Trains and the 3 Vs

Matt didn't like me to sing him to sleep. He would put his hand over my mouth (the ultimate singing critique?). What did he like? He liked trains. He always wanted me to draw him a train. He liked stories about trains, maps with train-tracks on them, the letter "T" - because after all, T stood for train. Trains, trains, trains - what would I have done without his love of trains?

Think about it for a moment. Trains line up in long lines. They have wheels that spin. They are beautifully crafted, and you can ride on them. They have various cars they can pull but there is always an engine and a caboose. The tracks seem to go on forever - an unbroken line. Hmm . . an un-broken line. Connections. Constant. Let me tell a few stories with these influences . . .

Learning to Draw -
Trains - what else? Matt would bring paper and pencil to me and push for me to draw a train. Now let's clear up my drawing ability early. Yes, I can draw. I'm an artist, but my skill is not one where I can just picture it in my head and it looks great. Far from it. I need to look at something to draw it with any accuracy, so my piddly little drawings of trains were rudimentary at best. One day, I put the pencil in his hand and clasped his hand in mine. Then slowly, we traced a train from one of his many train books. It took! He began to draw, and draw, and draw. Matt is now 24 years old and an artist. He draws free hand from both models and memory. No erasure marks - ever (if he has to erase, he throws it away!). The renderings are simply breath-taking at times. He chooses animation over real-life and that's O.K. His animations make my real-life drawings seem so plain.

Lesson learned - give him the tools he needs to do what he needs.

Learning the Alphabet -
The letter "T", of course, began his ability to understand and write the written word. Every morning, waiting for the school bus, we would draw on the frost-covered glass of the back door. I would write the alphabet and stop at the letter "S" and he would write the "T" and we continued. Day after day, year after year, it grew into his writing of the alphabet, then words - like his name, then his address, his phone number, and on and on. There were other times too, in school and at home, where we practiced, but the backdoor was his starting point.

Lesson learned - give him what he needs where he needs it (writing in frost was fun!).

Learning to Read -
Reading about . . you guessed it, trains! Type of trains, names of trains and train stations, names of all of Thomas the Tank Engine's friends. If it concerned trains, then he wanted to know. Wanting to know meant learning to read, and before long he branched out into other areas and new interests arose, but it all began with trains.

Lesson learned - If he likes it, use it.

Learning to Connect -
This one is directed at me.I needed to connect the dots. Patterns exist everywhere, and yes, even in the autistic mind that seems at times chaotic. Laughter, which would burst from him for no apparent reason, upward gazes that lasted minutes, crying and sadness out of what felt like nowhere. I had to learn to connect the dots.

Laughter, which I have seen listed as "inappropriate" under signs and symptoms of autism was not inappropriate after all. Observation and reasoning lead me to the understanding that he was actually replaying an event or TV show that was comical and laughing at it as he thought about it. Have you ever done that? Thought about something funny and giggled? Maybe smiled?

His "inappropriate crying" turned out to be the same way - he was thinking of something that had upset him earlier and was re-living it. Surely, you have done that! Thought about a loved one or pet and the sadness just came in and overwhelmed you. An autistic individual has trouble saying what they think, can't express the right words. It's hard for us mere mortals to understand what they feel - but they feel everything. It's just under the surface, hidden from view, but it is there.

And what about the 3 Vs? This story was one of those ah-ha! moments we get sometimes. Matt was in his early years of drawing. He spoke in simple sentences, and while driving would utter, "3 Vs". He would draw three V shapes, side - by - side, and would connect them with long lines to another set of 3 V-shapes. During a drive one day he uttered his famous "3 Vs!" and gazed upward. I leaned back and gazed with him and after a few moments realized what the 3 Vs were. He was looking at the telephone lines, the large ones that traverse mountain sides. These large electric lines carried 3 separate lines and connected to the poles via a V-shaped terminal - the 3 Vs. Yes, of course! Lines that seem to go on forever, connecting, communicating. Why had I not seen this sooner? It all made sense. After that revelation we made sure to drive past the mountain-traversing telephone lines as often as possible - after all, it is the simple things that bring us joy.