Loving the Tasmanian Devil: Ooh! I Love the Falling Snow Thing!

Someone (a certain housewife) mentioned that the children of an Aspergian she knows can deflect a scolding by asking said Aspie about his special interest. My children have figured out how to do this, too. So I decided to share this particular essay. It is much funnier if you have seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” In case you haven’t, the scene I describe is Youtubed below. If it is hot where you are this week, the first part of this post should make you thankful it’s not winter.

It is 10 AM on a Saturday morning in mid-January. I have already been to the barn and fed the calves. Middle and Youngest have recently rolled out of bed. Eldest is still asleep. The three of us are crashed in various reclining poses on the livingroom furniture watching the last half hour of the movie during which we all fell asleep the night before. The accumulated fatigue and information saturation of a long week at school has left us all brain-dead. We are waiting to recharge before attempting to greet the weekend in a house buried under snow in negative 10 weather.

The back door to the mudroom slams. We all exchange glances. Stomp, stomp, stomp, the door into the kitchen slams. We all struggle upright and rub our eyes, start to rise.

“Boys!? Who left all this food on the counter?!”

“Sorry, I did,” I say struggling to my feet and into the kitchen.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, into the office.

“Middle! Get in here now and get these CDs off my desk!”

Middle struggles into the office and starts piling CDs. “OK! OK!

Stomp, stomp, stomp, into the livingroom.

“Youngest! Clean up these videotapes! I can’t even walk through here!”

“OK, Dad! Jeez!” Youngest rolls off the couch and starts putting videos into sleeves.

“Where’s Eldest!?!? Is he still asleep?!? Jesus, it’s 10:00!! I’ve been up since 4!”

How could we not know this, since we are told this fact every day?

Stomp, stomp, stomp, up the stairs.

“Eldest! Get up! It’s 10 AM. I need help in the barn!!”

“Arrrr!”

Stomp, stomp, stomp, into our bedroom.

“Are there clean clothes anywhere?!?! Mo?!?! Are there any clean clothes? I am out of underwear. I’ve been outside in this blizzard for six hours and I’m soaking wet and freezing!!!”

I have crept up the stairs and into our room. “No, sorry. I was just about to put some in the wash.”

“I need your help in the barn. I need everyone’s help. There’s a bad ice storm coming. We need to get the tractor hooked to the generator.”

Stomp, stomp, stomp, down the stairs.

“Youngest! Stop messing with those videos and get some warm clothes on. You guys need to feed the heifers and then I need your help in the barn covering up some gaps in the wall before the ice hits.”

Stomp, stomp, stomp, into the office.

“Middle! Stop playing with those CDs and put on your snow clothes. Meet me in the barn. I have something you need to do. Mo!!!! Get Eldest up. He can feed the third-row cows.”

The door to the mudroom slams. Stomp, stomp, stomp, the door to the outside slams. Silence.

By this point all four of us are in the kitchen rubbing our eyes and looking at each other in resigned exasperation.

Parenting, Asperger style: What an eccentric performance.

During a family scene like this, I always think of Tim the Enchanter from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” When “Arthur and Bedevere and Sir Robin set out on their search to find the enchanter of whom the old man had spoken in scene twenty-four,” they round a Scottish mountain and see an explosion on a distant peak. Nearing the spot, they see a strange man standing atop a crag. He points toward another crest and another and another and another and another, each time apparently launching a fire bomb from his finger that explodes in a huge ball of fire. He finally blasts himself down into the presence of King Arthur and the knights and fires another two small blasts nearby for good measure.

What is absurd about this is that these explosions seem to serve no purpose but to demonstrate Tim the Enchanter’s powers. In the midst of their greetings, Tim suddenly uses his staff as a flamethrower to singe the immediate area and then launches a rocket from it, setting a nearby tree afire, at which the knights offer polite applause.

Thinking of this, I almost start to laugh when Andy comes striding in and starts pointing out troublesome issues in the house. Point – Pkkkkkooooo. Point – Pkkkkkooooo. Boom. Boom. Boom. I sometimes think of this as the result his tendency to “look at the world through shit-colored glasses.” He walks in, worried and anxious about the coming storm, and all he can see are the problems waiting to happen inside: the milk on the counter going bad, his desk covered with CDs that cover his seven lists, the videos about to get broken, the 15-year-old who sleeps until noon. He doesn’t see us or our exhaustion or need for emotional contact, just a big series of problems that need to get solved before anyone should be able to relax.

At best such a scene can be interpreted as unintentional anger resulting from autistic anxiety. At worst it can seem like Andy taking out his frustration on whoever’s nearest. Comedian Damon Wayan tells of his own childhood growing up with nine siblings in a three-bedroom apartment. His father would come home from a day working at the grocery store and the children would all run: “You didn’t want daddy mad ‘cause daddy was like, venting. He would come home looking to spank after a hard day’s work. ‘All right, who was bad ‘cause I need to unwind.’” Wayan tells this tale laughing and with a voice full of love, admitting that with so many children, order had to be maintained to keep the chaos at bay. He credits the enforced sibling harmony for the sense of humor he and four of his siblings were later able to develop into successful comedic careers.

