Love That Boy

by Ron Fournier

  Years later, Lori told me how angry and ashamed she was. “That lady made me feel like I didn’t give a rat’s ass about whether Holly was going to get out of day care, and of course I worried all day long.” After that incident, Lori resigned as manager to work part-time, and a few months later abandoned her career entirely. We put my work over hers, and me over her.

  “I didn’t think I was a great mom. I felt a little worthless,” she said. “I was always a good housekeeper—that I know. I can remember going to pick up the girls at elementary school and not getting dressed or doing my hair. That sounds superficial, but I would literally be in sweats and I would hide in the car. I didn’t want to see anybody. I didn’t want to see the other moms. I guess I was sort of going through some depression, and I would tell the kids, ‘I’ll be parked on the road. Walk down and find me.’ ”

  Trust me: Lori is a great wife and mother. Still, she felt the other mothers were better than her. They seemed to be busier outside the home—some balanced careers, and others had family schedules crammed with events. “I avoided that, which explains why I don’t have a big circle of friends to this day,” Lori said.

  Personal insecurities and the anxieties of mothering a young boy with social issues forced her into a shell, where she could protect herself and Tyler from failure and embarrassment. She pulled away from friends. She kept family and acquaintances at arm’s length. She was desperately lonely.

  —

  Something shifted for the better after Tyler’s diagnosis. Lori gained confidence, proud of what she has accomplished on his behalf.

  “This thing with Tyler hasn’t changed my social circle or restarted my career, but it has given me a purpose,” Lori said. “It has made me feel more competent as a person. It’s very complicated taking care…” She paused. “I’m going to cry.”

  Then: “It’s very complicated taking care of Tyler. There are a lot of balls in the air all the time with the different therapies that he needs and the schoolwork that he has to get done, because as he grows…it gets harder.”

  In 2010, shortly after Tyler’s diagnosis, I left my dream job at the Associated Press to become editor in chief of a news organization that guaranteed me more time and flexibility for family matters. Lori wanted me home more. The National Journal Group team was true to its word, but I found running a newsroom to be demanding under even the best of circumstances. After the 2012 presidential election, I stepped down as editor in chief and became a columnist—the most family-friendly job I’ve ever had.

  With Holly in Detroit, Gabrielle in Lansing, and our extended families planted in lower Michigan, Lori and I made plans to leave Washington and move to our home state after Tyler graduates from high school in June 2016. Family first, for once.

  For her next act, Lori has talked about consulting for parents of special-needs children. There’s an incredible need, and she’d be terrific—some other families’ hero.

  —

  In the spring of 2014, my father died. The cause of death was Lewy-body dementia, an insidious disease that rapidly robs its victims of both mind and body. So little is known about Lewy-body that it’s often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s. Mom decided to rent a boat and scatter Dad’s ashes in the Detroit River, where it feeds into our beloved Lake Erie.

  We boarded in St. Clair Shores and filled the 30-minute ride with awkward conversation—the kind of chitchat you hear in the first hour of a holiday gathering, before the alcohol kicks in. How’s the job? How are the kids? How about those Tigers? We spoke little about Dad; that’s what the wake had been for, I guess. We spoke nothing of the tension over his care and the secrecy around it.

  My sister, Raquel, was the first to lose her composure, dashing to the deck below to find a bathroom. She almost ran into Tyler at the bottom of the stairs, where he was sitting alone. He recognized her distress, jumped to his feet, and said, “I don’t know what to say to make you feel better, but I can give you a hug,” That was exactly what she needed. “He hugged me so tight. And kept hugging me,” Raquel told me later. “It meant the world to me.”

  When we arrived at the appointed spot, the boat stopped and we made our way to the bow. Raquel took Dad’s ashes from our mother and poured them over the side, while Mom stood alone behind her. My brothers made eye contact with me. What should we do? Rather than step forward to comfort Mom, I took two steps back. It was not my finest hour.

