Today, Ezra's* father and I met with his teacher, the school director, and a child psychologist who had come in to observe the classroom with specific attention to Ezra and his continuing inability (or unwillingness) to work within his school environment.
The school is very small: 16 kids grades K-3. It is Montessori-based, and run by a family of superlative individuals who are Orthodox Jews. They include Hebrew immersion and Jewish learning in the curriculum, as well as karate, art, music, and drama. In our smallish city in the buckle of the Bible Belt, this school was an excellent option for us. Despite the fact that we are by and large a secular family, the level of academics offered at the Day School and the concern for the well-being of the child within his community is unparalled in our region, and I doubt many big-city private schools could offer the level and quality of parental involvement that the Day School gives us.
Ezra is proof that you can never cover all your bases, even with the best of intentions. He was "technically" (as in, according to the arbitrary age = ability system used by most schools in the United States) a year early for kindergarten, as his birthday was a month after the cut-off date. However, there was no way on earth that he was going to be able to stomach another year of preschool, and the Day School was happy to take him as he was clearly academically ready.
The initial concerns of his social behavior were by and large attributed to the newness of the environment, the transition between schools, the raised expectations, his immaturity as a four-year-old in a class of five- and six-year-olds. But as the school year wore on and things didn't improve, the director, teachers, and I decided to seek an evaluation for him.
Ezra's father Jason*, my ex-husband, has Asperger's. Although he was undiagnosed as a child, there is really no getting around it as an adult and his diagnoses has clarified many of what appeared to be personality problems. He is fortunate to be on the extreme low end of the disorder, which to most people probably makes him appear as the shy genius type, but without the endearing and compassionate emotional side that Hollywood always adds in. In short, it is brilliance that is largely unmitigated by sensitivity to other people's reactions or feelings. Productive conversations with Ezra's dad involve a lot of repetition, so that he and I can make absolutely sure we know what each other is expressing six ways from Sunday. Actually, if you come armed with a thick skin and the ability to explore conversational tangents, Jason is a delightful guy. Definitely one of my top five favorite people, even if he didn't give me back that bookshelf until we were already divorced.
Much of what Ezra does now precisely mirrors his father's behavior at that age. Of course, Ezra's grandparents trotted his father from one psychologist to the next without a concrete diagnosis or, from my understanding, a reassuring explanation as to why their obviously bright son was doing so poorly in school. Of course, when we sat down to make a mental list of what Ezra is about, as a person, it wasn't exactly as if "THERE'S AN ASPIE HERE!" was marked out in blinking lights. If anything, to me he just seemed like a cool, smart kid:
Ezra is a collector. His first collection was balls, at less than a year old. 17 of them. Touching them, lifting them, and rolling them could entertain him for at least an hour, if someone was there with him. Following balls were wine corks, candle wax (scented or unscented), rocks, small containers (from coin purses to empty film canisters), and other tiny objects that he finds interesting (a broken barrette, an interesting bit of pine sap, a scrap of printed rice paper).
Ezra is a builder. Blocks, legos, Tinker-toys, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, those magnetic sticks that you attach with balls, furniture stacked on top of each other in constructions that defy physics, piles of books and toys arranged in complex and indecipherable patterns around his room.
For someone who's so messy, Ezra is a perfectionist. He has to have things just so. He comes to a project with a clear organization in his head, and God help whatever pipe cleaner defies the process he has ordained. Stickers, paper, writing utensils, paints, boxes of puzzles, and pillows all must be arranged perfectly. This is his own word. Perfect. It is the highest compliment he can give you (and for the record, not a word either his father or I used in praising him, preferring terms such as "Right on" and "Sweet").
Ezra loves to cook. If the choice is between watching a cartoon or helping with dinner, nine times out of ten he will drag his chair into the kitchen. In this aspect, he's an incessant bother, but to be fair to him he does an excellent job of understanding safety rules and the limits parents have to put on children around things like fire and sharp edges.
