The Monsters Within

“Matthew!” I asserted loudly. “Get off of me.” I was lying in bed, barely awake, my almost three-year-old whirling dervish of a son standing squarely on my chest. He peered at me and laughed in a manner I can only describe as demonically. He did not, in fact, get off of me. Instead, he slammed down onto my still sleep-soaked body, his knees, and hands pounding into my chest and belly with a force greater than his mass. I fought back tears of frustration and grabbed his body and wrestled him off of me. 

This was indicative of how a great many days as his mother would start. Oddly. Chaotically. Violently. Matthew is my third son of four and the two before him together hadn’t wrought as much mayhem in their collective 12 years as he could in a single day. Consistently wild, he was teeming with indescribable energy and challenging me in ways I had no idea how to manage. From the day he was born, he was so different from his older brothers. I was losing hope that I could crack the code to this mysteriously beautiful, wild boy. 

I was fucking lost and knew he wasn’t what anyone could consider to be “normal.” Hell. I’d known it from his infancy, when I’d put him to my breast and he’d gnaw on my nipple with the fierceness of a baby grizzly bear, drawing blood beyond a poor latch. He didn’t nap like typical infants. No cat naps, no mid-morning naps, and afternoon naps, no! He would take one long, oddly timed nap at around four pm and spend the rest of his day peering around the room like a little watchman. He appeared to be plotting something and he seemed wizened.

His crying at night was intense and rarely easily abated. He seemed anxious if you can imagine a tiny newborn having marked anxiety. I was a third-time mom with this boy. I had seen a thing or two of fussy babies and toddler oddities. What I experienced with him was not even close.

Not long after the day he stood on my chest at the crack of dawn, I made an appointment with his pediatrician for his three-year well check-up. I had addressed my concerns with her before as to his challenging behaviors and propensity to absolute unhinged energy. She also met me with a calm retort such as “Every child is different, you can’t expect him to be just like his brothers” or some other head-patting brush-off that made me feel like I had no idea what I was doing.

She reassured me that all the behaviors I described could be chalked up to weird shit babies and toddlers do. I tried to explain to her his behavior is not normal at all. She would come up with a perfectly logical-sounding reason as to why it was normal and I was overreacting. But, she hadn’t yet witnessed the full-on Matthew Ingles experience. The night before his three-year well check-up, I literally lowered my weary body to my knees and prayed to the sky that he would lose his shit in front of her. And, lose his shit he did.

I arrived at the office on time with my wee Tasmanian devil by my side while his baby brother sat calmly in his stroller. We entered the office and were ushered into the examination room. He sat on the bed in the room in his jeans, jeans jacket, and steel-toed, black cowboy boots, looking angelic. He was actually drinking chocolate milk from his Thomas the Tank sippy cup and looking at a book quietly until the moment the doctor entered the room.

“Hewwwwwwoooooooo!” He yelled, launching the hard plastic sippy cup across the room and at the pediatrician’s face. I looked up realizing my prayers had been answered. She narrowly stopped the cup from hitting her in the face as my gorgeous, curly-haired, tow-headed boy vaulted off the exam table and charged towards her bringing a length of the crinkly paper table cover along with him. He gripped that paper in one hand and used the other hand to yank instruments and glass jars off the counter and wall.

 

He laughed his hearty, devilish laugh the whole time he destroyed the room. I didn’t intervene. I needed her to see this.

She clamped down her hand on the top of his head and said “Matthew! Stop!” This only fueled more laughter and tumult as he replied with a lusty “Twy and make me, doctor!” This tiny boy--who could not yet pronounce his r’s--was ready to full-on fight with his pediatrician. I looked up at her and she said “Please. Make him stop!” I stood up calmly and said, with a grateful resolve, “I will. Do you see? We need help.”

That was the day we got through to the doctor. She saw him as he was, not as the model boy he could pretend to be. She saw the raw, firecracker of endless energy and willful defiance and the actual agent of total chaos my son was. She gave me referrals to neurologists and behavioral pediatric psychologists.

A few months and a lot of tests later, we learned he was on the Autism Spectrum. His specific diagnosis: Asperger’s Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Finally, We knew what his diagnosis was and we could chart a path to helping him become everything he could be.

For anyone familiar with Spectrum Disorders you know not one diagnosis is like any other. Just like no one person is like another. Matthew was Matthew. We weren’t going to change or cure him. We were going to help him harness his brilliance, tenacity, and sheer force of will into positive qualities that would serve him well. We just had to find a way to get through to him and with luck and guidance, we did.

This is not my story or the story of me being an Autism mom. This is the story of me witnessing my son become who he is. Learning about himself, understanding himself, and becoming one of the most incredible, committed, and determined people I will ever have the privilege to know. 

Once we had him diagnosed, we did the IEP evaluation with Farmington Public Schools. It was one of the most trying days of my little boy’s life. It was hours long with so many assessments and interviews and new people talking to him, at him and directing him, and testing him. He was absolutely adorable walking into that school room, loudly introducing his baby brother “Wittle Wuke, see, guys? Isn’t he so cute!” His normal uniform of jeans and jean jacket, a hand-me-down knit sweater that looked like he’d borrowed it from Freddy Krueger, and those clacking cowboy boots.

