A few months ago, Mark and I took the kids to a "sensory friendly" movie showing.  Autistic individuals, and others with sensory processing difficulties, can find a typical movie going experience overwhelming.  Movies are loud.  Theaters are dark and often crowded.  The screen is huge and the images on it are flickering and fast paced.  There are previews and commercials before the show that switch rapidly from one theme to another, while we wait impatiently for what we actually came to see.  Then when the movie does start, its story and situations are designed to evoke strong emotional responses: to scare or thrill or amaze us.  And did I mention they're LOUD?

Most of us go to the movies to be a little overwhelmed.  But for some people, all of that can be too much.  So, at sensory friendly showings, there are no previews.  The lights are dim, but the theater is not dark.  And the sound is turned down.  And not only that, it's ok to sing or talk or to get up and walk around, dance or jump if it all gets to be too much anyway.

At the showing we went to, some kids got up and paced the aisles.  Some rocked in their seats.  Some grunted or chirped.  My son commented on the movie at full voice.  (Whispering is only for secrets.)  And we all had a fun day out doing something different while nobody stared.  Nobody glared.  Nobody shifted uncomfortably in their seats and made little "hem" noises in their throats.  The air didn't buzz with electric hostility.  And nobody had to worry that, at any moment, it might.

I don't know about the other parents in that theater, but I felt like I'd been able to put down a hundred pound weight.  The kids and young adults in that theater could all be themselves, and we all understood.  No one said anything or did anything, but there was a palpable sense of acceptance in the air.  It hung there, invisible but enveloping, like the drowsy smell of honeysuckle on a warm afternoon.  What a relief.  Which made me realize just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

This past weekend, I went to a convention for my 12 Step group.  Hundreds of sex addicts and their partners or family members gathered in hotel conference rooms and ballrooms.  There were meetings and workshops and outings.  There were speakers who shared their experience, strength and hope.  At each banquet iced tea was served instead of alcohol.  No one gossiped about the latest infidelity scandal in the media.  People openly shared their pain and their weaknesses and their gratitude.  And all weekend long, I had nothing to do but connect with my Higher Power in a group of people who was supporting me in doing just that.  All weekend long, I felt I had nothing to worry about and nothing to fear.

Again that love and acceptance enveloped me.  Again that hundred pound weight dropped off my shoulders. Again the relief washed over me.  And again I realized just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

On the last day of the convention, I wept with gratitude for the gift of having been there.  (If you were one of the lovely ladies sitting around a hotel banquet table with me on Monday morning at breakfast, yes, that was me crying and smiling at you all crazy.) We were asked on that last day if we had picked up any burdens that we wanted to leave behind, and I couldn't think of any.  All I could think was that I needed to try not to reshoulder the burdens I'd set down when I entered.

We took the kids to a pool party at the home of some friends of mine recently. The hosts, as well as several guests, moved a fair drive away from us several years ago, and several more guests were visiting from out of town. As a result, none of them had seen my children in quite a long time, but they are all old enough friends to be familiar with our family dynamics and with Austen's quirks.

They knew him when he was an infant and his colicky wails had me edgier than that time a car backfired in the movie theater parking lot right after Saving Private Ryan. (And let me tell you, if it had been up to me to storm the beaches at Normandy and such, Hitler would totally have won World War II.) They've been there, sometimes live and sometimes by phone or e-mail, through the autism diagnosis; through speech, occupational and behavioral therapies; through all our concerns about his limited diet; through trials and triumphs in school. They know he's a sweet kid, skilled with numbers, blessed with a fabulous memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of his particular interests. They were all aware that parties can sometimes be overwhelming for Austen, that meeting new people (and many of them were essentially new to him after all this time) can provoke anxiety, that he'll often refuse to eat outside our home and that we sometimes have to cut visits short if all of these factors combined prove too overwhelming for him. And they all accepted him (and us) as is.

