Christine Stephan’s moving essay, “Navigating Autism” speaks to an issue that every parent can relate to: the process of tuning into our intuition, to what our gut tells us is the right next thing. Often that’s all we can do–the next right thing, according to the wisdom gathered by our hearts and mind. Parenting kids on the spectrum, kids whose trajectory does not follow the typical path, takes extra courage precisely because of the unique nature of their journey. Christine’s essay reminds us to trust that journey, our children’s and our own.

When Oliver was still an infant and toddler there was never any
doubt—any question, even—that I was the expert on my child. I
never would have thought to ask anyone for input on my parenting.
I am a believer in attachment parenting and that’s what I did:
I breastfed him until he chose to stop at two and a half, he never slept
anywhere but with me until he was ready to move to his own bed,
and I carried him close to my heart in a sling until he grew too heavy.
I never let him cry without attending to him. I wanted him to feel
secure, attached, and not alone in this world. That was the best way,
I thought, to help him feel confident enough to develop independence.
I never would have thought that someone understood Oliver better than I.

After the diagnosis, my grasp on motherhood, already shaky
from the intuitive knowledge that I somehow wasn’t fully meeting
Oliver’s needs, loosened. Or perhaps it became undone altogether.
All of the difficult parenting issues that we had faced up until this
point suddenly became pathological. It wasn’t his personality that
made him so incredibly stubborn; it was the autism. It wasn’t that
I had not been fully equipped with the information that I needed
to parent Oliver well; it was the autism. Suddenly there were others
(psychologists, social workers, teachers, therapists) who claimed to
understand Oliver, who could help us navigate life with this little boy
of ours more successfully.

In the wake of the diagnosis, I found myself leaning heavily
on the advice of those professionals. During a time when I felt unmoored
and lost, it became easy to turn to people who spoke with
such confidence. And yet, I now see how much our parenting strategies
changed, the dynamics in our house shifted; we were parenting
by committee. I see how vulnerable we all were and how we lost
something intangible and yet so valuable. Here I was, a mother who
had carried my child in a sling for his first year of life so that he
could feel and hear my heart beating as he had in the womb, and I
had somehow agreed to let him “work” with therapists for thirty-five
hours per week, shut away from his family and our daily activities.
The trust and attachment that I had worked so hard to foster since
his birth had lost its priority to all things in service of the autism.
Over a period of just a few months we had lost whatever remaining
grip we had on our feelings of competency as Oliver’s parents.

The essay continues in the print version of the book, but I can tell you here that Christine most definitely did navigate her way back to her parenting by her own intuitive wisdom. Her update:

A few weeks ago when a fat white envelope bearing the return address of Woodbine Press arrived, I eagerly opened it, excited to hold in my hands the much anticipated Gravity Pulls You In. Little did I know that I would soon have competition for the book. Almost immediately Oliver claimed it for his own. Perhaps drawn to the colorful image on the front or the weight and size of it or the shiny cover stock, Oliver has carried the book with him nearly constantly since it arrived. At night, after he falls asleep I sneak like a thief into his dark room and grope for it under the covers so that I get my fair share. Tonight I snapped a picture of him as he sat at my desk holding it, then noted that he was following the line of the word Perspectives over and over again with his index finger. How apropos, I thought, for the boy who has compelled me, again and again, to carefully consider – and reconsider – so much of what I once thought I knew.

As I write these words, Oliver is off on a bike ride with his father and younger brother. They navigate the streets of our town with incredible ease and grace. If you were to ride along with our family sometime you might be struck by the joy written on our faces. Oliver is in love with movement, speed and balance; his father and I are in love with the sight of our boy totally unencumbered by the many things in life that are so difficult for him. I’m not the first to describe parenting a child with extra needs as a journey but when we ride together I am reminded of what a joy it is to navigate together, focusing on nothing but the road in front of us. In the face of so much that can be difficult, it is often a daily challenge for me to keep this perspective. All the better that I have a boy who can, apparently, point it out for me from time to time.

Christine Stephan, a program certified RDI® consultant, lives in Virginia with her husband and three sons. She and her family can often be found navigating the streets of her hometown by bicycle.