{"id":52838,"date":"2016-01-20T04:11:59","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T09:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=52838"},"modified":"2016-01-20T15:22:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-20T20:22:16","slug":"teaching-my-son-with-aspergers-syndrome-to-forgive-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/israel\/teaching-my-son-with-aspergers-syndrome-to-forgive-himself\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching My Son with Asperger’s Syndrome to Forgive Himself"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RainyIt is Shabbat afternoon and my son, who has been diagnosed with Asperger\u2019s Syndrome, kicks our bedroom door until it breaks. We are all trapped in the bedroom\u2014 my husband and me, our son and our dog. My son screams that he wants to die and that we can\u2019t possibly love him. When he discovers that he broke our bedroom door and we are all locked in, he gouges his face with his nails, creating bloody scratches that he assesses in the mirror to gauge if he has done enough damage to himself for breaking our door. I embrace him and hug him from behind, gently placing my clasped hands over his clenched fists to prevent him from hurting himself more.<\/p>\n

Yet we are all still locked in the bedroom. My daughter holds court in the lounge, playing cards with a group of friends. I suspect this is the immediate cause of his outburst; his sister was busy with her friends and wasn\u2019t playing with him. I\u2019m not certain and he can\u2019t tell me why he is so angry because he probably does not know.<\/p>\n

I call to my daughter. She answers that she is in the middle of a game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important that you come now.\u201d I explain that our bedroom door is broken and I will slide her the key under the door so she can unlock it from the outside. But the key doesn\u2019t open the door, because the wooden frame is now curved and no longer in alignment with the lock.<\/p>\n

She kicks the door back into alignment and she is eventually able to free us. The dog shoots out of our bedroom and is not seen for hours. My husband goes to mincha<\/em> and my son and I go to the living room as if nothing has happened.<\/p>\n

*****<\/strong><\/p>\n

The root cause to my son\u2019s anger is what he is learning in school. He\u2019s learning about forgiveness. He cannot understand the concept because one of the symptoms of Asperger\u2019s is endless rumination. Individuals with Asperger\u2019s contemplate their past behavior and obsess over every real and imagined imperfection in themselves and in others. The problem is that being imperfect is an inescapable part of being human. That is why forgiveness exists in the first place.<\/p>\n

In cheder<\/em> (school), my son\u2019s rebbe explains that if you quarrel with someone you should ask for forgiveness and make peace. So when my son has a fight with the boy sitting next to him, he asks for forgiveness. Then he goes home from school early and wants to miss school for the next week. \u201cBut why?\u201d I ask him. \u201cSo you had a little fight. You asked for forgiveness and now it\u2019s over. We move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t move on,\u201d he says. \u201cI asked for forgiveness, but just because he forgives me doesn\u2019t mean I forgive him. It doesn\u2019t mean the fight is over. I\u2019m still angry at him. If I go back to school and I have to sit next to him, it will be so hard for me. I asked for forgiveness because my rebbe told me to, but it\u2019s not real. The fight is not over in my heart. It\u2019s sheker <\/em>(dishonesty).\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re talking and that\u2019s good. The problem is how seriously my son takes this conversation and the conclusion he draws about himself: \u201cI am a rasha <\/em>(a wicked person),\u201d he tells me. \u201cI don\u2019t forgive even when my rebbe tells me I have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

My son unintentionally opens a theological quandary: Can any of us truly forgive another person simply because we are commanded to?<\/p>\n

We remember and reflect on our past mistakes to learn from them: it\u2019s a desirable spiritual quality, but my son takes this to an extreme and it becomes a permanent obstacle. He cannot move forward. He can\u2019t imagine that his friends in school would ever forgive him because he can\u2019t forgive himself.<\/p>\n

He can\u2019t understand that his way of looking at the world is not like that of his ten-year-old peers. The technical term for this a deficit in the theory of mind: he is unable to look at the world from another person\u2019s perspective. In his case, it\u2019s the minds of his classmates.<\/p>\n

My son\u2019s learns in a mainstream cheder<\/em>, and his classmates are neuro-typical\u2014normal boys who listen politely to what the rebbe says; ask forgiveness when they are told to whether they mean it or not; and then go right on fighting, forgiving, and forgetting about it the next day. They move on. Hopefully, as a result of what the rebbe has said, their fights are a little less intense and a little less violent. But not necessarily: quarreling, and settling these quarrels with their fists, is a developmental stage that they will hopefully move past by the time they are teenagers. For now, these boys continue fighting, forgiving, and moving on, on an almost daily basis. This is called being a normal fifth-grade boy. This is called childhood.<\/p>\n