I am similarly able to credit growing up in an alcoholic household for my ability to read others’ emotions, handle rapid change without a hiccup, and completely ignore people’s moods when I have determined they were not caused by me. I hope that growing up with an Aspergian will have positive effects on our boys. I think that Andy’s own growing up with a likely Aspergian father led, for better or for worse, to his perfectionism. Tony Attwood says that “The lack of affection and encouragement, and high expectations can result in the child becoming an adult who is a high achiever, as an attempt to eventually experience the parental adulation that was missing throughout childhood.” I have heard this both from Andy’s father about his own childhood and Andy about his. I had the same quest except mine was an attempt to let the McCarthy girls’ achievements cover up the problems at home. (My sister’s name and my own are side by side on Lockport High School’s valedictorian plaque, each of us first in a class of 400+).

Another striking similarity between Andy and Tim the Enchanter is how leading statements simply don’t work. On a typical summer’s day, when a given morning’s farm problems are finally resolved and we are fully awake, we might start hinting around about our “recreational” plans.

“So, there’s a movie the boys want to see at the Colonia.”

“Mmmmhmmm.” Andy looks at me questioningly.

“Um, it starts at 1?”

“OK ….?”

“And uh, the boys have been wanting to see it …?”

“Yeah?” He still hasn’t figured it out.

“So, I was thinking of taking them down there.”

Now he’s got it.

“Please don’t do that. I have hay down and Tim’s not here and I just can’t deal with any extra problems or issues. I don’t have time to come down there and haul you back up the hill if something happens. Please don’t even let the boys know you are thinking about it.”

Again I bite my lips. It also takes Tim the Aspergian Enchanter 20 lines in the script to finally realize King Arthur is asking for information about the grail, and this only when King Arthur is crystal clear about requesting it. And then Tim launches into a fearful description of the creature that guards the cave wherein the information about the grail’s final resting place is located, “a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived! Bones of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth,” at which point he raises his hand like a mouth full of fangs and bizarrely imitates said nasty beastie.

King Arthur turns to his knights and says, “What an eccentric performance.”

This is the look we give each other back in the kitchen after Andy has stomped out, a combination of puzzlement, exasperation, and resignation. We cannot explain his strange performance, but we know we had better join in the horror or there will be hell to pay.

Tony Attwood delineates issues that families with parental Asperger’s Syndrome face, including confusion understanding “the needs and behaviour of typical children and adolescents,” the need of the family to “accommodate the imposition of inflexible routines and expectations in behavior, the intolerance of noise, mess, and any intrusion in the parent’s solitary activities, perceived ‘invasion’ of the home by the children’s friends, and a black and white analysis of people.” In extreme cases there can be abuse. I find these warnings a bit heavy-handed in our case. This last has certainly never happened in our family, aside from the unintended emotional abuse that results from the children misinterpreting Andy’s behavior as lack of affection or tiring of the criticism, public embarrassment, fear of his mood or feeling like a nuisance.

The phrase that stopped me in my tracks the first day I searched “Asperger’s” on the internet was “… the paradox of an apparently kind and gentle man behaving with cold cruelty, and then being distressed and surprised by the result.” Too many times this happens when Andy’s anxiety is expressed as unintended anger at the boys, besides which it leaves me as “the mediator, negotiator, referee, rule-maker, wiper up of tears, confidante – in other words, all things to all people.”

It has been really helpful to have the “diagnosis” and explain it to the kids. Before our discovery, I had already learned as Andy’s wife to let these kinds of behaviors roll off me and not take them personally, but the kids, I know, have often been unable to understand Andy’s actions toward them.

Now after he has stormed from the room, Youngest will sigh, give me a knowing look, and say, “Asperger’s?”

I’ll smile at him with pride and nod.

This all has given me a chance to explain adult behaviors to the kids. Having grown up in an alcoholic household myself, I remember being mystified and crushed by the behaviors of the adults around me. Finally knowing about alcoholism and learning about Adult Children of Alcoholics traits and issues was enormously helpful. Too many children spend their childhoods blaming themselves for their parents’ behavior: divorce, abuse, exploitation, neglect. I have followed the policy of extreme honesty with the kids, knowing that what children imagine a situation to be is usually much worse than reality. I wish someone had had the wherewithal to clue me in at a younger age that my particular crowd of adults had issues and personalities that were completely separate from my ability to influence them. I once heard that Oscar the Grouch was created as a character on Sesame Street to teach children that some people are just grouchy by personality and can still be cherished and not changed.

So within the past year I have been able to say “Dad is just very worried. He really doesn’t mean to sound mean. He’s really anxious and worried about a million details and he loves you guys. It’s just that the Asperger’s makes him sound upset. He is upset, but not at you.”

“It sounds like he’s upset at me,” says Youngest.

“Why does he have to overreact to everything?” asks Eldest.