We went to the party, as we always do, with a "let's see how it goes for all of us" attitude. And what we saw was: Austen and Janie having a great time in the pool. Austen and Janie playing video games with the other kids at the party while we chatted with adults. Austen happily eating his dinner in a new place. Both kids begging not to have to leave yet and asking when we could come back. Yes, the pool party went, well, swimmingly. (It would take a stronger willpower than mine to resist that pun.)

Everyone marveled at how much Austen enjoyed himself, and even thrived, on that particular day in a situation that he's had difficulty tolerating in the past. And when it was all over, for one brief moment, I thought, "Everyone is going to think I'm some kind of crazy Munchausen Autism by Proxy mama, making up lies about a completely typical child to get attention. Exhibit A: he's a happy kid who enjoyed a party. And that is not part of what people think autism is supposed to look like."

But then I thought back over the party: how the event centered around two of his favorite activities (swimming and video games), how everyone pleasantly addressed him by his chosen nickname, how no one offered him food or pressured him to eat with the rest of the people there, how he got a quiet room to eat his preferred food peacefully by himself, how the hostess quietly alerted me rather than chastising him when he undressed in the middle of the living room and started walking around the house naked, how when a birthday cake was produced everyone refrained from singing knowing that "Happy Birthday" drives Austen to howling tears (I think this should be part of the autism diagnosis personally, because Austen is far from the only autistic child I know who feels that level of antipathy for the song). This variety of little things took no real effort and detracted from no one else's enjoyment, but added greatly to Austen's.

And I thought, "Then again, maybe a happy kid enjoying a party isn't what people expect autism to look like, but it is exactly what autism is supposed to look like."

Two wet plastic balls:
Small neurotypical hand
grips both of them tight.

The summer sun shines
and cool water soothes her palms,
a welcome delight.

One wet plastic ball:
Autistic child's fingertips
touch it so lightly.

Water, tiny drops,
like so many small pin pricks,
are kept from his skin.

I was looking through Austen's school papers this week and found an exercise he had done describing what things would be like if he ruled the world. He had filled in blanks to complete several sentences, one of which read: "If I ruled the world, there would be no..." And before I read his answer, I thought about the kinds of things I'd want to do away with if I ruled the world: war, disease, abuse, famine... All the things a nice, neurotypical adult abhors.

Then I read Austen's answer: the answer of an autistic eight-year-old boy who hates to eat, who hates new tastes and textures in his mouth, who is a confirmed neophobe and resistant eater. Yes, next to "If I ruled the world, there would be no..." Austen had neatly printed the word "food."

I love him very much, but given my own strong anti-famine stance, I don't think I'll be voting for him for world ruler anytime soon.

I have a secret. I have been grieving over my children since, at times, before they were even born. Now that's not the way it's supposed to be, is it? I'm a mama, and mamas are supposed to be joy and love and acceptance for our whole lives long, from the moment of conception onward. At least, good mamas are. If we have expectations that aren't met, we're supposed to toss them out for all we do have, without a hint of regret; we're not to pack them away gently in the box with the baby clothes, stored in the attic because we can't quite bear to part with them yet.

My lowest moments in parenting -- the ones I want to stuff away in shame and never let my children or the world see -- are the ones where I couldn't accept that my children were themselves rather than my vision of them. They're the times I grieve the loss of what never was, and now go on to grieve the grieving.

My son Austen was only a few weeks old when I held the Worst Mother in History awards ceremony and handed myself the trophy. The qualifying event took place around 2 or 3 a.m. when my son was just a few weeks old. (No one else made it to the ceremony at that hour, but that was ok; I had no competition -- I never do -- since I am always running against myself, beating my previous lows. Those imagined, perfect other moms don't get to run.) Unlike other babies -- the TV babies, the parenting book babies, the babies with good moms who did things right -- my son wouldn't sleep anywhere but in my bed next to my body, which my (ex) pediatrician said was BAD and DANGEROUS.