Not for my son. He simply cannot imagine that his classmates think and feel differently about their behavior than his rebbe does. He can\u2019t imagine that they don\u2019t take what their rebbe says as seriously as he does.<\/p>\n

My son\u2019s Asperger\u2019s world is defined by black and white thinking, a world of absolutes. In this world, there is no room for mistakes. It is heavy burden for a ten-year-old. Sometimes he lashes out defiantly. Sometimes he is overcome by remorse and self-mutilates. Mostly he worries about losing control, about making a mistake, about that one wrong move that will define him as evil forever. When he is not worrying about the future, he is ruminating about the past and the mistakes he has already made. He can\u2019t understand the concept of childhood or what it feels like to be a child.<\/p>\n

*****<\/strong><\/p>\n

My son is the pride of the cheder<\/em>. He started learning Mishnah Brochos<\/em> when he was six, and he still remembers what he learned. He made a siyum<\/em> on all of Seder Nezikim<\/em> when he was nine. People think I must be so proud of having a son like this. I would be proud, if I wasn\u2019t so sad over his social isolation.<\/p>\n

I call his rebbe.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow is it going in class? How is my son doing?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat!\u201d He responds with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes everything is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd socially?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

Here he pauses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, he sits at his desk during the break, waiting for the next class to begin,\u201d my son\u2019s rebbe explains. \u201cI don\u2019t know why he doesn\u2019t just join the other boys. He needs to initiate and ask them what they\u2019re doing. They would let him play if he showed some interest. They\u2019re nice boys. But he just sits there, fiddling with his Rubik cube and waiting for the break to end. A whole day can pass without his saying a word to another boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being religious has not caused my son to have Asperger\u2019s Syndrome, and becoming non-religious would not cure his symptoms. But the manner in which he expresses his anxiety, and the nature of his worries, are definitely expressed in religious terms. If only he didn\u2019t put such tremendous pressure on himself to be that complete tzaddik<\/em> he learns about in school, and then have such tremendous meltdowns when he can\u2019t live up to those expectations, things would be different.<\/p>\n

I daven for my son every day. We have good days and bad days. The good days are very good, and the bad days are very bad. When the bad days are really bad, I tell myself that Hashem doesn\u2019t make mistakes, and he entrusted this child to us because He believes in our dedication to our son, and our ability to intervene in his life in a positive way. For me, as his mother, this does not simply mean that he learns enough Gemarah<\/em> that his rebbe and I can bask in the brilliance of this young prodigy. It means helping him gain the social skills to find a friend to talk to during the break between classes.<\/p>\n

At first, his rebbe suggests we send a chess set to school so that my son can play a game with his classmates. My son\u2019s rebbe even offers to play the first game wit him to create a buzz so that other kids join. This works for a few days. Until my son gets comfortable playing chess in class, and begins to beat each of his classmates, one by one. Soon nobody wants to play chess with him anymore, and my son returns to fiddling with his Rubik\u2019s cube alone during breaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny progress?\u201d I ask the rebbe a week later on the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he admits. \u201cNot much.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a mistake to think that people with Asperger\u2019s don\u2019t want to connect with others. They simply don\u2019t know how. My son wants friends. He is lonely and isolated. He likes chess because it is a game with rules. The bishop moves diagonally, the rook moves in straight lines. Reaching out to another child is a game without rules and involvement with another child has too many risks for him. What if the child doesn\u2019t like him? What if they eventually get into a fight? What if he has to forgive his friend even if he doesn\u2019t really mean it? Faced with all that uncertainty, he chooses to play alone.<\/p>\n

For now, I suppose the challenge of forgiveness is my own. I need to forgive myself for being unable to teach my son a lesson he is not yet ready to learn. I need to forgive his rebbe for being unable to help him find a friend and for being unable to understand what keeps my son locked in isolation. I need to forgive the people who see my son\u2019s brilliance, but don\u2019t see his pain. Most of all, I need to forgive my son for not being ready to learn the lesson that one day he will have to learn: that sometimes we all need to forgive ourselves.<\/p>\n

The author has requested to remain anonymous.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is Shabbat afternoon and my son, who has been diagnosed with Asperger\u2019s Syndrome, kicks our bedroom door until it breaks. We are all trapped in the bedroom\u2014 my husband and me, our son and our dog. My son screams that he wants to die and that we can\u2019t possibly love him. 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