Unfortunately, about one time in ten the overreaction is justified. The dire prediction is accurate and only Andy’s massive preparation and marshalling of the troops prevents disaster. In the Asperger’s world, these odds are good enough. To prevent any potential disaster is worth the extreme actions necessary.

Similarly, Tim the Enchanter is actually right about the scary “beast.” Arriving at the Cave of Caerbannog, the knights mock Tim’s calamitous warnings when they see that the horrible cruel vicious beast is a little white bunny rabbit that at worst might nibble their bums. At King Arthur’s command, Bors plunges ahead without fear to kill the bunny, when the fuzzy little thing zooms through the air and latches onto his neck: his headless trunk falls to the ground squirting blood.

Tim the Enchanter rubs it right in: “I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn’t you? Oh, it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it? Well, it’s always the same. I always tell them—“ etc.

Aspergians are the kings of “I told you so,” I think because they are so accustomed to being treated as if their actions are unusual or unmerited of extreme that when they are right they need to jump up and assert their correctness. Andy must feel relieved and “normal” when his dire actions prove merited.

Meanwhile, the boys have adopted their own creative techniques for dealing with Andy’s Tasmanian parenting style. Middle (who sincerely thought that NT stood for Non-Taz) says that a few years ago he figured out that if Andy is scanning the surroundings looking for problems and his eyes are heading Middle’s way, he can distract Andy by asking about something he is interested in. For example, he was sitting in the midst of a huge Lego mess the other morning when Andy came in. Middle told him that the Legos he had just received in the mail had been hand-fashioned on a CNC (computer numerical control) machine.

Andy paused, and then said, “I used to work on a CNC machine.”

Middle actually caught this entire scene on his digital video camera, a five-minute monologue on CNC machines and how they work which he played and replayed all day to his own great amusement. Middle said his alternate technique is to start talking about something he knows does NOT interest Andy, who will listen for ten seconds and then just wander away.

Youngest has lately developed a wonderfully disarming and effective way of defusing a Tasmanian attack. The other night Middle had gone to a dance at the YMCA and we went down to pick him up at 8 PM. Unfortunately, the dance had actually ended at 7:30 and Middle had finally given up waiting at 7:55 and walked off with a friend. We did not know where he was, who he was with, if he would plan to return to the Y, which direction to go. I immediately jumped out and did a quick walk to the local pizza places where he might have walked for a slice but returned unsuccessful.

I could see Andy was moving quickly toward the red zone: Middle had done a stupid thing, Andy needed to get to bed, There was no way to find him, etc. etc. I was preparing for Andy to completely blow in the middle of downtown Norwich. I knew Andy’s reaction was based on fear, but I had also given up trying to defuse him in the midst of one of these. I was intent on just finding Middle and removing the stimulus.

Andy continued on, fending off the bad joo joo: “When Middle gets home he’s going straight to bed and no X-Box! Why would he just leave? What a stupid thing to do!” at which point the ten-year-old sage in the back seat piped up with an adult sigh of self-knowledge, “As if we don’t all do stupid things sometimes.”

Andy halted, paused, and then laughed. Youngest turned to me and gave me a wink.

Of course the one with the least ability to adjust to Andy’s moods is Eldest, who fights back in his own Aspergian way with logic and determination.

Eldest will shout, “Why do you have to go on and on? I know I need to do my chores. You don’t have to tell me fifteen times. I always do my chores! Have I ever not done my chores? Have I?”

He simply won’t let it drop, pushing the point of any hyperbole on Andy’s part because the lack of accuracy drives him mad. It still astonishes me how an Aspie can be so alert to everyone else’s exaggerations and so oblivious to his own. Sigh. This is not unusual. Tony Attwood says, “The enforced proximity of two inflexible and dominating characters with Asperger’s syndrome can lead to animosity and arguments.”

Except, however, if I send the two Aspies off to tackle a mechanical issue: pop up the camper, build the Ikea shelves. One day Andy was heading out solo to test the trolling boat’s check engine light which had gone on during his previous outing. I suggested that he take Eldest along. Besides the fact that I was pissed as all get out that Andy was off to spend two hours alone leaving me with the three boys, I also saw a potential bonding experience.

“Why don’t you take Eldest?” I said.

“He won’t want to go with me.”

“Tell him you need his mechanical expertise.”

This seemed to do the trick with Eldest: Approbation. Appreciation. Acknowledgement of skill. Predictable dialogue based on problem-solving. Andy was able to be with just one son in a situation where the two of them shared an interest and both got to feel good about solving the mechanical problem. Besides which, once the boat was deemed fully functional, Andy let Eldest cruise up and down the lake and they both stimmed out on the sparkle of sun on the water.

Meanwhile, I took Middle and Youngest to the Bluegrass Festival, an event with so much stimulation and so many unpredictable social situations that it would have driven Andy into neurological engine failure.

It was a good day. Everyone stayed calm. Everyone had fun. We had scheduled the day with Asperger’s in mind and it worked.

And so, Mo and Middle and Youngest came back from their quest to see the bluegrass festival of which their schools had apprised them in late Spring. At the farm, they met Dad and Eldest, and there was much rejoicing.

And no eccentric performance.