So, on the night of my first worst moment as a parent, I nursed him for what felt like the two hundredth time and gently placed him in his bassinet for the two hundredth time, only to have him scream like the fuzzy warm blankets were full of blood-burning fire scorpions, the same way he had every single time I'd tried this for the twenty or thirty nights in a row. And that scream broke me. Bone tired and viciously angry, I picked him up roughly, looked him straight in his tiny screaming face and whispered, with venom and hatred in my voice, "You are a bad baby!" Oh. My. God. What was I saying? Was I insane? I was berating a tiny baby for... Being a baby. I broke down crying in exhaustion and shame, took him into the BAD, DANGEROUS bed, and was silently grateful that he was too tiny to see that I had been disappointed in him. Already. At a few weeks old.

When Austen was a year old, we went to a mama and baby music class. Now that's the kind of thing good mamas do, right? There I was, enriching my child's mind already at one. But he was having none of it. A class full of toddlers is never a model of disciplined attention, but even here I could see he was... different. He didn't have any interest in the bright, perky teacher or the other kids or even the musical instruments, which used to make him flinch and frown. He'd wander away from the circle where everyone else was engaged and stand staring out the window. I'd try to coax him back, thinking, "Why can't you be like the others? What am I doing wrong?" I was so traumatized by the feeling of something off, that we didn't sign up for another session.

A year later, when he still wasn't speaking and psychologists and therapists were starting, amidst a battery of tests, to whisper the word "autism," we tried a Gymboree class. "He needs to work on socializing with other children," they said. Again, there were all the other kids, enraptured at story time, while my son crawled through the same tunnel over and over and over again, alone. I'd get in the car, strap him into his car seat and sob quietly over the steering wheel, not wanting him to see that he'd disappointed me again before he'd even reached the age of three. And again, when the session ended, I couldn't bear to go back, but by that time it was clear he needed more than a Gymboree class anyway.

It was around this time that I found out I was pregnant with my daughter Janie. I was a little late and had been feeling a little queasy, so I took a home pregnancy test. My husband and I wanted a second child, eventually, but right then we were completely overwhelmed by Austen's needs. We weren't planning a pregnancy and had been using birth control. I took the test: thinking it would set my mind at ease, but fearing it would not. When that second line came up to indicate I was pregnant I sobbed, big heaving sobs of sorrow, the kind a mama is never supposed to sob when she finds out she's carrying the precious little life she's going to love and cherish. Already, before she was born, Janie disappointed me. Just by being. Being at the wrong time. I didn't feel worthy to be her mother.

I love Austen. He brings a richness and beauty to my life that wouldn't have been there if he had been the child I expected. So I don't want to admit that there was ever even a moment when I didn't love and cherish him exactly as he was, when I wanted something different, when I wanted him without the autism and his sensory issues I hadn't planned or expected. I love Janie. She's brought joy to my life that I couldn't have imagined. So I don't want to admit there was ever even a moment when I didn't want her at all or at least not when she happened to come. I don't want to admit that I had to grieve Austen's autism or grieve Janie's conception before I could arrive at the love and acceptance mamas are supposed to give as naturally as breathing. Yet I did. Shh! Don't tell anyone.

Mark and I were at a beach one day, years ago. It was autumn and the wind was blowing the chill salt air around us. I felt invigorated and happy, the way I always do when I can hear and smell the ocean, and as we walked inside, I was smiling. The warmth of the lobby we were standing in crept through us, and Mark sighed and said, "Whew! I don't think I could ever live this close to the water."

"Why not?" I asked, with a touch of disappointment. Living at the very edge of the world, where land and ocean meet, has always been my dream, and that doesn't work well if your life partner dreads the idea.

"It gets so windy. And the wind is exhausting. I don't realize how hard my body has been working until I'm not in it anymore. Now that we're out of the wind, it's such a relief."

And I knew exactly that feeling -- the struggle just to maintain myself in an environment that was hostile to my particular makeup: the noisy party that I could feel my body relax upon leaving, the bustling city that slipped away on the train ride out, the feeling of guardedness I dropped when I got home from work. It can be such a relief not to have to fight anymore.

Twice this week, I was reminded of Mark struggling against the wind and how he felt stepping inside the warm shelter of that lobby.