  But my son—well, Tyler exceeded my greatest expectations, stepping in front of his father and his uncles to hold his grandmother tightly in a one-arm hug. He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Everyone thinks I’m comforting you,” he told her with a smile, “but really I need comforting.”

  Now, finally, I know what perfect is. It’s a child blessed with the grace to show goodness, even on the worst of days. No, Tyler is not my idealized son. He is my ideal one.

  HISTORY LESSONS

  Among America’s most accomplished men, U.S. presidents foundered as fathers. Their children exhibited higher-than-average rates of divorce, alcoholism, and premature death. “Many children of high achievers struggle with feelings of abandonment and take more time in life to establish their own separate identity,” wrote historian Doug Wead in All the Presidents’ Children. “But this seems especially true for the sons of presidents, particularly those sons who worked for their fathers in the White House, or who were the firstborn, or who bore the same name, sons who were in some way considered to be ‘in line’ for the presidency themselves. It seems that the closer a male child was to the parents, the more likely he would be to self-destruct.”

  For the rest of us, there is hope.

  I’m no expert, but I know a few, starting with several child development professionals who helped me contextualize my research and reading, and including more than three dozen parents who related their experiences, insights, and advice. When parents get together, they tend to talk about their kids and their challenges. They’re not just bitching; they’re sharing—sharing hard-won wisdom and advice. In that tradition, here are a few closing thoughts:

  Don’t parent for the future; parent for today. Most of the pressure we impose upon our kids comes from worry about what’s around the corner. Can I get him into a good preschool? Can she play travel soccer? How many friends will he have? What kind of a guy will she marry?

  Tomorrow will come. Don’t rush it.

  A couple of tips for parenting in the present. First, create small moments. One weekend at a time, over the course of several years, I took my kids to every park in our county. I kept a wrinkled map in the glove box that we used to locate area parks and give them our own special nicknames (“House Park” was my favorite). When the girls were little, I told bedtime stories that I made up on the fly, with goofy characters and wild storylines. And while I put work ahead of family too often, I rarely missed birthdays, ball games, recitals, and other special events.

  Second, treasure every moment. Make memories. I jotted notes on the memorable outings and conversations I had with my kids. I took mental pictures. I would literally say to myself, “Don’t forget this, Ron.” And I won’t.

  Guide, don’t push. There is a world of difference between dancing in the living room with your daughter and forcing her to take ballet classes. The first approach is a playful and authentic way to expose her to a potential hobby. The second is conflating your dreams with hers. Remember, Goldilocks parents are involved and responsive. They set high expectations but respect their kids’ autonomy.

  “I’m a firm believer in supporting our kids in what they want to do rather than fulfill our own expectations,” said Lynn Schofield Clark, author of The Parenting App. We spoke at length about how she tries to shift the burden of expectations and responsibility from her shoulders to those of her children. For instance, she didn’t intervene when her 16-year-old son talked online with his girlfriend past midnight during the holidays. The next day, however, she told him he was too tired and crabby to go mountain climbing. “I tried to
show that the choices were about him, not me,” Clark said. “My role as a parent is to be more of a guide than a dictator.”

  Don’t beat yourself up. The knock on families today is that narcissistic, overinvolved parents are producing spoiled, entitled children with no values. While there may be some truth to the conventional wisdom, reality is more complicated. In The Price of Privilege, Madeline Levine said kids are troubled, not spoiled. Parents are struggling, not self-indulgent. The struggles of families are real, not trivial—and most parents feel alone and unanchored. “Anxious parents,” Levin wrote, “make anxious children.”

