Perspective

Life is what it is.  But what it is to you and what it is to me are two entirely different entities.  In fact, there are as many views on life as there are people in this world, close to 7 billion, I believe.  It all depends on a simple word:  perspective.  Definitions for the word are as follows:  A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view; true understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion.  Aha!  These two definitions seem to be contradictory, don't they?  A particular attitude versus true understanding...well you just may be about to find out, as I did two weeks ago, they are and they aren't.

Two weeks ago was a little rough.  Here it was, Monday afternoon, and Nyssa was in one of her usual bull headed moods while we were in the car, no less.  The sad aspect of the story is that I can't even remember what it was about anymore, but it unnerved me to no end.  She and Nathaniel were having a spat and she wouldn't cave one iota.  I tried reason.  I tried reasoning with her.  I tried explaining the situation to her.  I tried telling her just to stop.  I tried telling them both to stop.  I tried telling them to stop or I was going to pull over.  I did.  I was almost pulling my hair out trying to get Nyssa to just leave the subject alone and to stop trying to get Nathaniel to see it her way...because she was wrong.

By this point, I was a very unhappy camper.  Gabriela was tired because she had been awakened from her nap to pick up her siblings from school.  Benjamin was hungry.  Nathaniel had been in a very good mood but was now starting to have a meltdown due to his sister's attack, and Nyssa would just not give it up.  I almost pulled my hair out (remember that phrase in a couple days' time, will you?  Just stash it away somewhere in your brain if you don't mind) and had crossed the "enough" line 2 miles back.

I looked at Nyssa and just threw my hands in the air.  "Nyssa, just let it go!

"But he's wrong!" she insisted.

"No, he's not.  You are.  Regardless, I told you to behave and to be quiet.  That is enough!"

She would not stop.  I am not proud of the following words that proceeded from my mouth.  I said something to the effect of growing up, behaving, listening to what I said, obeying, and to "stop acting like a baby" who didn't know better when she is obviously old enough to obey the words "stop" and "be quiet."  I told her even Gabriela could follow those simple instructions and she needed to just obey.

"But," she began again.

"I don't want to hear it.  I don't want to hear another word come out of your mouth until we get home," and I started the minivan again and got back on the road.  There was finally silence, though I cannot say it was peaceful.  At least, there was momentary silence.  What came next just brought me chagrin and complete shame.

"You're a baby," Gabriela said, to nobody in particular.  "You acting like a baby, Nyssa."  Uh-oh.  "Taniel, you're a baby.  Benjamin, you're a baby.  Mommy, you acting like a baby," she giggled away.

At first, I was just angry.  In a too controlled voice, I said, "Gabriela, that's enough."  That only egged her on, not seeing my face or hearing the frustration emanating from my mouth.

"You a baby.  I not a baby.  You a baby.  You and you and you and you a baby.  Mommy's a baby."

Yeah, out of the mouths of babes.  I had lost it and now given my youngest something to say to bring me to shame.  It was new territory for me, because I had forgotten the power of words on a child.

Due to the Autism spectrum, none of the other three had ever just repeated what I said like that.  If I told them to say something, they would parrot me, but they never just picked up what I said and started repeating it back to me.  In fact, they had trouble processing what I said to them period, losing half of my words or more.  Only through therapy and hard work have they finally gotten to the point where they are able to process things better.  At least, I knew this was the case with Nathaniel.  I never knew Nyssa had any trouble with it, but at this moment it dawned on me that she had never parroted what I said randomly.  There was always a preexisting concentration on what the words would be before she would repeat after me.

That was Monday.  Tuesday was my visit to the Marcus Institute, the follow up from the testing Nyssa had done there a couple of weeks prior.  I was to receive their findings.  That day will be forever etched in my mind, because my entire perception regarding my daughter changed.  The results rocked my world.  I never saw it coming.

As expected, the doctor concurred with the diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome and the ADD Inattentive.  What wasn't expected was the fact that all her Executive Functions are rather lacking.  Her will power is very high and set, almost incapable of moving once her mind has been determined, to an unusual degree.  Her ability to process verbal stimulus is low.

Ok, so now what does all this mean?  We'll take it one step at a time.  Executive functions are those functions that help us to navigate our way socially, emotionally, organizationally, and environmentally.  They help us connect past actions with the present.  They help us with planning skills and navigating our way through time and in space.  Executive functions give us an innate awareness of everything around us and the ability to process that knowledge to our advantage.  They help us learn visual cues that tell us to not speak until it is our turn and to stop speaking in order to let someone else have their say.  They help our working memory, allowing us to be able to do more than one thing at once or to follow multi-step directions. 

