Binkie-dom
by
Jeff Stimpson
At 7:05 p.m., Alex spills a 60-piece jigsaw puzzle
across his bedroom floor. I tell him to pick all the pieces up,
please.
"Binkie!" he barks.
"Alex," I reply, "you're miles right now
from binkie-dom, pal!"
His binkies ("pacifiers," as I once knew them) sit
in a nut can on the shelf of the boys' room. Or maybe a cocoa can --
I can't tell, as somebody ripped the label off weeks ago. Maybe me,
out of anger in the middle of the night that my
nearly-seven-year-old can't go back to sleep without a binkie, and
anger that through the evening he had scattered them around the
house as if laying out a scavenger hunt.
Alex has four binkies. (Ned, incidentally, shoves
one in his mouth when he sees Alex with one, and when he thinks it
will bother me. Ned looks ridiculous with a binkie. There, I said
it, and I don't think that one day he'll hate me for saying it.)
Alex has two "old binkies," one green and one yellow, and two "new,"
yellow and blue. The shields on the new binkies -- I guess you call
them shields; I really didn't think I'd have to be thinking about
binkies at my age -- have holes in them, like masks for tiny hockey
goalies. Alex won't have anything to do with the new binkies. But
after especially trying schooldays, Alex will by 7:30 fly into the
living room from his bedroom, a binkie in his face and fondling a
soft piece of cloth, reminding me of Churchill conducting a last bit
of war business before bed in a robe and with a cigar. Alex is
tactile, and is another term I remember from deep in doctor days:
"Orally centered."
Sometimes when we're settling the boys for bed on
the other side of 8:30, Alex gnaws on his binkie, snapping it like
gum. "Alex, stop chewing or no binkie. Stop chewing or no
binkie. No, you sit here and read with me. Ned, take that out of
your mouth. You look silly, Ned. I'm sorry, but there, I said it
..."
"Binkie!" says Alex. "Go to bed! Binkie!"
I recently told someone that there are 30-year-old
autistic kids who still use binkies. "That's because their parents
let them!" she replied.
We do. I do anyway, because life with Alex is a
list of things to teach him, a series of fronts: advancing on some,
holding ground on others. He is solidly into his schooling, for
instance, at least for now and apparently for the next year or two.
Alex's teacher takes her class on as many as a half-dozen field
trips a month, which has greatly helped him learn how to hold a hand
and walk semi-civilized down the sidewalk. He attends a rec program
on Saturdays and on school breaks. He often sits quietly in
restaurants now (especially Burger King), and I'd sure rather fly
cross-country with Alex than with Ned. Alex has learned how to ride
on a school bus.
For dinner now, we can offer Alex chicken nuggets
or a hot dog (no bun); though dessert will likely be a
chocolate protein bar, it could also be vanilla ice cream or yogurt.
He likes to zip up all jackets now, including Ned's. He can slip on
his own socks and shoes. He's intensely curious about buttons and
belts. When I have the boys for an outing, we climb rocks in Central
Park. We haven't needed a playground in months, and a stroller in
many months more than that. On a Cape Cod trail in early September,
we discovered that Alex may dart ahead, but he will stop if told,
"Alex, wait for Ned/mommy/daddy!"
Jill has toilet training on the list for this
Christmas break. I think we have a 50/50 chance of succeeding.
On no front are we losing ground. I'm not happy
Alex still needs a binkie, any more than I'm happy he still needs a
diaper, or that already I've had a hundred, a thousand times the
number of conversations with Ned that I've had, or will likely have
anytime soon, with Alex.
"Go to bed! Binkie!"
Copyright 2004 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
