Excellence vs Persistence

Yesterday, B ran flat out across the school playground towards me, beaming, waving an official-looking piece of board paper in his hand.

"Nanay, Nanay, look, look at what Mrs L gave me at the big school assembuhly!!!"

I took it and read:

S___ H___ Primary School

Certificate of Excellence

Awarded to

B____ A____

for

Putting 110% effort into all homework every week

and consistently

achieving excellent results in spelling tests!

Well done!

[Sgd] Headteacher Mrs L__
Date 7 April 2006

Let me tell you, I hugged that boy till he nearly turned blue.

Not that I don't usually hug him, because I do, certificate or no, about a dozen trillion times a day.

Not that it was the first certificate he ever brought home, but it was the first BIG one, printed on BIG paper, and given at the BIG school "assembuhly" (as B calls it).

As early as July 2005, barely 3 weeks after his first day in SH Primary, he had gotten on their school's "Golden Times Board" (where they put all the names of children who achieved something noteworthy that week) for "Settling in well at school."

A few months later, in October, he got another certificate for "Always being first on the carpet and sitting well."

In January this year, he was praised for "Increased success in daily tasks."

And a month later, he was again recognised for "Working hard all week."

Now, far be it from me to use this blog to flaunt B's successes in school, as all proud mums are wont to do from time to time. Many parents unconsciously drive their children to excel, to be the best in class or to reach for high marks in school, or to get recognition, awards, medals, trophies... And maybe they don't know it, but maybe their children are getting the wrong message. Perhaps it is possible, just possible, that their children feel they have to earn their parent's love and approval with success. And when these messed-up children grow up, that makes for extremely messed-up adults, as well. (But I'm not ready to judge anyone here, no, not me. Judging others is not my style, as I would not want to be judged myself.) But while taking reasonable pride in one's children is forgivable and natural and instinctive, let me just say that pride isn't what drove me to post about it here.

Long ago, while B was still inside my tummy, and long before we had any inkling that some of his brain's neurons were not developing as normal, I had made a covenant with him, making promises about how his Tatay and I will love and raise him. One of those promises is that I will love him for who he is, unconditionally, and not for what he can or can not do. That he will never be my personal trophy, that I will be quietly proud of him and will express my affirmation in private, but that I will never embarrass him by showing him off to my friends. I promised to do my best to let him feel that he is loved and lovable no matter what. That he never needs to earn my love by any kind of success, or any kind of exceptional achievement. I did not want a child laden with medals and plaques, acclaimed by the world, but secretly doubting if he would be loved and accepted by me even without them. I did not want a genius or a child wonder, a gifted prodigy or an Einstein-in-the-making. I wanted to raise a child who could look back on his life and know he was loved, and loved greatly, for himself, for who he was. I wanted a child who thrived on hugs and smiles and cuddles and kisses, not one who needed awards or fame or medals to complete him. I wanted a child who knew what it truly meant to love and be loved, to be accepted and to be whole.

Which is why I am happy about all these certificates he keeps getting in school. Instead of praising academic excellence alone (best in numeracy or literacy, for example), they place a premium on hard work, on cooperation, on being capable of adapting, on overcoming one's personal challenges, on pushing oneself to one's limit in a daily way. They make no bones about what they value in that school. They appreciate what truly matters.

Just to make it clear: I have no qualms about excellence. I have nothing against trophies, medals, plaques, certificates or awards. My husband and I have a few of these ourselves and we know how good it feels to be acknowledged for one's talent or work. But I'm completely against making children (and grown-ups) feel that their excellence or their achievements ought to define them or their value, their acceptability, their lovability. No one need be excellent to be worthy of being loved. No child needs to get a medal first to earn a hug.

This is why I am proud of B. Not that he is the best in something, nor that he is gifted in anything-- the innate talents and extraordinary abilities we have discovered in him are clearly a given, and they are there to be nurtured and given room to thrive, but they are not why I am proud of my son, my child who has ASD. What I find most admirable in B is how he never gives up, how he pushes himself, how he works his very darnedest. How he picks himself up after a fall, dusts himself off, and tries again.