Think of a company.  It has a Chief Executive Officer.  That officer is responsible for making sure the proper plans, implementations, and goals are executed.  If the company has a bad CEO, the officer can bring the corporation to its knees.  If it has a good one, the CEO can bring the company to newer heights.  That is why they get paid all the big bucks.  If the company gets in hot water, the CEO is usually the one who gets axed.  If the CEO is attentive to the company's needs, both in entity and in employees, he will be able to adjust, plan, and repair a problem mid stream.  If the executive in charge refuses stubbornly to bend in the right direction, he will destroy a company.  Interestingly enough, in the same way, the executive functions are directly related to the ability to shift gears in the mental capacity. 

That brings us to Nyssa's willpower.  It's high.  Very high.  I've mentioned before in my rantings how she will just not yield, regardless of the situation, unless she is shown, logically, infallibly, to her understanding, that her course is wrong and needs to be adjusting.  Then and only then is she able to be persuaded to change her mind.  Without that, you may as well just throw in the towel, because she is not going to budge.  No form of bribery, threats or punishment will sway her, neither will your own reason.  She's not trying to be disrespectful.  It's not because she wants to see what will happen if she pushes my buttons.  It is the way she is wired.  She's a rock.  Where does she get this from?  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

As a kid, when it came to character traits, I always got the certificate that said, "determined."  I was not easily swayed; I couldn't be budged.  I was harder to be moved than a hardhead catfish that you hit over the head with a hammer to kill.  Under specific circumstances, I would accept any punishment, not in defiance, but in my firm belief that I had done nothing wrong.  I have been painstakingly honest about my natural disorganization, my messy house, and about my own struggles to keep it clean.  I have only in the past year begun to overcome my weaknesses in spacial organization.  As for time management, my mom can lose track of time, thinking only 5 minutes has gone by when it has been 2 hours.  Fortunately, I can at least stop and judge what time it is and usually be correct within 10 minutes...when I actually stop.  If I'm not being conscious of the time, it can fly by.  I know where my daughter gets it. 

I have told Nyssa on occasion to try to do her best and she states that she is trying her best.  On the piano, I would tell her to practice.  She would sit there on the bench doing nothing, not even putting her hands to the keyboard, but she was doing her best.  She was sitting there, even though (as I now know) everything within her told her to leave the bench.  I saw it as defiance.  The doctor let me know it's not.  She is just sometimes unable to see a different viewpoint, incapable of changing once she has made her decision, and sometimes it is all she can do to just try to figure out one instruction at a time.  She pulls on her hair, hard, if she is given more than one direction at a time.

Of course, that makes part of our job as parents more difficult; we have to find a way to help her see things our way on her own.  We have to give the right nudge here, the little suggestive message there.  We have to learn why she sees things the way she does.  That will help us to draw her to a better conclusion on the occasions she is wrong.   I suppose it comes along with seeing the glass as half full or half empty.

In life, we can get caught up in situations that are beyond our control.  We can get caught in a rut because we cannot see any other way.  There may be a way to escape but we are so caught up in the view which we have that we lose the ability to adjust our focus and look at it from the grand scheme of things.  Somebody else may have a better view but because we refuse to budge on our perspective, we make things harder on ourselves.

When I discovered these traits about Nyssa, a part of me felt so bad about my attitude toward her that day.  She was truly incapable at that time of seeing things from another point of view.  In her eyes, it was absolute truth.  My job as her mother is to help her learn the difference between the truth and her point of view and to direct her towards that infallible truth.  If she can see things as they truly are, then she will have a distinct advantage because once it's in her noggin, it's like Prego spaghetti sauce:  it's in there.

The same truth goes for whether she has done her homework correctly or if she truly knows how much we love her.  Sometimes there are only two perspectives:  the truth and a lie.  I want her to be able to discern the truth from the lies.  I want her to know that, regardless of her difficulties, she is special and she is important, that she matters.  I want her to know that book smart doesn't mean wisdom.  I want her to know that she can come to me with a problem and I will never turn her away when she really needs help.  I want her to be able to look at that glass and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that, because there is water in it, and it reaches the half way point, that it is half full.  I don't want her to just see things from her point of view:  I want her to be able to see things in truth.