A Different Kind of Boy

A Father's Memoir About Raising a Gifted Child with Autism

Dan Mont

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781846421785
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Index: Psychology

A little nine-year-old boy looks down at the gymnasium floor. The room is filled with children who like and respect him, but he has no real friends. He can barely name anyone in his class, and has trouble with the simplest things - recognizing people, pretending, and knowing when people are happy or angry or sad. Much of his life has been filled with anxiety. He is out of step with the world, which to him is mostly a whirlwind that must be actively decoded and put into order. And yet he was only one of seven fourth graders in the United States to ace the National Math Olympiad. In fifth grade he finished second in a national math talent search.

That boy is autistic. He is also loving, brilliant and resilient. In this book, his father writes about the joys, fears, frustration, exhilaration, and exhaustion involved in raising his son. He writes about the impact on his family, the travails of navigating the educational system, and the lessons he has learned about life, what it means to connect with other people, and how one builds a life that suits oneself. And, oh, yes, math. Lots about math.

1

A Fair-Haired Boy

The elementary school gym quickly fills with long lines of children as they file through the doorway and take their seats on the floor. They giggle and squirm and poke each other. One little boy proudly displays a rubber alien to one of his friends. Soon the room reverberates with the tinny sound of hundreds of high-pitched conversations, as the teachers try to straighten the rows of children.

The principal, a middle-aged woman with short, light-colored hair, steps up to a microphone at the front of the room. Immediately, teachers and teachers’ pets raise their index fingers to their lips.

“Shhhhh!”

The room quiets down. As the principal gets ready to speak, a blast of feedback from the microphone elicits a scattering of chuckles.

“Welcome, boys and girls,” the principal says in the singsong voice some adults use when speaking to children. “Now settle down and show our guests your best Candlewood behavior.”

The guests are parents who are sitting in metal chairs lined around the periphery of the room. This is the end of the year assembly – time for the last batch of “Soaring Eagle Awards.”

One by one or in groups, children are called to the front of the room to be honored for their academic excellence or participation in band, dance, or the soccer club. They walk proudly to the microphone, which is set up under a basketball hoop, and receive their awards from the teachers in charge of the various activities. Then, they scurry back to their seats to show them to their friends.

The math team coaches are introduced. A tall, lanky and balding teacher with glasses grabs a stack of certificates. He’s wearing a brightly colored tie, and when he talks he makes large, sweeping gestures.

“First of all,” he says, “I think we should have a round of applause for all the fourth and fifth grade boys and girls who took part in this year’s National Math Olympiad – a very challenging math competition that takes place all across America.” After a polite round of clapping subsides, he calls out the children’s names and hands out the certificates. A few children are singled out for scoring high enough to earn special patches.

“And now, I’d like to give out a special award.”

Eyes turn towards a little nine-year-old boy sitting on his teacher’s lap. He leans forward like a sprinter, ready to leap to the front of the room. He has blond hair and a round face. His blue-gray eyes are wide open behind bent and dirty spectacles. His shoes are untied and his T-shirt, which displays the solar system and a chart containing a host of numeric data on the planets, is barely halfway tucked into his jeans. He’s short, and he’s ready.

“For the first time in school history we had a student get a perfect score on the National Math Olympiad, one of a very few students in the whole country to do so. Alex Mont, will you step up here please?”

The fair-haired boy runs to the front of the room as the audience erupts into cheers. He claps his hands to his ears and grabs the award, never making eye contact with anyone. He is obviously excited but he struggles to hide a smile. Hesitatingly, he starts off back to his seat. His teacher starts to wipe her eyes as the clapping continues.

The little boy looks down at the floor, uncomfortable with the attention. The room is filled with children who like and respect him, but he has no real friends. He can barely name anyone in his class – even children he has been with for three years. He has trouble with the simplest things – recognizing people, pretending, and knowing when people are happy or angry or sad. He can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys in movies. He is only beginning to talk on the phone. Much of his life has been filled with anxiety. He’s out of step with the world, which to him is mostly a whirlwind that must be actively decoded and put into order.

