MOTHERING THROUGH AUTISM PERSONAL ESSAY words and images by Isabelle Kohler
The story of my son’s birth still describes him to this day. It was high time for him to leave my body but he was not moving. I tried everything my midwife suggested: fasting, Indian bridges, sugar shock, drinking castor oil... you name it. I did it all. I was growing more and more frustrated until I was finally admitted to the hospital to induce labour. Two weeks after his due date, my son was born. When I first held him my heart exploded of all the love I felt for him. He was a fairly easy baby and developed into a happy child. He was not showing too much of an effort to talk but other than that, he showed no irregularities at first. As he got older though things became increasingly more difficult. He was not getting on well with other kids, he refused to try new things, and he bit and scratched me and other kids - especially his little sister - when he did not get his way. Going to a party, family gathering, or a public playground became a nightmare and more than once we would all go home frustrated, exhausted, and in tears. At home, we were reading everything and anything that we could find about whales and dinosaurs. He became an expert on how they were related, what they ate and their respective differences. When he was six years old he started school and with it, things got worse. His selfesteem was at an all-time low and frustration was part of all of our daily business. My smart kid who could not cope with the school system, was put in a track for kids with special needs. He was already undergoing psychological tests but it took us more than a year to finally discover
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that my son is on the Autism Disorder Spectrum. He was diagnosed with a form that was first described by Hans Asperger - an Austrian pediatric, by the way, that my grandmother had actually met in person. The diagnosis triggered all sorts of fears in me... how will he manage? How will I manage? Is he ever going to be able to live an independent life? The diagnosis collided with everything that I had planned out for my life. But what does this diagnosis mean in everyday life? I think of my son’s autism as a social disability. Often I get asked about the special abilities that my son has. He was not born a Rainman. Yes, there are a bunch of things that he became very good at, an expert even, because of his special interests. But sadly, life in our world is sometimes very hard, tiring, and often lonely as he is misunderstood so often. For most people social rules are easily understandable and also make sense. This does not apply to my child. I realised this the first time that I told my son to set the table. In full force he was telling me ‘no’, he was not setting the table. Until this moment we were having a good time and I was caught off-guard by his oppositional behaviour. Then I connected the dots and found out that he did not know how to do it. Even though we always set the table in the same way, he could not recreate it. He was grateful and also a little bit ashamed when I showed him what needs to be done in order to prepare the table for us to sit down.
