I Was Happy, They Were Not - Part 2

By the time my mom was healthy enough to take care of me herself, I must have been a rude awakening for her. I did not respond the way a normal baby responds to his mommy. I did not reach for her or cry when she left. I did not play peek a boo, and her logs indicate this bothered her a lot. I did not look for her to hold me. When she held out her arms, I did not run into them for a hug. I was already installed in my private, separate world, and while I might play next to her, I would not necessarily play with her. Going down the developmental guidelines that I have since come to know so well with my own children, I did not resist the unfamiliar. I did not demand attention or test for curiosity. I would not imitate, another aspect that upset my mom quite a bit. And I did not communicate. By the stage that other kids formed words, I only babbled, and I did not point or try to communicate with gestures. I never invited responses or obeyed because those things did not exist in the altered consciousness state, where opening and closing doors, flushing toilets, flipping light switches, and banging pots and pans consumed and delighted me. I did not cry when my mother removed me from a repetitive activity; I simply moved on to another one. In clinical parlance, I showed no attachment behavior.

Neither, apparently, did my mother.

Whether because she had experienced such a blow health wise or because my behavior so bewildered her, my mother initially expected as little of me as I offered. If I projected any clues about what I wanted or needed, she did not pick up on them, an incongruity noted in the initial Cedars Sinai Preschool and Infant Parenting Service report written after she had taken me in to be evaluated by Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas, one of the world's leading autism experts. That state did not last long, however. By the time we began the Cedars Sinai Home Intervention Program under Shelley Gallenson's twice weekly observation, my mother's response to my lack of response was jumbling through concern, irritation, and a fierce determination to connect with her only son.

Fierce and intense were keywords to describe my mother's life. I suspect they unintentionally contributed to my discomfort and reinforced my desire to remain sequestered in my Alpha state. My comfort level was to be just with myself, a disposition my mother took as both a matter of concern and, incongruously, a deliberate affront to her. The more troubled she became about my withdrawal, the more intense her own behavior grew; the more intense her behavior, the more I withdrew. Between us, we established a vicious cycle of miscommunication, anxiety, determination, and love that would define our relationship until the day she died.

She may have gotten off the parenting mark a little late, but my mom would not be deterred. She intensely followed the dictates of the program to set aside specific short bursts of time when she would play with me in specific ways with specific toys or games. According to the logs she kept with an architect's meticulously detailed care, I responded pretty quickly to her efforts with a desire to please her, be with her, and capture more of her attention. Unfortunately, I did not have the tools or understanding of how to ask for that attention in an appropriate way outside of those times when Mom tuned into me, so I acted out.

I bit, hit, scratched, pinched, screamed, kicked, and threw things to get notice, smiling all the while. That smile, which my wife and I understand to mean our son is trying to communicate in a positive way, acted like a proverbial red flag to my mother. The therapists may have thought I was mildly retarded, but my mother's intuition told her I was so bright that even as a toddler, I had the cognitive ability to premeditate my tantrums. He does little things that he knows are naughty with a smile as a test. My behavior was always personal to her, as if, for some reason, I was being abnormal just to spite her.

My mother and I maintained this dynamic throughout most of my childhood. Looking back, I have to believe she did not actually understand what was going on with me or why I did what I did. For my part, I know I had no idea about how to read my mother's or anyone else's cues for good behavior. Once I started wanting attention, I did whatever I could to get it. It might have been my own form of fierceness or intensity, but the smile on my face during my attention-getting tantrums was meant to indicate that I had good intentions. I simply did not know any other way to behave. If my development was, in fact, arrested, it was not for lack of effort on my part. Simply put, I wanted Mommy, I wanted her now, I wanted her for my own and I wanted her to stay. At ages two and three, I exhibited the needs of a just awakened newborn.

My mother did not have the time or temperament for that level of neediness, however, and never accepted the near retardation or low functioning autistic diagnoses as an explanation. Instead, she truly believed everything I did, good or bad, was calculated and purposeful. A case in point. I had a significant bond with my great aunt, who I called Nana. She was very soft and sweet with me, extremely compliant, and would pretty much do whatever I wanted her to do, pick me up and carry me, play with me, get me a cookie. My mother was so certain my behavior was deliberate that once when I was barely two years old and Nana visited, Mom noted in her therapy log, ... he really played us against each other.

As an adult dealing with my own son's slow development, I understand my mom's frustration. I can even appreciate why she thought I was intentionally manipulating her. She was strong, a fighter, but here she was being reduced to tears by a little child who not only threw tantrums, which was bad enough, but who, from her perspective, willfully withheld affection. How could I possibly not know what I was doing?

As hard as it was for her to accept, I was absolutely and completely unaware of my effect on her or anyone else. I never meant to be nasty to anyone, never wanted to get under anyone's skin, never had the capacity to devise the contest of wills my mother projected onto my conduct. I wanted to feel comfortable. When I withdrew into flipping that light switch, I was comfortable, even though the more I did it, the more intense my mom became about making me stop. She would call my name over and over, but unlike my perfectly healthy daughter, who will hear me calling but ignore me, I heard my mother but did not ignore her. I simply had no response. I had no reflex. I existed in a separate world. Her words were meaningless to me, her commands equally hollow. We were wholly unconnected.

When the Cedar's directed home program pried me out of my shell enough that I began wanting to connect, I might as well have been set adrift on the ocean when it came to how to connect, despite my mother's absolute conviction that I could if I wanted to. When I felt threatened or beleaguered, I instinctively withdrew into my safe, contented world and returned to my comforting rituals.

Transitioning immutably into my mother's real world was slow, cumbersome, jolting, fraught with backslides, and often maddening for all concerned. Contrasting my behavior with J.R.'s once again, however, I cannot help but notice the disparity between me being my mother's most important project, and J.R. being my wife's most important son.

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