Someday, because of his hard work and his perseverance, and despite his present challenges, B may excel, win contests, get medals, awards, trophies, diplomas, degrees or what-have-you, and you know what? I will be happy, yes, and a very proud mum. But it can't possibly make me love B more than he knows I love him now. And if he doesn't excel, if he lives a very ordinary, mediocre, undecorated but otherwise happy and fulfilled life, with good friends and loved ones around him, I will not be disappointed or less proud of him in any way. It will certainly not make me love him less.

From B, I have learned the real meaning of the words tenacity, courage, determination and hope. His persistence and doggedness in daily tasks, his calm ability to surpass expectations leveled at him by textbooks and medical journals-- I see him at it each day and I am amazed.

At 5-going-on-6, B has taught me much more than he can ever learn from me.

Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check

Flashback to September 2005: B's first week in Year One

Found a sheet of paper stuffed in B's bookbag. It was a list of words under a heading which said: "Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check." Baffled, I asked his teacher, Miss N, whatever it was for.

"Oh, Mrs A," Miss N said to me. "You just do EXACTLY as it says, one word at a time. He looks at each word, says it aloud, you cover it-- just fold the paper over, like this-- then he writes it down on the square beside it, then you check it against the original. Takes 5 minutes tops. I assure you, it's a hundred percent guaranteed way of teaching children their spellin's."

SPELLIN'S, indeed, I thought.

So every single evening, for the past 7.5 months, B and I have been doing his "spellin's" religiously, practicing five words a week, to be tested on them each Friday. Children who get full marks get stickers the following week.

Sometimes, though, I'd find it sooooo tiresome, having to do it everyday. How long those first "five-minute sessions" took! Five minutes, hah! Fifteen, more like. And that was on top of homework! How I dearly wanted to squeeze Miss N's neck for adding to my already-full daily schedule. What tedium! What monotony! The same five words everyday for the whole week. When I could be doing something else completely, something way less boring, like finish my Harry Potter book. I admit that sometimes I'd try to weasel my way out of it. What's the use?, I'd secretly think. They're just SPELLIN'S anyway. But B would never let me off the hook. And then, abashed at my own sneaky laziness, so unbecoming in a so-called grown-up, especially in the face of such consistent craving to do the "spellin's," I'd sit down beside him and help him through it.

Sometimes I'd catch B trying to peek at the covered word when he gets stumped, and if it were early in the week, I'd let him have another look, but I always warned him, "No cheating; just ask me if it's all right to have another look." Sometimes, he'd get distracted while writing a word down and ask me, "What was I writing again?" I'd give him a hint (e.g. "It's something you use for eating") and he'd get it.

Then I noticed that B wasn't just memorising the words he spelled but he actually read them (by sounding out each letter) and learnt the meanings, using the words in sentences before writing them down, and I was very glad to see his vocabulary growing so quickly. And the five minutes whizzed by more quickly than I imagined.

Fast forward to 2006:

At a recent parent consultation meeting, Miss N spoke with us about how consistently B has been getting full marks on his "spellin's" each week, and we could tell that she was really impressed. She wondered if they were getting to be "too dead-easy" for B and asked us, "Would it be all right if we give him 10 words to spell, instead of 5?"

I didn't want to push B harder than we ought, but I didn't want him getting bored, too, so we said we'll leave it up to him. I told B about it and he practically clapped his hands with excitement. So, okay, 10 spellin's it is.

Last week, they gave him his first set of 10 words, and Friday being the last day of term, they stuck the stickers on the children on the very same day.

B's sticker read: "Wow! I got 10/10 in my spelling test today!!"