An old friend from high school found me -- the real life me -- in a different corner of the Internet. He was always a good and kind person, and he was reaching out to say hi and see what was going on in my life. And as he did, I saw myself through his eyes, the way he knew me and has seen me: a good and kind person in my own right. It was such a relief. I'm building a serenity around myself and a love for myself, regardless of how others perceive me, but it is still, most days, a struggle. It's still work. I'm still fighting the wind of school administrators who think I'm difficult or neighbors who want me to sweep the walk more often or employers who need me to meet a deadline. And in this simple hello from someone who has known me and liked me, I found a moment of quiet and calm and acceptance.

Also this week, while I've been sick in bed, I've been reading a book on Buddhism and the Twelve Steps by Kevin Griffin. As I read his thoughts -- on compassion, on God, on this journey -- I found that same relief. I wasn't fighting the wind of my Christian upbringing, of an external vision of God, of a society that feels compassion is equivalent to weakness or pity or is only for the deserving or the "good." I found my struggles reflected and my spiritual path understood, as I so often do in Buddhism. And I felt like I had stepped into shelter from the storm.

I appreciate that I'm learning to live in the wind, but how I also relish those moments when I'm standing in a warm lobby, free from the struggle for a time.

As featured in the New York Times blog Motherlode

I

A mother and her son are in line at a grocery store. They boy looks like he’s about nine or ten. The mother looks a little tense as the boy starts to fidget in line. At this age he really should be able to stand still. And watch where he’s going. He almost bumped the person behind him. His mother does nothing.

“When are we going?” he asks.

“In about two minutes. We’re almost done, buddy,” she says.

“No, not about. Zero minutes! I want to go now. Right now! Right! Now!” he says and stomps his foot.

Again, his mother does nothing to make him stop his rude behavior.

Fortunately, the cashier has finished ringing up the groceries and now the boy starts hopping up and down in place as the mother reaches into her purse for her credit card. He practically snatches the card from her and then after he swipes it, he starts shouting at her, “No! No! You do it my way!” She leans down and whispers something to him and he stops yelling, but he still hops up and down again, glaring at her and pulling on her and making those grunting noises rude teenagers do when they’re disgusted with you. No doubt she’s told him she’ll give him the candy she bought if he keeps quiet: rewarding and reinforcing his unacceptable behavior as bad parents do.

The cashier hands her the receipt and says, “Thank you, Mrs. Jones,” and the boy screams at the cashier as they leave, “No! You’re terrible!” The mother leaves without a word as the next customer in line rolls her eyes sympathetically at the cashier.

II

Today, I’m going to take my son Austen to the grocery store with me. It’s school break, and we need milk, the only thing Austen drinks.

Austen is autistic, which can make these trips hard for him. As a result, I schedule the bulk of my grocery shopping for times when he is in school or being cared for by someone else. However, sometimes I plan short trips like this one to help him get used to grocery stores (a skill he’ll need if he is going to live independently) or, like today, because we need some essential item at a time when I have no childcare options for him. When he does come along I make every effort to keep the visits to what we can both handle, so that they remain a positive experience for him.

To prepare for the trip, I’ve made sure that he is well fed, and I’ve arranged for his sister to play at her friend’s house so that I can focus on him. Since he thrives on routine and predictability, on sameness and scripts, I’ve reviewed what is going to happen when we’re in the store, so he knows what to expect. I’m also keeping the visit short; we’re going to get only what we need and then leave.

As part of his autism, Austen has sensory integration issues, which means that the way that his brain processes the information from his senses can turn a whisper into a scream or a tickle into a burn. Because of this, so much that goes unnoticed by others on these outings is painful to him: the store’s softly flickering fluorescent lights can look like a strobe and the incessant piped in music can sound like a rock concert, the aisles can seem breathlessly crowded with people, and the sight and smell of all these different foods can be nauseating; his own diet is self-limited to just a handful of items.