The tests ranged from academic achievement to behavioral limitations to taking directions. He was ferried around the room by person after person and when he showed his ODD by refusing to do a task, they dangled a carrot over his head. If he performed the laundry list of tasks, they would allow him to thumb through a Thomas the Tank engine book he had been eagle-eyeing since we walked into the room. They used that damned book as bait to finish all the testing activities.

I remember watching him as he completed the last of the many tasks. He looked up, his deep brown eyes widening with excitement, and said “Dis is great! I get to read da book now, mumma!” I smiled broadly and congratulated him and we waited for the test administrator to hand him the book. She looked at him and dismissively said “Sorry, kiddo, we don’t have time to look at it right now. Maybe another time.”

My heart did a swift deep dive into my belly. His face contorted with confusion as he reasoned back to her. “I did all da fings. I did all da fings you asked, wady. I was good and you pwomised me da book.”  She shook her head and he looked at me, eyes pleading and tears of betrayal and frustration welling in his eyes. “Mumma. I did all da fings, I was good and I wanna wook at da book. I wove Thomas.” My heart ached and I appealed to the woman. She summarily denied me and gathered her papers together as she hoped to calmly usher us out.

She had another thing coming. My small but wiry, muscled son bellowed “You will show me dat book, wady, or I will punch you.” 

“Oh, fuck it’s on.” I thought as his tears transformed into rage and revenge. I looked at her and I said ‘He’s three, it was unfair to use that as a promise. Let him look at the book, and set a timer for him. I can bring it back into the room when he’s done, please.” She shook her head once again and said “No.” He clenched his little fists and balled them to his thighs and howled “I mean it, wady! Wet me see dat book, or I am going to punch you. Pwease! See? I am saying fings powitely! Show me da book, now or, I will punch you!” 

She turned to me and I sat there. I was in no position to stand between her and her rightful destiny as she once again denied my son the chance to see the book she had bribed with him. He bounced into the air and ran towards her, fists up, ready to throw punches. I tersely stated, “He did warn you. You’ll have to handle this yourself now.” She flung one hand out and grabbed the top of his head to keep him at bay as he wildly threw his fists at her pleading “Pwease, wady! Wet me go! I need to punch you now!”

She never let my sweet boy see that book. It gutted me because it was shitty and he had worked so hard for so long that day. When we left that room, I sat down on the floor with him and explained to him that I think what she did was wrong but that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life threatening to kick people’s asses because things didn’t go his way. “Matthew William.” I said, calmly, “I don’t think that was nice of her but, you can only control what you do. I know you’re little and it’s hard to understand.” He said something through his tears that will stick with me forever and shows who he is to this day, “I can wearn fings, mumma. I am good.” I hugged him, tears springing forth again, and said, “You are so, so good, my sweet boy. You can learn anything you put your mind to.”

I kissed his forehead and he asked “Mumma? What kind of burgers do I have again?” I smiled and said “Asperger's, baby. Now, let’s go and get you a Thomas the Tank Engine Book at the bookstore that you can keep for your own. (Yes. That’s me. The mom of the toddler pugilist who rewards her son for threatening to beat up an educator by buying him a book. I would do it again in a heartbeat.)

He came to understand Asperger’s as something he had but not something that defined him. (Although, he often tried to use it as an excuse to get out of doing things. This is how we knew he was connecting the dots.) “Guys I can’t learn how to use the lawnmower! I have Asperger’s!” He shouted this at his father and me the summer he turned 10. My husband said, “Your brothers started mowing at age 10, you can, too.” He looked back at me like I would throw my arms around him and save him from this most unreasonable task. “MOM?” He called out. I smiled and said, “If you are savvy enough to try and use your Asperger’s as an excuse for getting out of yard work, you’re savvy enough to do the yard work.” He arched his right eyebrow and flashed me that devilish smile.

He is 18 now. My little professor, my energizer bunny of a boy who committed to doing the hard work of figuring his diagnosis out. I watched him transform from a child I could barely manage without being bitten, kicked, and beaten--I am not exaggerating. Multiple medical professionals asked me if I was a victim of spousal abuse--to a child who masters everything he puts his brilliant mind to. 

He made a commitment to himself as he entered sixth grade to maintain a 4.0 or higher GPA until he graduated. My husband and I supported him yet did not push him to do this. (In fact, with his OCD, albeit well under control, this goal terrified me.) He set out to be the best he could be and did not worry about competing with anyone else but himself. I am proud to say he achieved that goal. The qualities that had once confounded me he has taken ownership of and is using to blow me away. He is the picture of perseverance, discipline, and self-mastery.

I am so proud of who is and who he continues to become. I’m constantly impressed by his commitment to doing things, even when he doesn’t want to. I am inspired by his resolve and his bold spirit.

He is exactly who chooses to be.