Introduction

Most stories begin with an end in mind, our story does not yet have a conclusion. Our family is a work in progress.

Mid 2007 our son Jasper was diagnosed with aspergers. Aspergers is described as high functioning autism. Our Jasper is an incredibly bright wee man, so creative and does all most everything at a hundred miles an hour. However he lacks social instincts and an ability to communicate that we take for granted.

Jasper has no difficulty with his speech he just can’t communicate or translate clearly what’s going on in his head. This often leaves him incredibly frustrated, so much so that we often have incredibly intense tantrums.

By the time Jasper was four he had screamed and cried so much he had developed nodules in his throat, consequently he has a husky voice. 

Jasper is also prone making random noises, or phrases most of the time he’s imitating something he’s heard. Sometimes it his guinea pig, sometimes the sounds other autistic kids that he’s had contact with make. At the moment it’s the phrase, dumb fart or fart pants. 

Its sounds amusing but it’s often the thing that breaks me down.

My wife and I are constantly working with Jasper we’ve taught him the different facial expressions, but he still lacks the ability to read people. He often wont realise someone is annoyed with him until an extreme is reached.

He has no real clue how to interact with other kids. The other day we were at the park an other boy handed him a light saber and asked if he wanted to play star wars. He didn’t know what to do. We asked later how he felt when the boy invited him to play, he said ‘Surprised’.

I’ll often ask him who he play with at school, mostly he’ll he played by him self.

It’s our next challenge to teach Jasper how to play with other kids.

There are so many things that they don’t tell you when become a parent, the tiredness, the pressures it puts on your relationship, the fog of the first few months and the feeling you making it all up as you go long. They also don’t tell you about  the extreme love and bond you have for your child, the sense that you would do anything for them.

I can still clearly remember holding Jasper for the first time, it was an extremely drawn out birth, Adele was completely spent so for at least the first hour I held Jasper as he sucked his fingers a looked around the room. This is my boy and I will do anything I can to help him grow up well, safe, secure in himself and help him under stand the world around him.

Since then I will admit openly that I have moments of complete despair. I’ve lived with a guilt that I passed on the genes that mean Jasper is likely to struggle in most aspects of life. I share some of his traits and some of his anxieties but they in now way as severe as his. 

I will also admit to yelling at him, loosing my temper with him, ending the day after he has finally shut down and feeling deep sense that I could have done better.

We are all working together to help our boy feel like less of an alien in our world.

May we never loose the determination to draw the best out of our boy. Honestly when the red mist clears and there are no black dogs hanging around the door I count it a privilege that I’ve been trusted with my boy.

I’m not writing this blog to encourage your sympathy or to hold myself up as a super parent. I simply want to highlight through our struggles what I have learnt to help others that are beginning the journey with this mystifying disorder, Maybe you can learn from some of mistakes, share in some of our victories.

I also want to maybe transfer some of the judgment and misunderstanding that is directed at parents who have some very public struggles with kids like Jasper. 1 in 100 children are now being placed on the autism spectrum. Chances are you will know someone or will encounter someone who has similar struggles to us.

Hopefully our story will help you empathize and give you and insight into how you could help.

I’ll begin this blog with a short story I wrote about Jasper after a trip to the park. It’s an attempt to give some insight to just how differently Jasper sees our world.