In spite of this, he does really well as we walk through the store. He stays close to me and doesn’t run off. He even talks about some of the items he sees on the shelves and points out some candy that he knows his sister likes, so we add it to the cart to bring home to her as a treat. He wouldn’t eat the candy himself even you bribed him with an XBox, so it’s wonderful that he thought of her. In fact, there are some who posit that autistics have no “theory of mind” at all — that they are incapable of realizing that others think differently. For Austen, it seems to be difficult, but not impossible, to see things from someone else’s point of view, and I celebrate it when he does.

As we pass through the produce section on our way out, a clerk says ‘hi’ and asks a question about the cartoon character on Austen’s t-shirt; they have a brief, polite conversation, although Austen has to pause a bit to gather his thoughts between sentences. At age two, Austen was not speaking at all and doctors first began to tell us that it was possible he was autistic. It took intensive speech therapy in his preschool years and the work of several loving and dedicated special education teachers to get him to the point where he can have this conversation today. Austen is tall for his age and the clerk is surprised to learn he’s only seven.

He’s handling this whole trip really well. All the work we’ve been doing to help him get comfortable is paying off. “You’re doing such an awesome job of helping me today, buddy,” I say.

All we have left to do is pay, but I get tense when I see there’s just one register open and the cashier is engaged in a complicated transaction ahead of us. We do the best we can, but even after a short, positive visit, waiting in line is hard. I think (hope) we can make it through the line without a meltdown. If we leave now, we’ll have to come back again later to get what we came for and the second trip is unlikely to go this well. After a little while, Austen starts circling me, which is what he does when he’s tired and anxious. He’s not hurting anyone by doing it, and he’s keeping himself calm. So, I breathe and hope the line moves quickly, since I can tell he’s used up almost all of his resources to make it this far. If we were finishing up and walking to the car now, as I had expected, the trip would have been perfect for everyone. I try to remind myself that sometimes, in spite of all my best planning, life happens.

At last he rolls his head back and sighs, “When are we going?”

“In about two minutes. We’re almost done, buddy,” I say. Oops, I’m tired and anxious too now, and I slip. This is the wrong time to say “about.” That’s a trigger word. Austen craves precision. We can work on estimates and inexactness like this at home, but the grocery store is the wrong place for it: just as running across a busy freeway would be the wrong time to stop and work on tying your shoe.

He also — as is the case in so much of the obsessive compulsive behavior that is common with autism — reacts to anxiety by becoming even more rigid and insistent on rules and routine in order to quell his rising panic. The more chaotic and unstable he feels his world becoming, the more he clings to the solidity and familiarity of the rules he’s created to soothe himself. That means the very public situations in which he’s expected to be most flexible are the very situations in which he most desperately wants the world to conform to his rules. Predictably, he protests my vagueness.

“No, not ‘about.’ Zero minutes! I want to go now. Right now! Right! Now!” he says and stomps his foot. Damn, he’s really had more than he can handle already. I didn’t think we’d have to wait so long in line. He’s been working so hard to make it this far, and I know he’ll feel better once he’s back in the quiet, familiar car away from the people and the lights and a whole store full of nauseating, offensive foods.

Fortunately, we’re at the front of the line by now and the cashier rings up our groceries quickly. Obsessive interests are another hallmark of autism, and a longstanding passion for numbers is one of Austen’s. He loves to work the ATM/credit machine, so his participation in this process is a way to end trips on a positive note. After some practice, we’ve gotten pretty smooth with it. He likes to push in the PIN numbers, and has finally reached a point where he no longer feels compelled to say my PIN out loud as he types it. We only run into problems when we have to use the card as credit, because he doesn’t like to see my signature. It’s incomprehensible and extremely upsetting to him that the bank wants me to scribble instead of printing my name in block letters like at school. Everything goes well at first, he takes the card eagerly, swipes it just right and gets ready to enter the PIN, but the cashier makes an error and we have to reprocess the transaction as credit.