And yet, 85,000 students participated in the National Math Olympiad and he was one of only seven fourth graders in the nation to ace the test. In the fifth grade, he finished second in the country out of 9000 of the nation’s top students who were invited to take part in a talent search sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University. He’s a boy who has reveled and delighted in math since he was a toddler – who was using logarithms in kindergarten, finding mistakes in books on probability when he was six years old, and solving complex problems while shopping in the grocery store as he giggled into his hands and rolled on the floor.

That boy is my son, Alex. Alex is autistic. Alex is also loving, brilliant and resilient. He has taught me a great deal about life, about what it means to connect with other people and about how one builds a life that suits oneself. Through raising Alex I’ve learned about a lot of things – how the mind works, how special education should work, the generosity of children, and – oh, yes, math. Lots about math.

*****

Upon hearing the term “autistic” most people conjure up visions of people who are totally shut off from the world. People with no language, who rock incessantly or maybe bang their heads against the wall. People who are not capable of functioning in the world at large.

Some autistic people are like that. But autism actually encompasses a broad range of abilities. Some autistic people are college professors or computer programmers. Some are married. All of them, though, have trouble dealing with the world of the NT, that is, the neurologically typical. Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has written several books on the subject, has described being autistic as being “an anthropologist on Mars.”^* She feels her brain is wired differently from the NTs, and the way they communicate with each other and behave is at some deep level a mystery to her. She copes, though, by observing them as an anthropologist would. She uncovers the rituals and behaviors of typical people and then learns to incorporate those behaviors in many different “scripts” that she uses in different situations. One autistic person, writing to an internet chat group, said he had ascertained through careful observation that in conversations with NTs eye contact was important at the beginning of a speech and at the end, but seemed optional during the course of the speech. There’s a handy tidbit of information guaranteed to help you glide through life. Now let’s decode irony. Or sarcasm. Or, as my child had great difficulty with – the difference between lying and pretending. Explain that one in rock solid language to a six-year-old. I guarantee you it is harder than you first think.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, however. I am not an expert on autism. I am, though, an expert on Alex. At least as much as any NT could be.

*Sacks, O. (1996) An Anthropologist on Mars. New York: Vintage Books.

2

“You’re a Father Now, Damn it!”

I’ll never forget the day we brought Alex home from the hospital. He was our first child and so naturally we were excited, nervous, and just a tad shy of being overwhelmed. I could not believe the people at the hospital were allowing us to bring him home – entrusting this new life to us. I was twenty-six and suddenly felt very young and too inexperienced for such an important task.

It was October of 1987, and the air had suddenly turned crisp. I drove down to the hospital, the brand new car seat strapped snugly into the back seat of our car, and pulled up to the front entryway. Nanette, Alex, and a nurse were already waiting for me. The nurse checked that I had put in our new infant seat properly, and wished us luck. Bursting with excitement, we gently buckled him in and headed back to the apartment – the three of us – a family. When we got home we removed the little Ernie doll that had been saving his place in the crib and set him down sleeping. We looked at each other. Now what? Weren’t we supposed to be doing something? What key parenting activity should we engage in? These were typical first parent thoughts. Unfortunately, Alex’s birth was not exactly typical.

Nanette’s labor did not go as planned. Late the night before she had noticed some clear liquid leaking down her leg.

“Did your water break?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean, you don’t think so?”

“Well, our Lamaze instructor said if you can stop the flow by trying to hold it in then it isn’t amniotic fluid, it’s just urine.”

“Does it smell like urine?”

“No…I don’t think so.”

“Well, what should we do?”

“I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow first thing in the morning. I don’t want to rush to the hospital and find out my water isn’t broken. I mean, it’s supposed to gush out, right? Let me go back to sleep and I’ll find out tomorrow.”

