I Has High Expectations

I woke this morning and soon after read a blog post written by a friend, whom I have never met in person, but I consider her a friend. In a conversation she had with her autistic, nonverbal (but definitely not non communicative daughter) daughter via spelling on a letter board, her daughter said to her,

“I HAS HIGH EXPECTATIONS.”

The conversation came following a difficult situation they had come through, and her daughter was expressing her frustration with herself because, well,

“I HAS HIGH EXPECTATIONS.”

This phrase struck me to my core. It’s something I’ve held close to my heart for as long as I’ve been a parent, and I suspect if D ever figures out a way or learns how to communicate his inner thoughts to me, he’ll say the same thing.

Autism can manifest so differently in kids and adults. At a birthday party I was at today, five of the kids there, including D, were autistic. Their autistic selves were similar and so different from each other. But I think this phrase could apply to anyone of them.

“I HAS HIGH EXPECTATIONS.”

Time and time again, over the years, D has surprised me with his ability to understand something, learn something, achieve something or teach me that there is another way, or that thing that I thought was so important really never was. While a guest in our lives may observe him and see the most profound characterization of an autistic person — that would be a great disservice to who D is.

Because there has never been a kid who has worked harder at figuring out how to live in a world that doesn’t get him, with a family who gets him as best possible, but still falls short.

Consider how hard D has worked to communicate via his iPad. I wrote this last fall:

Going up the stairs, I see D take his iPad and walk over to his sister and use it to ask for some chips.

Come my friend, she says to him. Let’s get you some chips.

It’s such a small thing, but it represents years of hard work, from sibling therapy to cultivation of sibling support to endless discussions with A and H in how they can support D and help him to help himself, to exploring technology devices to starting the use of the iPad to switching from GoTalk to the Proloquetogo app to working months to encourage him to navigate the screens to express his wants and needs to teaching him to generalize it so that he will use the iPad to help converse with ALL members of the family to this:

Telling his sister – I want chips.

THAT’S why it means so much. THAT’S when I talk about the sheer effort and work he puts in to everything.

And then, I wrote this maybe two months back:

Maybe 4-5 months ago we switched D’s iPad to this green case and put the family iPad in his old blue one. The blue case just wasn’t protecting his iPad anymore and the glass kept cracking.

But then, anytime anyone asked D to get his iPad to say something, he would grab the one in the blue case. And we would correct him. Or he would grab the one in the blue case and bring it to us to request something. And we would correct him.

Until today, when he on his own chose the green case iPad to ask for chocolate.

It may take some time, but he gets there, when he is good and ready.

Like my friend’s daughter, I know this truth holds true for D. And I believe in it. I know he’ll get where he needs to in his own time, in his own way. Maybe that will be here in this lifetime. Maybe that will happen in the beautiful infinity of Jannat (heaven). But it’ll happen. It’s the ultimate truth.

“I HAS HIGH EXPECTATIONS.”

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