  This means you’re not alone. Relax. Do your best. Don’t wallow in guilt. That may seem like odd advice from a guy who writes about so-called guilt trips. In Dad Is Fat, comedian Jim Gaffigan captures the absurdity of self-serious parenting. “I feel guilty when I travel out of town to do shows,” he wrote. “I feel guilty when I’m in town and I don’t spend every single moment with my children. I feel guilty when I’m spending time with my children and I am not doing something constructive toward their intellectual development. I feel guilty when I feed them the unhealthy food they like. I feel guilty when I drop them off at school. I feel guilty when I pick them up at school. I feel guilty mostly for writing this book instead of spending time with them. Great, now I’ve probably made you feel guilty for reading this book. I feel guilty about that now, too. Sorry.”

  Celebrate all victories. The first time Tyler took a shower without prompting or did his homework without complaining—those were big small things. Your son gets his first passing grade in math. Your daughter cleans up her room without being asked. Big deals? Heck yes. There are no small victories in parenting. Only victories.

  I learned this from the mother of a severely autistic boy from rural Maryland. Sitting at a mall coffee shop, the woman told me that her backyard is a haven for rabbits. Her son never paid attention to them. Never noticed them. Until one day she heard him shouting and found him pointing at a rabbit outside the kitchen window. “He wanted me to come look at it. It was one of those moments, a breakthrough,” she sobbed. “You might shrug, but it was a big deal.”

  Slow down. “Contemporary hyper-parenting is a true product of our times—manufactured in a high-tech environment, according to a set of stratospherically high expectations,” wrote Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld and Nicole Wise in The Overscheduled Child. “The emphasis on perfection and perpetual motion is destroying family life.”

  Their advice is simple. Limit your activities. Give yourself a break. Don’t spend money on products that distract you, appease your child, or further complicate your life. Finally (and ironically), “be discriminating about the advice you pay attention to.”

  Make different cool. When my siblings and I got old enough to get into trouble, my father had a saying: “It’s cool to be different.” It was his way of giving us the courage to defy peer pressure. When everybody else seems to be skipping school, it’s cool to be different. When everybody else is smoking dope at a party, be the one cool enough to say, “No thanks.”

  As a parent, I see his advice in a different light: Tyler is cool because he’s different. Rather than be ashamed of whatever makes your children different, embrace that uniqueness.

  Be a spouse first, a parent second. The best thing I did for my kids was loving their mom. (Granted, loving Lori is the easiest thing I’ll ever do.)

  The typical child will live with his or her parents for 18 to 25 years. A fortunate couple will be married at least twice as long, and their commitment to each other can be a model for their children. It’s like my dad told me when I was starting my family: “As much as I loved you guys, I never forgot that you would grow up and be gone, and I’d always be with your mom.”

  In The Overscheduled Child, Rosenfeld and Wise broaden the logic to stress the importance of prioritizing your family. “Our children are with us for a short time before they head out into their own lives, busy with friends, college, jobs, and eventually their own families. We ought to enjoy them, and the brief flicker of time we have with them,” they wrote. “Family life should not be overloaded with chores and commitments that add unnecessary resentment to daily life.”

  Share even the bad news. My brother Tim recently asked me, with regard to Tyler, “How can siblings, classmates, and other peers be made to understand and retool their interactions?” The question scratches at the feelings of love and helplessness that are conjured when a child is in trouble. The most important thing is communication. While we were slow to get Tyler diagnosed, we immediately shared the results with family and friends. The benefits of that decision were twofold. First, the most important people in our lives were able to help us. Second, the information helped them. They had known Tyler was struggling, but they didn’t know how much or why—and certainly didn’t want to risk offending us by asking. The diagnosis gave our families and friends the green light to do what families and friends want to do: love us and help us.

  Fight for your kids. Lori and I will always be indebted to Dr. Quinn for giving us the language we needed to squeeze more services out of our public school for Tyler. I hope in some small measure this book inspires parents to seek the help they need.

