A Little Chaos Theory

This is not going to be a well-written blog entry, but I have to get this out.

I don’t post a lot about Breydon’s autism. That hasn’t been deliberate, but to me that diagnosis doesn’t usually mean a lot. Sure, he has some quirks, like being able to name every single president, when that president served, who the person was married to, etc., but that’s just part of what makes him Breydon. He fixates on something for a while, but once he has explored a topic to his satisfaction he moves to the next obsession and we go on. We went through the alphabet phase, the planet phase, and the president phase.

Everything changed today.

Breydon’s new obsession is death.

Roegen was stinky, so I took him into my bedroom to change his diaper. After the offending odor had been surgically removed from his backside, we played a game of “peek-a-boo and tickle” (he hides behind his fingers so I can’t “see” him, I tickle him anyway, we both laugh) and then rejoined his brothers in the living room. I don’t think I was away from the older boys for more than 10 minutes, if that.

When we returned to the living room, I noticed that Jude had something red and sticky on his pants. I thought he had gotten into my raspberry Torani’s and asked what happened — to shake my head in disbelief at the words “Breydon made me take medicine.”

Say what?

I won’t going to detail the entire heart-stopping conversation, but suffice it to say that Breydon dosed Jude with a bottle of cough and cold medicine “because Jude is sick.” And then, while I called Poison Control to find out what to do next, he kept asking when “Jude is going to die and go to heaven.”

Jude is okay.

I am not.

I know that autism causes a disconnect in the brain, so that those who have it don’t have the same thought process as most. I know that to Breydon death is a concept that he’s trying to understand. The idea has been revisited recently because the kids know we’ll be moving this summer, and when we moved to Oregon from Texas Breydon’s cat died – so he’s acting out and expressing his fears in a way that would never even be considered by most. I know that Breydon didn’t want to hurt Jude, because he has even talked about Jude coming back “after he die.”

That knowledge is cold comfort because the outcome could be so much worse than a 4-year-old who is starting to realize that he can’t trust everything his older brother tells him to do. What happens next time? Will there be a next time? How can I help my son realize that while it is okay to ask questions and experiment and explore his world, death and dying is not something to be played with?

I don’t have answers. I’ll work to find some but right now I have to work to let go of my fears, I have to work to make sure that my special son knows I still love him, that I’m not going to hold this against him – while ensuring that my younger sons are still safe.

Please God. Let me keep my children safe.