Several weeks back (boy, the series of viruses that have hit my house recently have really got me behind!), a reader forwarded me an article on autism secrets for parents. The article was posted by Autism Diva (a blogger I ought to have visited by now, but in my perpetual state of overwhelmedness, haven't -- sigh!) at The Wrong Planet (an online community for people with Asperger's where I have been known to lurk in the shadows, learning).
The whole article is worth a read, but the part that really struck me was this: "The idea of 'critical periods' or 'brief windows of time' during which you can teach your child something, has been exaggerated and oversold." Now, I know that Autism Diva was talking about autistic children here, but I'd say the same holds true of all children.
Before my son was born, I collected all of these factoids about child development: how the ages between birth and three years old are critical to a child's development, how a child loses the ability to distinguish the unique sounds of other languages before the age of one, how neural pathways that are never exercised in infanthood are never created. And I felt this huge sense of urgency knowing that little brain was growing and changing and making connections in ways it never would again. Why didn't I speak another language? My kids would never learn to say a Spanish "R!" Who knows what else I was depriving them of?
When my son was an infant, the topic most on my mind was sleep: namely, how little I was getting. So, I looked to the sleep "experts," all those parenting books that are supposed to have all the answers, and some of them contained alarming information. I was told that in order to ensure "good sleep habits" I would have to act and act quickly, because soon the window for dealing with sleep issues would be forever closed, and this and all future children would be sleeping in the bed with me, waking me every few hours until they went to college. Thank goodness I acted on that advice and... Oh wait. I didn't.
I learned that I could do all the work I wanted on the sleep of a six month old but teething, colds, developmental leaps, a move to a new house, a vacation, a new bed, the birth of a sibling, a scary story, a new school, a visit from Grandma, a babysitter, a holiday, a storm, nightmares, anything and everything could disrupt sleep patterns and send us all right back to the vast wasteland of Sleep Deprivation. There was no magical window of time during which my children had to learn to sleep through the night (or sleep in their own beds) or risk never acquiring the ability to do so. Each of my children now spends most nights from bedtime until morning asleep in their own beds. Each learned to do it at a different time, in different ways. Each has relearned this particular skill again and again.
And as for the Spanish R my children will never learn? So they'll have an accent. So it will take more time to learn. The window for distinguishing those sounds may be gone, but the window for learning to speak another language never closes.
Last week, I mused about some of the early signs of autism. And if you have heard much at all about autism, you have probably heard about how crucial "early intervention" is. The sooner we know about autism the better, because we can start those kids in therapy, right? Without early intervention there is (cue ominous music) no hope! But I'll tell you a secret to add to Autism Diva's: you know who early detection benefited most? Me! My son is learning and changing and growing at this amazing rate. He makes learning look easy. Now my 40-ish brain can learn, because I'm telling you that it's always possible to learn, but I'm not half as quick as he is. The real benefit in early detection was to give me that much more time to learn about autism, to learn how to advocate for my son with the school system, to learn how to be the best mama to him I can be.
Great post.
And i whole heartedly agree with you about early detection. My Dr told me my son was autistic before he was 1. I didnt get the formal diagnosis, for another year, but i was able to use that time to learn.
What a great mom you are.
I have a very wise friend (well, in addition to you) who once listened to me fret about the fact that we hadn't signed our daughter up for any sports. Said daughter was about 4, I think, when this conversation took place. My friend said "If she discovers that she's passionate about soccer when she's 10, she'll still be able to play. She has time." It was so helpful.
A much more trivial example but the same issue, I think.
Yes, I agree with you on this Early Intervention premise. We all have the ability to learn at whatever age and the kids are in a constant state of learning. I think you've made an excellent point.
I have avoided reading too much about milestones etc. because I don't want to become obsessed about it. My son is doing fine, and he does things in his own good time. Great post.
Well, TC did all of the milestones just like Sara did but I noticed regression when he was close to 4. I really didn't think anything about it until it never improved so at 4 I started trying to find out what was going on. I still wonder should I have known sooner? But I have stopped beating myself up about it.
Well said.
We can drive ourselves insane with all the crazy pressure. Our kids will learn and be just fine. And they'll be kind enough to help us out along the way.
Well, I hope you look better when you're sleep deprived than I do. I've only had about 7 hours sleep over the last two nights, and I look disgusting.
It's not necessarily true that your kids won't learn a Spanish "r". I learned a French "r" and a German "r" and I wasn't exposed to either of those languages until I was about 11 or 12. A lot of it depends on how good the child's ear is. I find that musical people are good at languages (particularly as regards developing an authentic accent), probably because their brains are hard-wired to be be interested in sound.
As you might guess, this post is near and dear to my heart.
I cringe at the word intervention, it's like immediate combat stance when I hear it. The mental image that floats through my mind is one of doctors, nurses, machines and wild eyed parents, all in a frenzied, swooping down on some poor kid and all he can say is Huh? The image and the message I think we tend to portray on WP is just the opposite. Picture the intervention of a bunch of us swooping down on the parents and saying it ain't us, it's you. Get your mind right and we're here to tell you just how it is and suggest how to do it.
The beauty of WP is you can get your eyes opened wide, because we can tell you the diversity of it. I can write now, but couldn't. I can speak a thought better now but couldn't. And I'm the advocate for those that still can't. And if I don’t know an answer, someone else will. If I get it wrong someone will state exactly why they think I’m wrong.
Yeah I still think being aware of the situation factually is very important. I do not want to see the kids go through what us elder’s did. What was being tried as helping me came across to me as a punishment and it was. It took a lot of self sorting to figure it out and I’m still doing it. It set up some really long life problems and hence finding out that I may very well be Aspie, was the huge breath of fresh air I needed. All of a sudden, my life made sense. I sure as hell do not want to see what happened to me happen for the younger. But you know what? Because it happened to me, I don’t look at it as a negative, it’s positive because I can show you an end result. I lived a version of how not to do it and my parents were very caring, it wasn’t their fault, no one knew. But we do now, don’t we.
I had a thought about lurkers on WP. I was writing about not being able to write till about a year or so ago. A parent had come on lamenting the fact that their high IQ son wasn’t toeing the line with writing, he wasn’t doing it at all. I suggested some things, the whys of it and as is normal, others came on with even better insights and how to do it. We know because we lived it. See it isn’t always the AS, it’s the things that come a long for the ride. What struck me was this, there are those with in the spectrum that still can't get it out, but yet can read just fine. All this time I was thinking it was the NT's and the shy spectrums that were doing the lurking. Yeah we live and learn and hope to do it better.
Always refreshing to see people speak of not trying to cure. It's who I am, I don't want to be cured.
(Lol, if you didn’t catch this one, it was a hoot, someone coined a term on WP, Jenny McCarthyisam and ain’t it the fucking truth. I suppose it could have been thought of else where, but this was the first I saw it.)
Lurking, well your choice of course. We don't bite, well I do, it's just my bad attitude and I don't bite hard. And yeah I know half as long but this gets me fired up. Sorry about the length. You rcok’n’roll!!!
“The single-child yuppo-family that uses the child as a status object: `A perfect child? Of course! We have one here -- he's under the coffee table. Ralph, stand up! Play the violin!'“
Frank Zappa
postpaleo, honestly, it's time constraints more so than shyness holding me back at WP. I can barely keep up with my blog these days!
I think I was that child under the coffee table for awhile.
*shiver*