The Autism News | Special Guest

By Anna Olson, Mother of AJ, Marlo and Husband Ian
AJ is eight years old with Autism

My husband and I often get calls, emails, and texts from friends and family seeking wisdom for their friends or neighbors that have been recently diagnosed on the spectrum. We now have pre crafted resource emails that we send around for 4 states (and counting!). ASD (autism spectrum disorder) is a fairly new area to science and therefore, often hard to find guidance in. It’s a community effort to poke around and research by word of mouth on treatments, drugs and programs.

I, in turn, ask my friends with older kids how they got to where they are today. When I asked advice of my more experienced friends, I was often impatient with their answer. They would often smile and tell me one word I really do abhore: patience. I may be a lot of things but patient is not one. My husband’s favorite question every time we see our autism doc is “did they find the holy grail cure yet?” We, like many, wanted THE cure, THE answer and THE fix. Hmm…..we are still hopeful but I am slowing understanding the wise words of our friends.

They would tell me that there was plenty of time. Work on one thing at a time and appreciate small miracles. For Christmas this past year, my kiddo received Super Mario Galaxy from his uncle (yikes!). For three months, our lives were turned upside down. We were forced to play one continuous game after another to model how to get past levels he was stuck on. He was OBSESSED! Up until then, he was very happy plunking away at the computer. This game took obsession to a whole new level. He played this game (and it wasn’t easy, okay, at least not for me) 24/7.

Yes, he really would play it 24 hours a day if we’d let him. Since our son is mostly non-verbal; anytime he speaks, we feel obligated to comply with any request (short of homicide or jello wrestling, well, maybe jello wrestling wouldn’t be so bad in comparison to Mario). We were haunted day and night with his persistent angelic sweet voice “mommy’s turn” ,“daddy’s turn”. Thank God I was so bad that even his 6 year old sister came in pecking order before me. On small miracles, our son magically began speaking more and more through interaction with Mario.

He began naming characters in the game, cheering on his latest gaming victim and spitting out full sentences! I finally got it. What does it take to make progress with these kiddos? As it goes, our friends were right, many years of grueling work, prayers and sweat from you, your family, friends, school teachers and therapists. Then poof! Mario Brothers. We do often complain about these interesting obsessions and fads AJ goes in and out of, but low and behold, herein often lie the breakthroughs. Yes, we finally get it and we are smiling pretty big. So…next time you are building the biggest Thomas track known to man, constructing a replica city in Leggos or coordinating all the clocks in your house to synch perfectly; just smile, have a chuckle and you never know…

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