🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
I love my son Elisha to bits, but I don't know if he loves me. There is nothing that I want more in the world than for him to say those words to me—and to mean them.
My wife and I have been blessed with four children. Three are neurotypical extroverts, but our fourth child, Elisha, is more like me: quiet and introspective, and so very gentle. When Elisha was three, it was clear that his verbal development was lagging, and some time later he was diagnosed with moderate-severe autism.
This was both heartbreaking news and wonderful. Heartbreaking because of the enormous parenting challenges that we faced to help Elisha find his way, and wonderful because I understood, or at least I thought I understood, something of autism. I too inhabit the spectrum, the so-called Asperger's band, and I thought I could give Elisha something I never had: a parent who understood. I don't know if I was right.
When Elisha was four, I trained him to say "I love you" as I dropped him off at preschool. With some prompting, he would give me a hug, and say "I love you" in Hebrew. He dutifully repeated those words to me daily in a toneless voice, looking away from me, and then he would go play with his firetrucks.
Elisha is now eight years old. I don't ask him to say "I love you" anymore. It is too painful.
What I have learned from parenting an autistic son
Elisha has taught me so much about myself. Tendencies of mine that have grown muted because of vigilant masking are present in him in their beautiful unvarnished form, like stimming—those calming repetitive motions that help regulate mood and behavior.
I don't think I ever stood on my head while munching Cheerios like he does, but I used to calm myself with wide circular hand motions. I think I lost an opportunity at a professorship once because of my "enthusiastic" hand gestures, so I have policed myself rigorously in the past 15 years and I no longer stim in that way. I rigidly hold my hands at my side or seize the podium for dear life. I don't feel calmer or happier, but I don't stim anymore. Seeing Elisha stim makes me nostalgic.
Parenting Elisha sometimes requires more guesswork than average. Elisha's vocabulary is limited to simple sentences, usually no more than six or seven words long. These sentences usually convey his immediate needs: eating, the bathroom, sleeping, and rarely anything else. Often these statements are expressed in the second or third person, and somewhat ungrammatically, although he is making steady progress on that front.
The only word for feeling that Elisha uses regularly is sadness. The deep irony here, for which I am immensely grateful, is that Elisha is a very happy little boy. I will often find him laughing—laughing at the world, laughing at himself—with genuine, unironic laughter. When I hear it, I sometimes cry. I ask him to tell me the joke, but he can't or he won't.
When he says "Elisha is sad," you have to carefully watch his face. Elisha is sometimes sad. Sometimes his little brother went downstairs behind him instead of ahead of him, sometimes his avocado's blemishes have not been sufficiently removed, or salt was not sprinkled in the proper amount.
Usually, though, Elisha is happy or amused when he says this. It is often a conversational catalyst for him, which I love, though these conversations will sometimes consist of me telling him he is not actually sad, and him repeating that he is, and doing this 50 times in a row. He will then laugh as if to say, "Look, I got my father to repeat this 50 times." That is quite funny actually.
Sometimes Elisha will wake up at 5 a.m. and talk to himself. I am a very early riser myself, and I try to tune in to these conversations. Sometimes, I recognize a word here and there, but there is no coherence I can readily discern. Most importantly, though, he seems to be in a place of calm happiness. When I try to shush him because he is waking up his poor brothers, he shushes right back at me and laughs like a baby hyena. It is so vexing but, at the same time, amazing.
An unspoken bond
Each morning, my son Elisha eats the same breakfast: Cheerios with maple syrup, avocado with salt, and oatmilk. As the clock draws close to seven, he is full of excited energy: his bus is coming! He gets dressed fast, and for a few minutes we sit together on the steps outside, just father and son, holding hands. We identify the birds chirping and read some of the traffic signs.
Then the bus is here, we walk together until the door of the bus and he climbs on. I wave goodbye, but he is not looking at me.
At 4 p.m. he comes home, and I am waiting at the stoop. He steps off the bus with a beautiful smile, and I ask him how his day in school was. He says "yes,"' still smiling, and we come back inside.
Elisha does not tell me he loves me anymore. But I believe love is most evident in interactions spanning a lifetime, even when the words are not always there.
Rabbi Dr. Tzemah Yoreh is the head of the City Congregation in New York City. He is the author of So Compassionate it Hurts: My Life as a Rabbi on the Spectrum, which is out now.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