Austen, overwhelmed by the wait, anxious that things aren’t going as planned and distraught at the thought that I’m going to have to sign rather than punch in a PIN, starts shouting, “No! No! You do it my way!” I lean down and remind him that when he gets upset in these situations, he’s supposed to signal me and let out his anxiety by squeezing my hand really hard instead of yelling. So, he hops up and down again, frowning and grunting slightly with the effort of squeezing my hand tightly.

At last, we’re almost finished. The cashier hands me the receipt and says, “Thank you, Mrs. Jones,” and I do my best to rush us out. Austen, exhausted and triggered by the formal use of my last name (“only teachers are called Mrs. and you’re not a teacher”) is practically in tears as we move toward the door. Unable to soothe himself with the hand squeezing any longer, he screams at the cashier as we walk away, “No! You’re terrible!” I smile weakly and shrug an apology from near the door.

All in all, it was a very successful trip, and once we’re clear of the store, I say, “I know that was really hard, but we’re all done now. You did great this time, buddy, even better than last time. High five!”

This week a woman I knew in high school shared snapshots of her family at Halloween; she and her husband and a few other couples had gathered to take the kids out trick-or-treating. The adults were all smiling, dressed in matching thematic costumes, and the children were adorably wide-eyed, grinning with the manic excitement of impending candy. They posed together inside tastefully decorated McMansions and on wide, green manicured lawns. Like the taste and scent of Proust's chamomile tea and a Madeleine cookie that evokes a vivid memory of Aunt Léonie's house on a Sunday morning, these pictures sent me reeling to some half-remembered place.

At one point, this woman and I had a crush on the same guy, and I spent a good deal of time in my teen years mentally comparing myself to her: putting both our attributes in neat little stacks and seeing who won. I liked to tell myself I was winning. Or even if I wasn't winning in some areas right then, I would be someday: some future day when I was that wildly successful adult I was certainly destined to be, when I would blossom like those nerdy girls in the after school specials always did, when I would somehow magically morph from Velma into Daphne. And also I would be driving a Ferrari. And it would be red.

So, yesterday, when snapshots of her family at Halloween hit my inbox, I found myself among those neat little stacks that somehow ended (in my girlish imagination) with her living out some normal life, while I rode off into the sunset, hair flying, in a red Ferrari with our old high school crush. And I found myself comparing our lives as they had played out, rather than how I thought they would.

Of course, the high school crush rode off into the sunset long ago without either of us, and neither of us ended up (as far as I know) in a red Ferrari (those don't tend to be great for transporting kids), but what struck me about looking at her was how orderly and well, normal, her life really did seem. And how that didn't seem like such a bad thing, because, by comparison, my life looked strange and isolated and insane: with my secret blog and my debts and my disorganized house and my surprising new expertise on things ranging from addiction recovery to occupational therapy. I felt this huge, oddly familiar gulf between me and the rest of the world. It's one that opens up its gaping maw most often when I drop my daughter off at school and am surrounded by all those typical looking parents. I feel like I'm a space alien who has taken on human form: among others, yet disconnected.

But then I remembered that the last time I got that feeling, I end up smiling secretly. Because who knows what people see when they look at me. Maybe one of you is standing right next to me with your secret blog and your crazy life and thinking, "Damn. I bet she'd never understand where I am right now." After all, I don't know what most of you look like, and most of you don't know me. And if I look at pictures of myself, I'm smiling with my family and friends in a house that (as far as the narrow scope of the camera lens goes) looks cozy and neat. Most of us look normal on the outside, but it seems to be largely because we present to the world the pictures we want them to see.

Image credit: Photo by Anthony Cain on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I'm glad the election here is over. I'm feeling a bit wiped out today. (Note to self: elections are exhausting, even when all you're doing is voting. This must be why the inauguration isn't until January; it makes for more effective government. If I were Obama, I'd have to sleep for the next 75 days straight, which is yet another reason I don't get to be president.)

