My son was born 7 years ago today. Following 24 hours of painful back labour, when K. Schellenberg entered the world he was facing an unusual direction.
He still is.
In Kindergarten, when other children were bringing toy trucks for Show and Tell, K. brought diagrams of the digestive system. (He was dying to share his joy about discovering the function of the villi in the small intestine.) When his classmates walked single file to music class, K. swung his arms like windmills while singing at the top of his lungs. On a good day. On bad days he'd run out the front door and as far down the street as he could get.
We suspected Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but that didn't quite cover it. This spring, at the end of grade one, a psychiatrist diagnosed him with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), a mild social skills delay on the Autism Spectrum. But he suspects in a couple years it will become clear that K. had Aspergers (another step on the Autism Spectrum).
Kids with Aspergers are sometimes called "Little Professors." They tend to fixate on an area of interest till they become articulate and engaging walking encyclopedias on the topic. When he was 5, K. would stop our neighbours on the sidewalk to explain how the chloroplasts in their flowers' leaves made glucose. No joke. That was his "photosynthesis phase." He's since moved on to physics. This week, when I asked him to tell me his favorite things, he answered, "friction."
Which means, while raising a son with social challenges wasn't the direction I expected, life is never dull.
And I know I don't face it alone.
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