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TURIN — In the mid-1990s, I was happily involved in building my family, which in addition to my wife and me, consisted of twin children, a boy and a girl, and little Federico. A family with three young children was very challenging, tiring at times, but it also provided a lot of joy and gave much hope for the future, in which I imagined my three children who had now become teenagers beginning to experience life together.
This joy was undermined by the realization that Federico, who was two years old, was beginning to show obvious regression in his ability to handle situations and relationships. Like all families entering the experience of autism, we began first at the pediatrician’s office, then with periodic observations at the ASL (public hospital) and finally at the Department of Child Neuropsychiatry at the Polyclinic, where Federico was diagnosed with Generalized Developmental Disorder, one of the diagnoses that lie within the autism spectrum.
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Those who are thrown into the reality of autism at first do not even have time to despair: while they try to comprehend what is happening, they are thrown into a merry-go-round of clinical tests, medical assessments and paperwork.
“As if” you are normal
When I emerged from this phase, I developed an existential strategy of responding to the situation. It was as if I were saying to my son Federico, “Don’t worry, even though you were born different from us, neurodiverse, now with therapies we will teach you to behave and live like us.”
I saw the therapies as training to get back to normality.
I viewed my son’s therapies as a training process to get back normality. Federico was for me like those Italians who, if they learn to speak English well, can live and work in London, “as if” they were English.
My strategy was to train him with therapies to make him “as if” he was normal. The more I went along thinking this way, the worse things got. The problem was that Federico did not feel accepted in his diversity.
On his 14th birthday, Federico had a tantrum and I had to intervene to contain him and prevent him from hurting himself. It was a huge shock for me. I had used my strength against my son’s strength, even if it was just to contain him.
Back then I didn’t know how to face my son’s autism — but the pain and frustration that I was feeling sparked another idea. I took Federico in front of the computer, our best way of communication, and wrote to him out of the blue, “I realized that you will never become like me. Since I do not want to lose you, because you are my son, will you teach me how to become like you?”
Yes Dad, I’ll teach you
I had reversed my training logic. Now it was I who wanted to be trained by Federico to become “as if” I were autistic — and spend time together with him in his world.
Federico was very happy with the proposal and wrote back to me (still at 30 years old today, he speaks very little): “Sure dad, I can teach you.” Of course, I could not become autistic because my brain did not function in that mode, but Federico began a training path for me in his autistic way of life. It brought us both real joy, though it would take some time to get used to.
The first experience we had was the autistic walks, which meant walking for hours, often in the woods, side-by-side without ever saying a word. At first I was anguished because of the silence, until I realized something very important: it was not true that Federico did not communicate. In fact, he was very good at it, even if it was almost always non-verbal communication.
I discovered that so many small movements of Federico’s body and face were actually communicating all the emotions and moods possible for a human being, and later realized that my body was also doing the same thing. I had discovered autistic non-verbal communication.
I had many other experiences of autism with my son, and I cannot cite all of them otherwise this article would become a book, but I want to mention the autistic dinners, which means going with Federico always to the same trattoria, always sit at the same table, always eat the same things, always pay the same bill. It helped me see that in the chaotic life of living in a big city, repeating what you already known is really a relaxing break.
Differently happy
After Federico turned 16, he wrote to me, “Since I am differently abled, then I will have to be differently happy.”
It was a beautiful sentence. In our society, too often we hear: “he is autistic and can never be happy.” There is a part of truth in this sentence that makes the lie more effective. The part of truth is that my son Federico cannot go to the mall when it is at its most chaotic time, he cannot drive a car, and he will not (perhaps cannot yet) travel alone. But if he can’t be happy like us self-proclaimed normals, he can be happy on his own path, his own terms. He can become Diversely Happy.
You should write a book.
The rest is history, or almost. When I saw that Federico was writing so well and sharing such deep thoughts, I told him that he should write a book.
Federico has now written three, and has sold (at the latest available data) 14,280 copies and writes articles in several regional and national newspapers. He also travels around Italy to spread his word of Differently Happy among students, teachers and families living with autism.
As for me, I am close to retirement, which will give us so much more time to do beautiful and useful things together. And I can add that I am very happy to have an autistic son.