Marla asked how voting went, and while it was not without incident, it went smoothly overall and both kids did get to (sort of) see me cast my vote for president. We arrived at our designated polling place (armed with snacks and a Nintendo DS) to find there was (thankfully) no line. However, a data entry error with my registration took some time to sort out and caused a line to back up behind me. In the meantime, the polling place was brimming with triggers for Austen, who was apprehensive about the new people, the voting equipment and the paperwork. (Buttons, with their potential to cause noises or sudden movements, have always been fraught with danger, and he has particular quirks about handwriting and letter formation that make it difficult to write or sign anything without causing him distress.) This led to me become frazzled enough to play my Nintendo DS trump card to buy some less interrupted negotiation time with the poll workers.

We managed to figure out what had gone wrong, and with ballot finally in hand, I headed to a polling booth, where I held Janie up so that she could see me cast my votes. Austen watched for a moment, then sat on the floor under a table, knees pulled tight to his chest, playing his DS and waiting. I handed my ballot back to a poll worker who gave us each and "I Voted" sticker, to the delight of the kids, who proudly smacked the stickers on their chests and the poll workers, who thought the kids were terribly cute.

As we drove home, the kids wanted to know who won and were disappointed to learn that we would have to wait for the polls to close around the country and the votes to be counted to find out. That evening, when the polls started to close, I pulled up a live electoral map on my computer and my kids excitedly watched as a few states turned red and blue, cheering when their chosen colors appeared. But they were off to bed well before the winner was announced. I stayed up, hunched in the dark living room to watch the concession and acceptance speeches and cried during both.

Today, after school, Janie said, "Some kids in my class said Obama won." And I said, "Yes, he did."

I was feeling blah this morning and wondering what to write about when I read on Marla's blog that it's Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) Awareness Month. If you are like our family, every month is SPD awareness month. In fact, we are actually so aware that we do even better than that: every moment of our day is SPD awareness moment! Of course, some of you are wondering what it is that we're so very aware of.

Most of you will remember learning about the five senses (taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing), but do you know what the most important sense organ in your body is? Your brain. For example, I just took a sip of hot tea from a shiny red mug and each sensory input -- from the soft scent of chamomile to the glint of light off the mug to the way the tea burned my tongue (which is still tingling a little now) to the taste of the tea to the firm sound of ceramic mug being placed on wooden table-- had to be processed by my brain.

So, what happens when there is no physical problem with my tongue or the nerves in it, but my brain misprocesses that burnt tongue as a tickle instead of pain? Or what if my brain cranks up the wattage on the light and makes that glint of light blinding? Or if it keys in on the smell of chamomile so much that it seems overpowering? If I process that input differently, I'll probably respond in ways that seem unusual. And that's what happens with SPD.

My son's brain processes a lot of his world differently, but he is most sensitive to sound. When Austen was a toddler, he was terrible frightened of anything that was made of plastic and looked like it might make sounds. In short, he was terrified of anything that resembled, um, a toy. He would scream in terror and curl in a ball covering his ears until we removed the offensive object from his sight.

He once received a gift from a relative: a book that had buttons to make noises as you read along with the story. As he tore of the wrapping paper, his hand hit one of the buttons and he shrieked. He clearly felt it was the most horrible trick someone could have played. A book? A nice silent book that made noises?! I had to promise him that I had made the book go away to the other side of the Earth. (I didn't want to tell him that I actually donated it to the library, because I knew we'd never be able to go there again. As it is, we may never be able to visit Nepal. My apologies to the Nepalese.) I've managed to avoid further incidents by pre-opening presents and screening for noise makers, although we were both tricked a year ago by a musical greeting card, a find that (unfortunately) delighted his sister.

What SPD means for Austen is that when he hears the tinny sound of electronic music that seems to delight other children, his brain tells him it's nails on a chalkboard broadcast over stadium loudspeakers. Pure aural torture. And he reacts in a way that seems (to the rest of the world) out of proportion to what they hear, but completely appropriate for the way his brain is processing the sounds.

SPD has a strong genetic component, which explains why I don't wear socks but do wear sunglasses inside. My brain is also on a slightly different setting than the rest of the world. But if you've been reading me for any amount of time, you know that already.