  For many parents, however, the hurdles are far higher than they were for Lori and me. Their kids go to poorer schools. They can’t afford private services. They don’t have networks of family and friends to help pick up the slack. This is where Hillary Clinton was right: It takes a village to raise a child, which means every taxpayer must be willing to support public services for children, especially those with special needs. Federal, state, and local governments must invest in child welfare, and spend the money with efficiency and transparency. Business leaders must view child welfare budgets as a down payment on their future workforce. Elderly residents must support child services that they’ll no longer need. Charities and nonprofit organizations must spend less on overhead and more on their stated purposes.

  Finally, we parents can’t wait for information and services to come to us. We can’t use obstacles as excuses. We can’t be perfect, but we can always do better.

  Channel your inner Aspie. What makes Tyler and other people with Asperger’s syndrome unique also makes them a model for the rest of us. Their hyperliteral mind-sets make honesty as much a part of their nature as breathing. Tyler is almost incapable of being duplicitous or hypocritical. Lori says, “Nobody rats himself out quite like Tyler.” Every day when he comes home from school, Lori will ask, “Do you have homework?” Tyler replies, “No”—then pauses for a heartbeat, bows his shoulders, and mumbles, “Yes.”

  While he has a hard time expressing empathy, Tyler may be one of the most caring people I know other than his mom. I think there is something about living so deeply inside their heads that make Tyler and fellow Aspies extraordinarily sensitive to the effects of isolation, criticism, and other slights—even if they’re less attuned than normal to when and how they might be negatively affecting somebody else.

  It’s easy to get hung up on the traits Aspies struggle with: inflexible and rigid thinking, making connections and generalizations, complex problem solving, abstract thinking, multitasking, and the social issues that Tyler tackled on our trips. It’s important to value and model the traits that author Liane Holliday Willey called “20 first-rate ways to describe Aspies.”

  * * *

  1. Very loyal

  2. Open and honest

  3. Guardians of those less able

  4. Detail oriented

  5. Uninterested in social politics

  6. Often witty and entertaining

  7. Capable of developing very strong “splinter skills” (savant-level abilities in an area of intense interest)

  8. Storage bank for facts and figures

  9. Tenacious researchers and thinkers

  10. Logical

  11. Enthusiastic about their passionate interests

  12. Able to create beautiful images in their mind’s eye


  13. Finely tuned in to their sensory systems

  14. Ethical and principled

  15. Dependable

  16. Good at word games and wordplay

  17. Inquisitive

  18. Rule followers

  19. Unambiguous

  20. Average to above-average intelligence

  * * *

  Do you see your child reflected in Willey’s rich list of adjectives? I bet you do. In his or her own way, every child is lucky enough to be different.

  I can’t count the reasons I love my boy. I used to say I hope to be worthy of Tyler. Now I see that I should hope to be more like him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In December 2012, I published an essay in National Journal magazine titled “First, Family: How Two Presidents Helped Me Deal with Guilt, Love, and Fatherhood.” A cable news network invited me to discuss the story on TV, and I remember the scene inside a crowded green room: Several guests and an equal number of college interns buzzed around a coffee maker and pastry plate. Every few minutes, an intern announced the name of their assigned guest, offering an escort to the studio.

  I was the last guest summoned. My assigned intern was a shy 22-year-old who wordlessly walked me into the studio—then stood waiting for me when my segment was over. He led me to an empty elevator and pushed the “lobby” button. As soon as we were alone, the intern stepped to my side of the compartment, looked me in the eyes, shook my hand, and said, “Thank you for coming on our show.” I thought it was a gracious gesture, if not a bit awkward.

  When the elevator opened, I started to say goodbye. The young man interrupted. “I want to tell you something,” he blurted. “I have Asperger’s syndrome. Thank you for writing the story and please let me know if I can help Tyler at all.”

  I can’t tell you the intern’s name because he asked me not to share it; autism can carry an unfortunate stigma. But I owe him this thank you—for being the first to tell me how much Tyler’s story mattered to Aspies; for his willingness to help my son; and for his time as a source and sounding board for the book that grew out of the National Journal story.