My little Cameron boy.

As promised, here is the post about Cameron. I started noticing things about Cameron a few months before we had pieced things together with Sean. I remember thinking that they had similar anger patterns and dealt with  failures very similarly too. I asked Sean one time, "how did you pass that on to him, it almost seems genetic?" I laughed it off, not knowing there could be any truth in my question. I could understand the source of Sean's anger, he had been through some really tough things in his life. But I couldn't understand why Cameron acted the way he did. He seemed to act like a troubled teenager. He would tell us he hated us at the drop of a pin and be deeply offended or hurt by a timeout and lash out in anger or violence. I worried for his little life. I knew no one understood him like I did. It was going to be hard if no one understood that there was the sweetest, most lovable child hiding under all that anger. Besides the anger issues, I remember thinking that there were a few things that were strange, but I never would have put it all together had I not figured out Sean first. He had some weird quirks, but I thought he might just be a little OCD. Here are a few things that I noticed about Cameron after the fact.

• Loud noises bother him, he is always covering his ears when we run the vacuum or when he hears certain pitches.
• Loves learning, and learns very fast. He is very good at learning, he is constantly surprising me with words and ideas I never knew he knew.
• Very smart, he just looks at things from a completely different perspective than a lot of kids.
• Very rule oriented, e.g., If I tell the kids to turn the TV off he will walk up and shut it off immediately before anyone has time to pause a movie, or save a game. He sometimes ruthlessly will enforce rules with Braydon, he doesn't understand that hitting the baby is worse than the baby touching the remote.
• Extremely literal. We have to watch everything we say. He got very upset with Sean when Sean told Cameron he would run a little bath for him. He basically was angry because he said he couldn't fit in a small tub. When we were swimming this summer, I told him that he was my little fish because he was swimming so well. He got extremely upset because he said he was a boy, not a fish. I have thousands of examples of this one. Some are pretty hilarious, and they offer up comedic relief for us in the moment, but he fails to understand that we aren't laughing at him in a mean way, and he becomes deeply hurt.
• Difficulty reading body language, facial expression and tone. Many times we have been in a store and he loudly announces that he hates a certain child walking passed him. ("Me hate that boy!") He has a hard time understanding facial expressions, so when someone is looking inquisitively at him, he is unable to determine the expression and immediately thinks they are mean.
• Repetitive routines and rituals. He has to have his blankets laid completely flat over him. He has to have his towel opened completely wide before we wrap it around him. His jacket has to be zipped exactly the way he likes it, in the order he likes it. His gloves have to be on before we get in the car, etc...  It takes constant explaining to get him to change his mind about things. We spend most of our days talking about the "why" of things, and the reasoning behind each choice. Fortunately for us, it avoids 90 percent of his meltdowns.

•  Strong sensitivity to sound, touch, taste, sight, and smell. He hates getting his clothes wet, he will take all his clothes off when they get a little bit wet. He hates having accidents to the point that he will sit and poop in someones backyard over doing it in his pants. (We've had lots of talks about this.) He's obsessed with skin. He can hear the neighborhood dog and obsesses about him jumping over the fence.
• Amazing memory. He recalls things from a year ago and hes only three years old. He pays attention to lots of details as well, things I never notice, he has thought about.
• Can play with his toys for hours uninterrupted, especially trains. I thought that this is what "normal" children were like because Ammon was so far on the opposite end of the spectrum and had to have me with him and entertaining him every second. Cameron could always play forever with his toys.
• Wants to make friends, but lacks the social ability to do it a lot of the time. He will blurt out something completely unrelated to the topic of a conversation in his attempt to join in. When he fails to join in the conversation, he attempts (if he hasn't crumpled to the floor in defeat) to physically get into the conversation, sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in not-so-good ways. He has broken a toy children were playing with, because they failed to reciprocate the desire to play with him. He will also just give up and retreat, hang his head, and say "no body loves me."
• Black and white thinking. You are good, or bad. No in between. I remember a time Ammon and Cameron both asked for candy for breakfast. I told them no. They were a little disgruntled so I said sarcastically, " I know, I'm such a mean mommy, huh?" Ammon told me "NO! You're a nice mommy, I love you" and Cameron replied with "You a mean mommy, me hate you!" He always will come back when he is his sweet little self and apologize though. He doesn't like being on bad terms for a long time.
• In his "own little world." We always joked about Cameron being in his own little world and that if you ever want to escape reality, go talk to Cameron! Others have described him as marching to the beat of his own drum.
• Clumsy. We always thought we were just comparing him too much to Ammon's natural ability to play sports.
• Desires friendships and social contact but difficulty acquiring and maintaining them.
• Difficulty understanding others’ feelings. He would become extremely upset that I put him on timeout for poking the baby in the eye. He said I hurt his feelings. He had no concept of the actions he did to warrant a time out. It takes a lot of explaining and role playing for him to understand how others are feeling, but we have worked a lot it and he has made great improvements. 
• Loyal. He is fiercely loyal. He will jump to the aid of anyone in need. There have been times he has misjudged Sean and me being flirtatious as an argument and he runs to whoever he feels is being mistreated. He will stand up to me when I am unjustly assigning a timeout to one of his brothers. He will confront Sean if he feels Sean isn't acting nicely toward me or his brothers. He does all this because he is beyond loyal, and he will never let his sense of justice or right and wrong go as long as he feels he has the power to do something. He will never stand by and watch innocence (or what he perceives as innocent) be mistreated. He has been wrong, and he has been right in some circumstances, but in every circumstance, his undying loyalty shines through.

Cameron was officially diagnosed last month, but we started testing back in July. Before that I had been working with him, helping him with his eye contact, helping him understand his actions, helping him be aware of others emotions, and guiding him in his interactions with others. Although I didn't know he has Asperger Syndrome, I did know that he was misunderstood and somehow lacked the the ability to communicate with others. I tried to help him as much as I could. Later, I learned that I was already doing what the therapists would have recommended. (Divine inspiration!) We have been working on a lot of things in the last six months and Cameron has made incredible improvements all across the board. Begining school was also a tremendous blessing for him because it provided him the structure and routine he was craving. The routine alone has made him one of the happiest little boys I know. He still has issues with his anger, but he is overall tremendously more happy. He randomly professes his love for each of us and he rarely tells us he hates us any more. (Although his weapon of choice lately is "Me not your mommy anymore," and yes I have to hide my giggles.

 I'm happy we got the diagnosis--not because I want to label him--but because I wanted people to understand him a little more. I want to equip him with the tools he needs to face the world and succeed. I want him to feel like he can do anything, and not feel trapped and alone. I know that in order to be helped, he needs to be helped in a way that makes the most sense to him. I could make him live on time out, but our relationship wouldn't grow any stronger and he would probably grow to resent me. Our relationship has grown exponentially in the last six months. We talk everything to death, until he firmly understands it, and until I see that light in his eyes that tells me he understands.  You know, it's always fun to look at the world through your children's eyes, and with Aspergers children it might seem a little harder. It takes a little more effort to wrap your brain around the way they think, or how they process things, but once you do, you will love what you see. Things make sense to them in ways that other people can't see and it's a beautiful thing to catch a glimpse of that. I love crawling into my little Cameron boy's  head. It's always worth the journey.