You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family

I think all parents of children on the spectrum at some point wrestles with informing the extended family. That’s been the case in our experience, and with friends who have children on the spectrum.

What do we tell them?

How will they accept it?

Will they love my child any less?

Will they feel awkward about interacting with him?

Or worse, will they be scared of him?

To be honest, these questions never crossed my mind. I’ve always been rather oblivious to stuff when it comes to my family.

My wife wasn’t however. She worried more about my family accepting the news than her own.

One thing I’ve often envied about my wife’s family is their ability to communicate with one another. They call each other all the time, for no reason other than to ……..talk!

That is somewhat foreign to me. In my family we seem to talk when we need to.

Rashele’s family knew of Mason’s diagnosis within minutes of us leaving the doctor’s office. Her family listened intently when we informed them of Mason’s diagnosis. They asked questions. Over the next few weeks they read things about autism on their own. When they saw him, they studied him, and asked more questions.

In my family, while we all love each other dearly, we’re a bit different. I come from a large family of 6 kids. Communication isn’t our strong suit, hence why I have issues in this area. We’re not overly chatty folks, and there are times when there are awkward silences, or just small idle chit chat to fill the dead air. Rarely do we ever venture into important topics like politics, religion, etc as they tend to turn into arguments. For the most part we all tend to stay out of each others’ business.

Rashele has had to get on me a number of times for not sharing information with them, important events, new jobs/promotions and the like.

After Mason’s diagnosis, she needled me to call my family. I kept putting it off partly because of all of the reasons above and also because:

1 – I hate to talk on the phone

2 – I didn’t completely understand all this autism stuff yet. So explaining it was going to be difficult.

I eventually got over myself and did call them and overall my family took it well. Although I don’t think it was met with the seriousness that it required when it came to my mother.

Now understand, my mother is a great woman, and I love her dearly. She has many qualities that I admire, and I attribute a large part of who I am today to her. She did a great job raising all of us.

But……

When we discussed Mason, and his lack of development, my mother, made an excuse for every possible delay.

I think it’s a generation gap thing.

When we told her he wasn’t talking like he should be at this age her reply was, “You were a late talker too, so were your brothers”

When we told her he wasn’t making eye contact, her reply was “He’s just shy, don’t worry about it”

When we told her he wasn’t social with anyone, her reply was, “He just likes to keep to himself, just like Grandpa” Which in itself is true, my dad can be anti social at times, he likes his peace and quiet. I often joke with my wife that my dad has sensory issues when it comes to crowds, noise, etc.

Getting back now to my mother. When she’d baby-sit, and we’d present her instructions on how to care for Mason, she’d sigh and say “I’ll be fine, I’ve raised 6 kids”.

She just wasn’t getting it.

Mason is nothing like any of the kids that she raised.

I can’t blame her I said the same to Rashele when she suspected something was amiss with Mason and all his misplaced milestones.

Thankfully Rashele doesn’t listen to me much.

As time went on, things got better. My mother picked up on our cues and has since adjusted very nicely. She even consults us on every birthday and Christmas gift.

Just last week she babysat and brought Mason new pop-up books, each about numbers and letters which is his “stim” of choice.

That night, she was Mason’s newest best friend.

Basically, we let everyone in both families know, the best thing they could ever do WITH, and FOR Mason was to get down on his level, literally.

Engage him.

We told them to check their pride and embarrassment at the door, and get on your hands and knees and look him in the eye. Make and hold eye contact with him whenever possible.

Push his Hot Wheels and toy trains around the carpet with him, and make all those same crazy sounds and mimic all those pretend play things we did when we were kids.

Make a mess with him if that’s what he wants to do.

These are our house rules, and once you step into the house, you must obey them.

We thank them for it after every visit.

I'm optomistically hoping that he’ll thank them for it later.