Last week Mark and I attended our last-ever back-to-school parent meeting. Bryce, our youngest child, is a senior. We’re a light year away from the first year following his identification as a child with autism, when he attended a four-days-a-week supported integrated preschool class. Each Thursday he would greet the teacher with, “One more day, baby” a line pulled from a movie. To this day I get an occasional call or email from the teacher recalling that line. On the morning of his first day of school this year, Bryce turned to me and said, “One more year, baby.”
Seven years after we left that preschool, I wrote a little thing called Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew. It grew into the kind of book every author would be honored and humbled to have been able to write. Those ten things spoke for the younger child my son was at the time, a child who was not able to speak for himself. He speaks for himself now, so my role is now to speak to him, not for him. Thus, a new “ten things.”
You’ll notice right away that these ten things don’t appear to be autism-specific. That’s because the older Bryce grew, the more his autism became only a part of him, a thinking and learning style, not a defining or even controlling characteristic. He would be the first to tell you that he autism has and always will impose challenges on his life. But he has also been blessed with grace and fortitude. He will live these ten things, and a few hundred more, long after his senior years is over…
Read the ten things on my Facebook page.