And to think that at this exact time last year, with all his fine-motor skills delays and his difficulty getting his fingers in a proper tripod grasp, B could not even hold a pencil properly, let alone write, draw, colour, spell his own name or take written end-of-term tests in preschool. His handwriting was weak, spidery and ill-controlled. It was painful to watch him struggle, since it used to take forever for him to write his first name, and he complained that his fingers got tired too quickly.

Not anymore. His handwriting is strong, neat, legible and very well-formed, at times even better than some of his classmates' writing. Last 26th March, B wrote me a card for UK Mothering Sunday, and though the "spellin's" left something to be desired, the fact that my son is now finally able to put his thoughts and feelings on paper, to WRITE, overwhelmed me beyond imagination.

B's card said: "I luvn my Mam and dad and my bravo and day lavn me to -B"

(Translation: I love my Mum and dad and my brother and they love me, too -B... "Bravo" is how he says "brother" with his newly-acquired accent.)

So I guess B was right all along. The daily spellin's were worth it. The widened vocabulary, the lovely handwriting, the newly-found ability to write complete sentences and make his mum cry over a badly-spelt Mother's Day card.

Just five minutes a day has made a world of difference to B.

Look Into My Eyes

It was late afternoon in early December. As the developmental pediatrician assessed my son, B, my husband and I looked on with bated breath. At two years and five months, B was hardly intelligible, speaking jargon, couldn’t keep still for two seconds. We watched as the doctor coaxed B into holding a pen. He gripped the pen with his palm, his fingers skewed and totally unable to control it. She tried to get him to build a tower of blocks, but he hardly gives it a second glance before whizzing about the clinic, staying at each task for only two or three seconds at a time.

B had seemed normal, intelligent and healthy until he was 8 months old, when he caught the measles from a girl with a half-wit mother irresponsible enough to let her daughter stay in the doctor’s waiting room with other kids, even when SHE knew that it was the measles. Even now, just thinking about that fateful day’s events still makes my blood boil with anger, frustration and regret.

After his terrible bout with measles, and barely two weeks later, with roseola infantum, B was not the same baby. He seemed less aware of us, he lost a lot of weight and he seemed to be quieter. We thought he was just taking his time recovering from his first real illness, but as the months passed, he began to turn himself upside down and get extremely active. B being our first child, we had no way of comparing his development with that of other children.

Meantime, O and I were both busy with work and other things. It shames me no end to admit this, but I was too distracted by my career to notice that B didn’t respond when he was called, he didn’t know his name or ours, and he still wasn’t making a lot of sense when he tried to talk. Looking back now, all the warning signs passed me by unnoticed.

It had been increasingly difficult for us to take B anywhere. His behaviour was straining our own marriage and testing our parental fortitude. Even though I had breastfed him till age two, I had not had any meaningful eye contact with my only son. My dreams of reading him stories at bedtime, with him sitting quietly and contentedly on my lap, had all but vanished. He could not sit still long enough for me to even tell him I loved him. I was feeling distinctly unloved as a mother, and wondered why other parents had the consolation of being hugged and kissed by their young, when I could not feel even a hint of gratitude or affection from mine. O and I knew something was wrong, despite vague assurances that “boys develop slower than girls” and “he’ll get round to it eventually.” Our voiceless fears brought us to Dr S.

After an interminable hour of tasks and questions, Dr S faced us and spent the next half-hour explaining the different disorders which were usually suspected in cases like this. She wrote them all down on paper so we could see. She looked at us kindly, paused, and slowly circled a word that would change our lives forever: AUTISM.

That was 3 years and four months ago.

This morning, B got up as usual and cheerfully came into my room saying, “Good morning, Nanay!” (Nanay is Filipino for Mum.)Then he went down for breakfast before getting himself dressed for school. As we met at the foot of the stairs, he surprised me by saying, “Nanay, I love you very much.” My eyes strained to cry but I held back my tears. He hugged me and then said as we broke apart, an impish look in his eyes, “Or maybe I love you very small?” Ha, ha, ha, I said. Too late for that, sweetheart.

