-discipline and improve his physical prowess, as well as give him something he could legitimately be proud of.
Today, however, my son had several meltdowns (a meltdown begins with a long, loud wail of frustration, followed by a weird, contorted grimmace of anguish with mouth wide open, and then concludes with flopping down on the mat fully prostrate) during testing. The incidents followed his failure to do something he thought he should have been able to do, and/or seeing his sister do something that he failed to do.
This was torture for me, because my first instinct was to go rescue him, preventing further meltdowns and my own personal mortification. But I stayed put, unsure of the protocol for walking out onto the floor, and hoping my son would rally. The Master would let my son flop for a minute and then tell him to sit up, and thankfully, my son wasn't so far gone that he refused to obey.
The last testing event was the board breaking with a side kick. My son tried twice and failed, and the Master moved on to my daughter who broke it, resulting in another meltdown for my son. After the first pass through the class, the Master went through all of the kids who didn't break the board the first time and let them try again. The first two kids succeeded.
My son got up and tried twice, failing. Then he tried a third time and mis-aimed his foot, scraping it badly on the side of the board. He collapsed with a really loud wail and burst into tears of pain at that point, and I stood up, but the Master did not catch my eye and instead encouraged my son to try again, and, unbelievably, my son did.
And then, miracle of miracles, he broke the board with the last kick -- injured foot and all! At which point I myself was unable to hold back my own tears. Tears of happiness and thankfulness that he finally succeeded, of relief that I hadn't "rescued" him and denied him this success, and of anguish because as far as my son has come, he still has so much further to go.
I am constantly surprised by these types of revelations, that no matter how much he learns to compensate and cope with his autism, that no matter how intelligent he is, autistic behavior will still spring up and make its presence known in such spectacular ways. As the mother of a child with an invisible disability, when things are good, I hope they'll STAY good. I guess deep down in my heart of hearts I still want to believe my child will "recover", regardless of what my brain tells me. That maybe it was all a mistake, a misdiagnosis, that my incredibly bright, sweet child will figure out how to live in the world and to enjoy it "like everyone else".
But I need to knock that off!! I can't put my head in the sand about his challenges, I've got to keep teaching him how to problem solve, how to adapt, how to get his brain to overpower his impulses. And he can do it! He's learned so much, against considerable odds. It took him 3 years of daily speech and behavioral therapy to teach him to communicate, but he did it! It took him 2 years of weekly swim lessons to overcome his fear of water, but he did it! I just have to stay patient and be willing to teach him compensating strategies, over and over again. He can get it! And the world is a big, diverse, place, and my son can still live in it, enjoy it, and grow in it, even if he's not exactly "like everyone else."
And as he gets older, society will be less and less tolerant of his idiosyncracies, his occasional lack of self-control. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see parents, aghast, as my 10 year old behaved like a 3 year old, over and over again. I didn't look at any of them, not being able to stand what must be going through their minds. They have no idea how far my son has come, they could care less. All they saw, all they judged him by, was the behavior they saw at that point in time.
Well that is the way the world works. I shouldn't even be thinking about those other parents. My job right now is to see that my son stays in Tae Kwondo, because it benefits him in countless ways. I'll visit the Master and explain about my son's autism. I'll have my son write a note apologizing. Perhaps in the future, I'll have my son belt-test in private. Perhaps I'll sign him up for more weekly classes, so he has better mastery of the moves.
And if there is another outburst, perhaps I will look at the parents. Maybe one of them was glancing at him with a sympathetic eye. Maybe one of them has a relative, or a friend, with an autistic child. Maybe they weren't all as judgmental as I fear. And if he has another outburst, maybe I should be honest. "This is really difficult for him, he has autism," I could say.
I don't know. And this is where, once again, I want to bury my head, "It WON'T happen, it WON'T happen, it WON'T happen again...."