The next morning we drove down to the doctor’s office. Nanette’s doctor was a jovial man in his late fifties who looked like he played football in his youth. His son was a star athlete at the university and that night was the biggest game of the season.

“Now don’t tell me you’re in labor,” he chuckled. “I told you that you can’t give birth tonight.”

“Well, actually,” said Nanette, “I’m not sure, but I think my water may have broken.”

Concern flashed across his face. “Not sure? Get undressed.” Nanette started to explain about what the Lamaze instructor said, but before she could say much he told us that her water had broken. He told us to get to the hospital immediately. He was going to induce labor.

Nanette dilated slowly. After a few hours it was clear that the doctor was not going to make his son’s game and he began getting surly. During that time her labor pains were mostly in her legs. The nurses thought this was a sign that the baby was not coming out in the proper position, but the doctor ignored those concerns. Nurses whispered in the hallway outside the hospital room door, as Nanette screamed in agony. I could feel panic bubbling up to the surface.

“Excuse me, but what are you talking about?”

“We think if your wife doesn’t dilate further very soon she’s going to need an emergency C-section.”

“Just do it,” I thought. I only wanted a healthy baby and a healthy mom. I went back inside to be with Nanette, trying to hide my concern. They soon measured her again. She had dilated further and she was entering the last phases of labor – just in time to avoid the C-section. They rushed her down the hall. Sweat poured from her face, which was red from the labor pains. She looked relieved though. The baby was finally on its way.

“Okay, now push.” The doctor spoke firmly. The baby wasn’t coming. He realized that Alex was facing sideways and would not come out. He reached for his forceps and yanked Alex out quickly. Nanette screamed. Although she had had an episiotomy, she ripped further. The labor nurse stared with the focus of a laser beam into Nanette’s eyes and said, “Don’t move!” Their eyes locked together as the doctor sutured an unanesthetized Nanette.

I felt about as useful as an icemaker on the Titanic.

Meanwhile Alex was experiencing his first few minutes in the world. Wrinkled, slimy, and crying he was being wrapped in a blanket. Proud dad feelings started welling up inside me. He was beautiful.

Something was wrong, though. His left arm hung limply by his side.

“What’s wrong with his arm? Will he be able to move it?”

“We don’t know.”

People are usually not that straight with you. I was expecting an answer more along the lines of “We can’t say for sure but he’ll probably be just fine”. The honesty was a bit jarring. In the future, there would be times I would have appreciated that much honesty.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. Nanette s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• 1. A Fair-Haired Boy
• 2. “You’re a Father Now, Damn it!”
• 3. The Wild Goose Chase
• 4. A Different Sort of Boy
• 5. Daycare
• 6. An Addition to the Family
• 7. Doors Opened and Closed
• 8. “You Want to Do It!”
• 9. Taking Turns
• 10. “I Know, Mom, I Know”
• 11. My Parents
• 12. A Team
• 13. Off the Charts
• 14. The Evaluation
• 15. “My Son, the Doctor”
• 16. “Believe Me, They’d Have a Schedule!”
• 17. An Integrated Classroom
• 18. Crazy, Incomprehensible Rules
• 19. Exhausted
• 20. On the Town
• 21. “That’s Just Backwards Multiplication!”
• 22. Frame of Reference
• 23. Spreadable Fruit
• 24. Diabetes
• 25. Off to School
• 26. Such a Bright Boy
• 27. Mathematical Marvel
• 28. Simon
• 29. Careers
• 30. “Daddy, Look What I Can Do!”
• 31. “Don’t Mourn for Us”
• 32. Moving to DC
• 33. New Kid on the Block
• 34. Such Sensitive Children
• 35. A Blessing
• 36. Stamping Out Ambiguity
• 37. Going Hazy
• 38. Learning to Cope
• 39. Black History Month
• 40. Mr Hustle
• 41. Front Page News
• 42. Life
• 43. Math Camp
• 44. Connections Gained and Lost
• 45. Graduation
• 46. Becoming Self-Aware
• Epilogue