Dawn of the Tuesday Machine

"What was Scooby Doo about this morning?" I ask him as he bounces around my bedroom.

There is no immediate answer, as usual, and I wait before posing the question again.

"Hey, bud, what was Scooby Doo about this morning?" I repeat from my bed. It is Saturday morning, which means cartoon time with Daddy. Daddy and both boys have just arrived to beckon me from my weekly -- when I'm lucky -- Mommy Morning.

He stops bouncing long enough to announce matter-of-factly, "Dr Fives (the arch-nemesis of the 2007 version of Scooby Doo) built a Tuesday Machine. He was using it to drill under the ocean."

Here I must, like most mothers of small children, think very hard. Translating the language of a young child is no easy task, I assure you. And he is very impatient when I don't catch on fast enough.

"Oh..." I say slowly, though my brain is frantically trying to track with him. And then...

"Do you mean a "doomsday machine?" I ask.

"Yeah, a doomsday machine, " he says simply, before launching into a slightly disjointed retelling of the rest of the plot.

I sigh with relief and watch him bounce.

While this incident was so very mild compared to others like it, these moments of struggling to comprehend really symbolize what it is like to live with an autistic child. Certainly all parents must learn to interpret their children's unique words and descriptions, but a child with autism speaks a language it seems that only he can understand.

I think of missionaries who live among people groups who have no written language. Such intrepid folks must learn from experience only what these native peoples are saying, what their behavior implies. It is much the same with my son. Through trial and error -- mostly error! --and much studying, I am finally getting a glimpse of the world through my son's eyes.

God blessed me with my son five years ago, and oh, it has been a rough road! I have gone from believing that I was failing as a parent to thinking that he had some sort of attachment disorder to the horrible realization that my son would never be "normal". With the diagnosis four months ago came answers: its not my fault, I'm not crazy, and there is some hope. The diagnosis gave me a name for his language and a starting point for learning to understand.

Each day brings with it its own Tuesday Machine -- usually several -- but now I know why.