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When my youngest son Sawyer was four, his preschool teacher suggested it might be a good idea to have someone from the state come to the classroom and observe him. She’d noticed a few things about his behavior that might be tricky when it was time for him to go to Kindergarten. My wife and I agreed, and the next time I picked him up I noticed a neatly dressed woman in the corner of the room with a clipboard on her lap.
I got a funny feeling seeing that clipboard. I didn’t trust it. It bespoke the dry, analytic assessment of science. I liked science fine, but I’d never trusted it to fully understand the mysterious, creative wholeness that is a person. Sawyer was quirky, for sure. At home he was quite happy playing entirely by himself. When he got interested in a book or toy, he could focus on it for hours at a time. But he was walking and talking and affectionate and could even play the drums pretty well, so who cares if he didn’t always respond when you called his name?
Once the assessment was complete, my wife and I gathered with a collection of experts to receive the verdict. Sawyer, the experts all agreed, had a problem. He was significantly behind children his age verbally and socially. He did not play with other children. He did not seem to always understand what was being said to him. Something needed be done and soon.
It was confusing listening to them describe Sawyer. It didn’t sound like the boy I’d spent four years raising. They were only talking about what he couldn’t do. There was no mention of how good he was at puzzles, or that he could keep time with Hey Jude on the drums, or how he could act out scenes from Blues Clues. I brought all this up, but I was reminded that none of that was really relevant. If he was going to have success in school, these holes in his development would have to be addressed.
It was funny that they should use that word–success–when describing Sawyer’s challenges. At that time, it seemed I was having scant little of it myself. Like a lot of writers I knew, the specter of success and failure hovered quietly and constantly over my life, and on some days there was nothing but failure as far as I could see. It was like waking up in a wasteland where you could find yourself wondering why you should bother planting anything if nothing would grow.
Except it wasn’t until I came home from that meeting that I began to notice how much time I spent focusing on what I hadn’t done, focusing on the books I hadn’t sold rather than the agents I had signed with. In fact, almost all I cared about was what I hadn’t done. If all you look at is what you don’t have, it will seem as though you have nothing.
When Sawyers was 14, after years of evaluations, and appointments with neurologists, and a diagnosis on the autism spectrum, and I. E. P. meetings, he finally confessed, “Dad, I don’t want to do anything because someone else told me to.” This, in it turns out, was the great secret to the mystery that was Sawyer’s challenges. It also made traditional school nearly impossible, and we had to homeschool him for the last six years of his education.
There were some days we accomplished little more than having long a conversation about the individual role in society, or watch a documentary about the Roman Empire. Usually, he spent his schooling time itching to get back to his computer where he could read what he wanted to read, watch what he wanted to watch, play what he wanted to play.
But when he turned 18, he looked up and realized he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life living with his parents. He wanted to get a job, find his own place to live, have a girlfriend, and generally lead what might be described as a normal life.
It was at that moment that he looked back at his schooling, such as it was, and feared he’d blown it, that he hadn’t learned anything, that he was hopelessly unprepared to make his way in a world he had largely ignored. He feared he’d be nothing but a failure. How could I help him? I was no longer his teacher. I was at best a compassionate observer and occasional companion.
All I could do for him, I’ve learned, is what I have had to do for myself. The success I eventually found as a writer came from focusing on what I had the most interest in, what I had the most fun writing, what I had the most fun teaching, and then figuring out how I could have more of all of it. I couldn’t think about what I hadn’t published, or where I wasn’t teaching. This took discipline. How tempting it is to believe that my life will be better, will be complete, when by some magical means I at last have what I feel is missing. There is no magic. Nor is there a wasteland. There is only a garden that will only grow whatever I choose to focus on.
So every day I try to bring this same discipline to Sawyer. I remind him of all that he has learned, the skills he has accumulated, and, most importantly, everything he has interest in. If we have nothing else, we always have a curious mind. That’s enough to do anything. I know it doesn’t always seem like enough, that it seems too ordinary, too ineffectual. In reality it is the engine that drives all success, moving Sawyer, and me, and everyone, ceaselessly toward a life meant only for us.
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