Ezra needs to know why. And if he doesn't accept your reason for why, he will have to ask you repeatedly until you come up with a different way to explain it. Then he will illustrate, using examples from his previous life experience and observations he's made on the world at large, why you are hopelessly incorrect and in what ways and how often he should be allowed to do as he originally proposed.
Before he was three, Ezra was explaining to adults how velocity worked and its bearing on gravity. Ezra physics are a riot.
Ezra displays some tendencies that do not seem in accordance with his otherwise advanced abilities. For example, he is very resistant to getting himself dressed, brushing his own teeth, putting on his own shoes, wiping himself after using the toilet, doing his part to share and help out. In this aspect, his three-year-old sister far surpasses him in terms of maturity. Ezra never had much of a "No! I do it myself!" phase, despite our repeated efforts (for the sake of saving time, if nothing else) for him to learn to do these things on his own.
Ezra is an ignorer. Up until today, I vacillated between thinking he had a hearing problem, was a naughty child who just didn't listen, or had a genuine inability to understand when something was being requested of him.
Ezra has a good eye for chess, puzzles, and manipulatives, but he also loves to run around and play outside. He is an extremely nimble climber and is not awkward or clumsy when he jumps around and plays. He is daring: he likes to climb into places from which it is impossible to descend unassisted. He likes to be observed doing this.
Ezra hates performing. For being a non-native speaker of both Hebrew and Spanish, he has an excellent understanding of both. But he will very rarely communicate in either of these languages. Nor does he like to recite things he's learned, or show you a trick that he knows. He can also tell when you are trying to slyly coax this out of him. He will, however, talk with adults in a very animated and un-shy way, if the topic of conversation is right. Recent good conversational hits that various adults have scored in the past three months: electronic dreidels, the Cranium game Cariboo, the location of South America in relation to other continents, the way in which gypsy children will take your money, what needs to happen before humans can live on the Moon. If you want Ezra to make eye contact and talk with you, you have to give up the pretense (which most adults don when communicating with children) that you really have no idea and are waiting to hear the quaint and adorable way he will explain it to you. Ezra can sense patronizism a mile away. He's more likely to be interested if he thinks you think you know everything already--- because then he can tell you something you didn't know yet.
Ezra doesn't understand how he hurts people sometimes. He displays very little recognition when others tell him that they don't like what he's doing. He doesn't seem to internalize when he's seriously offended another child until they are so completely frustrated that they burst into tears. With adults, Ezra has a very limited reaction to disappointment or admonishment expressed by grown-ups. In some ways he seems to have blinders on, unable to realize that he's acting inappropriately and has been asked to correct it. On the other hand, if he realizes what he's done he will be genuinely remorseful, offering very kind words and strangling hugs.
Despite all of our friends and family insistently assuring us to the contrary, the official (although non-specific) word is back. Ezra is an extremely intelligent child with atypical neurological development. More testing is required to pinpoint any more. He is often verbally aggressive, has an inability to transition between environments and tasks, has trouble working with a partner or in a group setting, and in his own friendly way is very disruptive. His teachers assure us that he is one of the best students, in many ways advanced beyond his peers--- when he chooses to do his work.
Now, I have a marked disdain for worksheets and meaningless exercises. Two years teaching Latin at a Waldorf school inured me against the idea that busy work was still good because it was work. The Montessori environment, I had hoped, would allow Ezra to follow his own interests and work at his pace. The thought of my sharp, sneaky little boy sitting silently in a row of desks all day was anathema--- this school truly seemed like a compromise between what I wanted (some sort of bizarre unschool home-learning where science, language arts, and history are all combined in a lesson on Roman road building) and what was offered in the area (soulless, depressing public schools or trendy, hip private schools with empty educational philosophies).
It's apparent that even in this child-led environment, a compromise must be struck. Today, it was decided that Ezra needed more direction in his lessons, which seemed like a good idea at the time: keeping him focused and interested instead of bored and disruptive. Now I realize that very little was actually decided to address his... I'll call it his unique social skills.
I just want to grab him and swing him around in the sunshine. There's nobody else who can make me laugh like he can.
*Names are changed.
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