Parents get to learn the power of patience

Sister Lil is the assistant principal at Aidan’s school. For a woman who never had progeny, she sure does know children. On one of my exasperated days, when I had actually calculated Aidan’s math homework, so I knew it was done, and I told him three times that he had to hand in the assignment and he still didn’t turn it in, she smiled and said, “Thirty.”

“Thirty what?” I asked, terrified that this was either a fundraiser or a penance I had incurred and forgotten.

“Thirty times. No matter what you want to teach a child, whether it be tying his shoes, or doing her homework or not burping in front of the nun. All children: boy/girl, black/white, special ed/gifted. You have to tell them 30 times. And on the 31st, they’ll learn it. And you know what you’ll learn in the meantime?” I shook my head. “Patience.” A deputy with whom I work walked into my office on Thursday, and let me know he needed to take some time off, as his only son had been diagnosed “on the autism spectrum.”

It’s hard to be grateful at times like this, but I started out with, “At least now you know.” For a long time, the FisherPaulsons didn’t know. We had confused ourselves with a normal family, only to find that there is no such thing as a normal family.

Oh, we knew about the fact that the majority of families were parented by mixed-sex couples. But, even that was deceptive. The most recent census showed that only 69 percent of children in America are raised by two parents. The rest is all single parents, grandparents and what-have-you. The part about gay parents is a little harder to track down since, even in the ultramodern 21st century, there are still people on the down low, but we’re not as unique as we once were. The Williams Institute estimated that as many as 6 million children have an LGBT parent.

Took a while for us to know in what way we were not normal. We knew that Zane was spirited, but his first expulsion, from day care, was for biting another child, and, honestly, we had no idea: Did other children bite? Nibble? Did they bite enough to get expelled?

Crazy Mike has had his fair share of challenging children, so I asked him. He told me that all children try out biting, but eventually figure it out. Two months later, I asked how long it took them to figure it out. He asked his wife Jeannette, who had run a day care for many years. “Only way to stop ’em: bite back.”

But then we adopted Aidan, who never once bit anyone. In fact, for his first year and a half, Aidan didn’t smile or talk. Now by this time, we had one other child to compare him to, and that was Zane, who had never stopped talking. So by then we knew we needed some kind of help. We knew then that the outer, outer, outer Excelsior orbited a planet other than Normal.

So what did I tell this deputy? I told him, “Your son is still your son, only now you know the challenges. And over the years, you might get angry, or frustrated, but you’ve got to remember: The boy never chose this. No, given a multiple choice, most of us deep down would rather be normal. It takes a long time to find out that being average means not being exceptional. So go ahead and mourn the loss of normality, then roll up your sleeves and be a father.

“That means struggling with every school principal who thinks that they know more about your own son than you do. Some nights it means the microwave blowing up or getting rocks thrown at your head. That means arguing for an education plan that works, and making the school stick to it, but you know what you’ll learn in the meantime?” He shook his head. “Patience.” “Does it get any better?” “It does and it doesn’t. You don’t get normal victories. My boys don’t get sleepovers. They never get high grades for decorum. To this day, we still have to hide the lighters and the knives. But we get little successes. Let me tell you about the Randall Museum Science Fair. Last week, Aidan actually came in second place with his exhibit on wolves. Uncharacteristically, Zane congratulated him. And Aidan, his hair disheveled, the only boy wearing sweatpants at the presentation, just shrugged.

Zane asked, “You still don’t smile, do you, Aidan?” to which his brother shrugged again.

“That’s all right,” Zane added, “I’ll smile for you.”

I told him, “Your son is still your son, only now you know the challenges. And over the years, you might get angry, or frustrated, but you’ve got to remember: The boy never chose this.” PUBLIC “When EAVESDROPPING my boss told me I didn’t get the promotion, I went into the breast-feeding room and cried. We don’t have a crying room.” Woman to woman, overheard at Fifth and Market by Anna Mindess