Why labelling kids is wrong...

We’ve been pretty lucky health-wise with our kids (touch wood!). Two of them have never seen a doctor for anything other than immunisation, and apart from the time when four of them came down with chicken pox, we’ve been troubled by little more than the odd sniffle.

We did, however, go through a scare with the ten-year-old boy several years back, when we thought he might be autistic. I’ve chosen to write about this because only last week yet another friend confided she was having two of her kids tested for autism, and it struck me that this is something I hear all too often from other mothers.

Before I go any further, I want to say two things: firstly, I’m not a medical expert, and am talking purely about my own experiences. Secondly, autism is a very serious condition and my heart goes out to anyone with an autistic child, it is not an easy path.

But I do wonder if these ‘spectrum’ conditions – such as autism, Aspergers, ADD -- are over-diagnosed at times.

When my son first started school his teacher pulled me aside and asked me if he had hearing problems. He didn’t, I told her, but was often ‘on another planet’ and didn’t listen. She raised a sceptical eyebrow.

A couple of weeks later, she told me he was showing signs of dyspraxia – his fine and gross motor skills weren’t very well developed and he was uncoordinated; he might need therapy. These words were unfamiliar to me, and I was fearful. Were things really that bad? I wondered. Sure, he was a bit clumsy, and a little ‘odd’; he tended to fixate on things, and at the time was obsessed with Pinocchio. The obsessions shifted over time from Greek Gods, to Woody from Toy Story (he would  stare at his picture on a piece of paper for ages...just staring). He wouldn’t look you in the eye.

Some months later we moved to the UAE, and having seen his school report, his new school refused to admit him until he was psychologically assessed. I was frantic; what if they wouldn’t take him? What if he if had to go to a special needs school?

Mercifully the school were satisfied by the assessment, and grudgingly admitted him, but his behaviour over the following weeks became increasingly erratic. He would throw tantrums each morning before school, would escape from his classroom and generally cause mayhem. And the swearing! Words like Tourettes, Aspergers and dyslexia were tossed casually around by the teachers.

He couldn’t read. During a school show, while the other six-year-olds read lines from cards, he tumbled around at the back of the stage yelling rude words until he was removed. I clamped my mouth to conceal my hysterical, terrified giggles.

I was advised to have him formally assessed again. This time the psychologist concluded he was on the autistic spectrum, albeit high-functioning.

I was frightened; my shy, gentle, odd little boy was dragging me into new territory; a terrifying world of appointments and therapy, of special needs assistants and labels. What did the future hold for him?

His teacher confided one day that she felt he lacked confidence, partly due to his inability to read.

I mulled this over for a while, and then as with all of life’s quandaries, took to the internet to find a solution. I came across a programme claiming to help children to read (easyreadsystem.com), and I signed up immediately. And reader, it was magic! Fifteen minutes a day for a week is all it took for him to be able to read simple words. In a month he was level with his peers. After two months I cancelled my subscription, his reading level had shot up, and his bad behaviour had stopped entirely.

My son is now ten, and although still a little unusual, I love him all the more for it. He spells better than me, reads voraciously into the small hours, and is a gifted and creative writer who invents his own words. Yes he’s a bit of a loner, but kind and empathetic. He can look me in the eye.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had gone down the route of therapy with him; if I had -- at such a young age -- marked him out as ‘different’. If I had pandered to his so-called ‘special needs’, as so many other frightened and confused parents do these days. Who knows,  I’m just glad I didn’t find out.
(This column appeared in Good Taste Magazine in June 2013).

Up in Smoke....

One of my favourite memories from childhood is of my mother creeping into my bedroom late at night -- following a party or dinner out -- a little tipsy, and reeking from the heady mix of Bacardi and coke, YSL’s ‘Youth Dew’, and a dozen Silk Cut purple cigarettes. 

Full of conviviality and rum, she would whisper promises of treats and trips-out into my sleepy ear, before tiptoeing out of the room to rejoin my father downstairs for a night cap. Snuggling down under the covers, I would drift off into a contented slumber with her loving words still dancing in my head. The world was a safe, good place.

I've always hated cigarettes and cheered for the strong arm of the nanny-state the day the smoking ban was introduced into Ireland; but even today as a non-smoking adult, the mere whiff of cigarette smoke can evoke feelings of warmth and safety, bound up with a million memories of my mother and the close bond I shared with her as I grew up.

My mother was a twenty-a-day woman, and all activity was either prefaced with or followed by a well-earned ‘fag’. Through her I learned a lot about the psyche of an addict; like the regular tea-breaks which punctuated her day – ‘Ooh I’m gasping!’ she would chuckle conspiratorially as she lifted her tea-cup, although it wasn’t the tea she wanted at all but the ciggie which inevitably followed; the tea just made it ‘taste better’, as she once told me. The knowledge that it was soon time for a cigarette put her in a good mood, and it was as if her day existed purely to accommodate her many fag breaks, with all other activity merely a distraction until the next one.

 

I see a lot of her in myself these days, as I impatiently put the children to bed, salivating for a cold glass of white wine. And the knowledge that there is a fresh bottle waiting in the fridge is enough to keep me in good spirits, regardless of how irritating and argumentative the children are.  

‘You’re too cheerful’ DH will say, eyeing me suspiciously, as the kids flood the bathroom and attack each other with sticks, ‘I’m guessing you bought wine today?'

I often think about how my mother viewed her life when she was my age; whether like me she had ambitions and dreams for herself, to be more than just a wife and mother. On reflection, I don’t think she did; at least nothing more ambitious than ‘lose ten pounds’ and meet Des O’Connor in person because her real life goal was limited to the extremely achievable next cigarette. 

‘Oh I’m not like you,' she would say, matter-of-factly, turning her head as she blew out the smoke, 'I can't do anything but be a housewife!'

She tried to quit smoking several times over the years, one of the more notable attempts thwarted when her father, ironically, died of lung cancer. As illogical as that seemed to me at the time, I now completely understand her reaction. How often have I read a damning report on the terrifying effects of alcohol on women, only to close the page and pour myself a glass of wine, reasoning it would be awfully bad luck if that happened, but I was willing to take the risk.

As she grew older, her smoking became increasingly contentious; the scowling refusal to get out of the car whenever we went to a non-smoking bar or restaurant; the mutinous puffing outside the front door of my first home, after I had triumphantly informed her that I wouldn’t allow smoking around my baby daughter; her refusal to curb her smoking around my father, even as he sickened and died.  The cigarette became her weapon of choice which she lit defensively, hands shaking, as the world she inhabited became less and less familiar to her; dragging hard on those little white sticks as if they might save her from the sinking ship of her own decaying mind.

She’s in a nursing home now, ravaged by the cruel horrors of dementia.  At first she remembered her beloved Silk Cut, even when she had forgotten her own name, but now they too have been vanquished by her self-erasing memory, and she spends her days permanently at a loss – as if something has slipped her mind, and she’s trying desperately to remember what it is. Her last fag-break long overdue.

When I look at my mother's life now, I realise it was a life spent in the grip of a very serious addiction, not just physically but also emotionally. With retrospect, I now see that each cigarette she smoked was a thought unspoken, a dream unrealised, a risk untaken. A life unlived really, and literally going up in smoke.

(It was World No Tobacco Day last Saturday, May 31st)