Shane Had To Tell Me.
When Shane was little, his kindergarten teacher said to me, “I love the way he thinks. He’s just so out-of-the-box!”
Out-of-the-box? I thought. He’s the first normal person in our whole family!
Then it hit me: Shane thinks like I do, so I deemed him “normal.” We are both a little off-center, a little bit too literal, and focus maybe a bit much on tiny details. But I adore having Shane in my life, in my family, and watching him grow – hearing what he thinks. His is the opinion I value most, because it’s often most in line with my own.
That doesn’t mean Shane is perfect. In fact, I often learn a great deal from Dylan, whose thinking is so often vehemently opposed to my own.
But I’ve always been interested in Shane, since he’s not only an out-of-the-box thinker, but more emotionally balanced than I ever was.
I thought maybe some of Shane’s personality was skewed in a positive way due to his vision processing disorder. He did everything so easily and perfectly when he was undergoing treatment!
The staff at the vision therapy center even called to see how Shane was doing at home, since he seemed so wildly well-adjusted at the center. They expected him to complain substantially more about his therapy exercises.
Shane never complained.
I’ve been taking Asperger’s tests online, for Shane, for as long as I can remember, because I knew something was going on with him. Longtime blog readers will know that I determined (without professional help) that Shane definitely has Nonverbal Learning Disorder – which explained many of his symptoms, but also gave him some symptoms Shane didn’t have. I’m still not sure if I was right on that one.
I wondered, and wondered, and wondered: What is going on with Shane?
And then, when it came right down to it, Shane had to tell me. No matter how hard I looked, no matter how much I guessed, I couldn’t figure out how to solve the puzzle without some substantial clues from Shane.
I’m so proud of him for talking to me, after being bothered for so long about what was bothering him. He didn’t know enough about OCD to know that’s what was going on, in his brain, in his life. He had to tell me what he was thinking – how he was thinking – before I could even suspect OCD.
And at the same time, I’m so incredibly saddened that I didn’t see it, didn’t know it, didn’t even guess it, until Shane told me. How could I not recognize such a huge thing in my own child?
A friend told me, when I confided my angst, that it’s not so much that I didn’t recognize the OCD as I “embraced it” as being simply Shane. And that’s true: I just chalked it up to being part of his personality, and loved it along with everything else.
This tiny statement from my friend made me feel so much better.
But what about the great likelihood that I have OCD, too, and never knew it? I don’t know if my having OCD – if I do – made it easier to recognize, or harder to recognize, in Shane. And I sure don’t embrace anything in myself.
For Shane’s sake, I am glad he’s able to move right into treatment – a pretty simple, flexible treatment – and get help for what’s been ailing him.
I just wish I would have known about it sooner, so he wouldn’t have had to suffer alone.