I sat beside him as he put his shoes on, and he chattered about what he would do later in drama club and asked if his friend J could come over to play again next week. Before we said goodbye, O and I prayed a morning blessing over B and his baby brother, E. This time, for some unfathomable reason, my tears refused to be held back and I told O, I don’t know why I’m crying. Sitting beside me, B looked into my eyes and gravely asked, “What’s the matter, Nanay? Why are you crying?” I’m just gonna miss you today, sweetheart, but I hope you have a happy day in school, I replied, trying not to upset him. He then gave me a reassuring smile and said, “Don’t worry, Nanay, I’ll see you later.” Kisses and hugs all round, then he was off to school with O. With E busy playing, and no one else around, I gave my tears free rein for a few moments.

Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD for short, revolutionised the way O and I approached parenting. It transformed our vision for the kind of persons we would mold our children to be. Instead of having them value success or accomplishment in their pursuits, we realised that all we wanted were children who knew how to love and care, to feel, to know what it means to be human. We became very hands-on parents, very open with our emotions and physically expressive of our love for our son and for each other. We taught ourselves to be experts in our son’s disorder. We devoured books as we found them.

And ASD changed the way we view life itself, our appreciation of human emotion, sensory experiences and relationships, the things which make us truly human. B started having weekly occupational and speech therapy soon after his diagnosis, and I put my career on hold so I could transform our home into a fun, safe, 24-hour therapy center of sorts for B. We played games and obstacle courses, played to his strengths, helped him develop his immature skills, guided him through his emotions and gently taught him how to manage them. B responded to all we did, becoming more and more alive, more and more human, more and more PRESENT, by the day.

At four years and ten months, B was discharged from all occupational and speech therapy, with his condition so vastly improved from the initial diagnosis of classic autism that it was declared to be virtually undetectable, except by trained specialists.

Now, just two months away from his sixth birthday, B attends Year One in a mainstream primary school here in England— reading, writing and spelling extremely well, enjoying new experiences and surpassing everyone’s hopes and expectations. He helps around the house and is quite independent: he makes his bed, dresses by himself, sets the table, brushes his teeth, clears away his toys. He is always ALWAYS laughing, smiling, giggling at some joke or prank. His pure, innocent voice fills the room when he sings along to his favourite CDs, and despite his young age and the fact that he has never had vocal training, he is completely on-key and knows all the words! With his innately shy temperament, he still struggles in developing social skills, finding it challenging to make new friends in a new school, a new country, with people talking in strange accents and saying odd phrases never before encountered. Reaching out to strangers and making new friends is a concern for him, but isn’t it so for most of us, as well?

Truth is, I cry for joy today, out of gratitude for this unexpected gift, because B said he loved me. Not because it’s the first time he’s said it, but because it has just struck me how often he has been saying it, and so earnestly. Because he is forever hugging and cuddling and tickling and squishing, and asking to be hugged, cuddled, tickled and squished back. Because he listens, he understands, he speaks, he connects. Because he cares, he empathises, he responds. Because he looks into my eyes and knows he is loved.

All this, when he shouldn’t be able to. All this, when autism dictates that he should not. ASD should have robbed me of my son’s hugs and kisses, of the loving look I see in his eyes when he gazes back at me, of my hopes for his life as a happy, well-adjusted person. ASD could have taken my son away from me, and it should have, but it did not. It has failed, miserably. For my son is here, and he thinks, he feels, and he loves.

This weblog, then, is the story of how B continually challenges and re-defines the boundaries set before him by ASD, how he confronts his fears and limitations, defies expectations, disproves human theory, and attests how foolish it is to put the power of human love and divine intervention inside a box. It is the story of my son’s quiet victories and triumphs, his momentary setbacks and defeats, his courage and his persistence.

I look into his eyes, and he looks back into mine. Each soul mirroring the other.

It is then that I know: We love, and so begin to live.