Month: January 2018

Lucky

/ jess / 2 Comments

IMG_9945I’m trying to institute a new tradition in our house: on each of the children’s birthdays we will all get up and do birthday breakfast, open presents and be generally celebratory, and then I will go back to bed for at least an hour. I think it is a good idea for all of us to remember that this is the anniversary of these kids coming out of my body and that body could do with a little lie down.

Molly’s birthday a few weeks ago was the first time I implemented this brilliant new tradition, and as I was lying down remembering her birth two years ago, I read an article by Chitra Ramaswarmy about her tendency to catastrophise. It was poignant to be reading about how incubating and then having children affects your outlook on life, particularly if one of your children is diagnosed with a disability.

Ramaswarmy experienced a very tough year in which numerous difficult things happened. By its end she had – after a complicated pregnancy – given birth to a healthy baby, her partner and mother had been seriously ill and recovered, and her son had been diagnosed with autism. Was it a year of disaster or, actually, was her family lucky?

Ramaswarmy describes how she is naturally a catastrophist, and inclined to be anxious about the potential for the worst case scenario to occur. She makes the case that the parenting is an antidote to catastrophising:

‘The hard graft and small, pure joys of looking after a baby and a little boy with autism anchor me to the present. The baby keeps me healthy, makes me feel lucky and gives me a constant dose of perspective. She is also exhausting: I am too tired and busy to catastrophise with as much fervour as the habit demands.’

This rings true for me. I am not a catastrophist. My natural tendency is towards slightly anxious optimism. But there is no doubt that I thrive when I am rooted in the present, and nothing keeps you in the present like having a small child, and then another, and then another. It’s not all rose-tinted snuggles – Ben’s early months were difficult for us all and he was frequently made miserable by reflux and feeding difficulties. But my focus on looking after him meant that by the time I looked up and around we had largely weathered the storm.

I went on to have two more babies and, luckily for all of us (and I mean luck, because these things are just a roll of the dice), Max and Molly were babies that were easy to please. I have been largely too busy caring for all of them over the last eight years to spend much time thinking about what might have been, or what might go wrong.

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What really resonated with me was Ramaswarmy’s reaction to her son’s autism diagnosis:

‘Then there is my brilliantly singular, loving and brave son. Before he was diagnosed with autism (that happened this year, too) I feared this moment: how will we manage? What will we do about school? How will he develop? Is everything going to be OK? The mystery and idiosyncrasy of autism can be frustrating, but it is also a visceral reminder that none of us knows what lies ahead and that compassion is the most powerful weapon against anxiety. So, here I am, living and thriving in the future over which I once catastrophised. And you know what? It is not so scary after all.’

We have had Ben’s birth described as a catastrophe, and in purely medical terms that may be true. But it has not been a catastrophe for our family. Sure there are difficult times, and complications, and we are sometimes sad and frustrated, but there is no catastrophe here. Something that was unfamiliar and therefore terrifying has become normal to us, and with familiarity comes an ease (hugely helped by the privilege of having carers to help and living in an adapted house).

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Over Christmas, all the kids were largely at home every day for two weeks, something that is rare, which meant they spent more time together than usual. Molly can now talk and asked about, or talked about, Ben at least every hour. Ben happily tolerated her climbing on his wheelchair, wiping his face, pressing her cheek into his. Max is currently obsessed with gags about bodily functions and Ben encouraged him by laughing at his poo jokes. Ben let Max play with all of his Christmas presents. Molly clambered on Max and ruined his games and he only snapped after such goading that any jury would be on his side. Ben and Max watched Star Wars for the first time and were scared and excited by the same bits. We went ice skating, for walks, swimming and to the cinema.

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The ‘mystery and idiosyncrasy’ of cerebral palsy can be difficult, but it is also a prompt to live this life that is happening right now, even if it is one that would have counted as a bad outcome at some point. We have three healthy kids, and it’s not so scary after all. Are our family the survivors of a disaster, or are we lucky? Perhaps ask me again when they’re all teenagers, but on the basis of this Christmas we’re extraordinarily lucky.

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The temptation to interrupt

/ jess / 2 Comments

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If you have a child who doesn’t follow the typical path it’s difficult to have a sense of where they will end up. I don’t mind this too much; I don’t find it that useful to have conversations about what Ben may, or may not, be doing in ten years time.

But everyone looks for role models for themselves or their kids, and some sense of where the path might be going. Disabled adults are rarely found in mainstream media, so I was lucky recently to be at a study day where a panel of five Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) users answered questions from the audience using high tech devices. Three of the five used eyegaze, exactly like Ben is learning to. There is a video here.

It is important, and inspiring (not in an inspiration-porn kind of way) to see people using AAC to talk so eloquently. THAT is where we want to aim for.

But I was really struck by something that one of the panellists – Kate Caryer – said at the event: she pointed out that people sometimes think of a communication aid as a gift or a toy, that users should feel grateful their local authorities have provided. Whereas it is in fact a human right.

Respecting Ben’s right to communicate means his device needs to be there, in front of him, as much as possible, not just when we decide we can fit it into his daily life. We need to make sure the batteries are charged, and the mounting arm is ready when it is needed. We need to force ourselves to fit it even when it feels like a bit too much effort on a busy day.

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But more profoundly, we have to be ready to hear what is being communicated. We have to alter our own culturally-constructed notion of how conversations work.

I find it uncomfortable to leave gaps in conversation – I feel I have to fill them. I first realised this when we lived in the Middle East and would spend time with Syrian friends who were happy to sit companionably with long pauses in conversation. I had to teach myself to enjoy this time and not fill the gaps with mindless waffle. This was made easier by my rudimentary Arabic.

Someone using a communication aid to talk is probably going to take longer, more time than a typical talking person. At the study day, it took time for the five individuals there to answer questions from the audience: they need to hear the question, navigate (with eyes or fingers) around their communication device to find the vocabulary for what they want to say, and then speak it.

This often makes conversation with an AAC user slower than we are used to, and I for one need to force myself to accept that rhythm of speech. This means waiting the extra 30 seconds to see what your conversational partner wants to say, and not interrupting. Ben isn’t able to shout immediately, in the way that Max does frequently, ‘Mummy, I was actually in the middle of talking when you interrupted me!’

I frequently screw up even when I am trying my best. I realised recently that after a conversation with a woman who uses a communication aid, I had said goodbye and walked away. I hadn’t waited to see if she wanted to say goodbye, or even if she had anything else to say. I felt a little sting of shame when I later realised. We can all have good intentions, but we don’t always behave as well as we’d like.

If you manage to fully embrace the alternative pace, there are rich rewards. A few years ago when Ben was just learning to look at Yes and No symbols on the armrests of his wheelchair to answer questions, we went to a local park and met some friends. One of them, who happens to be a nurse, crouched down in front of Ben so she was at his level, asked Ben if he was enjoying his new school, and then waited.

Ben slowly and deliberately looked down at the Yes symbol. It was the first time he had totally independently answered a question from a stranger, and it happened because she asked the question in the right way for him.

If we accept that people with communication difficulties have a right to talk – and therefore to be given the support, equipment and training they need – then they also have the right to be heard. And we, the people taking our communication skills for granted, have to learn how to listen. Not make assumptions about what is being said, or interrup, or fill the gaps in conversation with inconsequential waffle, but actually listen.

I mean it’s a good tip for life generally – many marriages could benefit from partners actually listening to what each other are saying. But rather than forcing the AAC user to navigate their way through their devices to say ‘Stop interrupting me’, maybe we should just take it upon ourselves to get our own houses in order.