GrahamLester.Com

Today is my ten-year-old son's last day at the school he has attended for five years. He does not know this.

He'll go to school today, just like any other. He won't know it's his last day. When he comes home this afternoon, he won't know that today was his last day. He'll start a new school and wonder why. Maybe some months from now, it will gradually dawn on him that he's never going back to the old school again.

His current school is being closed for no reason. It is a school with excellent exam scores. The building is fine: every classroom has its own toilet.

They will tear down the old school and plan to build a new school at the same location, which will open in several years' time. Why? Because the district's operating fund is short, but its building fund is plentiful. It will close the current school to save much-needed operating expenses, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with the old school. It will build a new school at a projected expense of about 8 million dollars.

You guessed it: the operating fund and the building fund come out of different pots, and nobody has the authority to transfer money from one pot to the other. So a good school closes, an expensive school opens, and my son has to move. Can you believe this entire post is actually true?

But, about my son. I actually have two sons. My oldest son scored straight 99s on the Cognitive Abilities Test. But the son of whom I write today is not like that. We once had his language tested:

ME: "Oops, you have accidentally added a decimal point here. The way
it reads now, it's saying he's in the bottom tenth of the bottom percentile."

SLP: "No, Mr. Lester, that's where the decimal point is supposed to be."

My ten-year-old son's official diagnosis is "moderate to severe autism." His language deficit is so extreme that he has only ever attained minimal understanding of any sort of language, whether one tries speech, text, icons, signing, or whatever. He understands single words but not syntax: the way words interrelate grammatically to create abstract language. It is not just that he cannot use syntax, but that he cannot comprehend it when others use it. He can understand "red" and "balloon" but not "red balloon."

An aside: My wife ate healthily and took no alcohol or other drugs during her pregnancy. Autism can strike any family at any time and does not ask for a reason. Ditto mental retardation.

From when he reached the age of three, I spent several years doing intensive therapy with my youngest son, and greatly neglecting his two siblings in the process. My wife supported the family while I tried to teach him to talk. Before I started, he understood nothing. He did not know his name, or who his mother was. He could not say a single word. After several years, he was potty-trained and had a large repertoire of single words that he could both speak and understand, but he still could not grasp syntax.

When I attempted to return to the workforce part time, I was faced with a Catch 22 problem: I could either be honest about the severity of my son's problem and concede that I might be called away from work for a child-related emergency at any conceivable time, or I could try to downplay it and leave them with less ability to understand the reason for the gap in my resume.

I have two Masters degrees. I graduated cum laude on the first, but it is not fully accredited (a later post). I scored a 4.00 GPA on my second Masters degree, which is from a fully accredited state university, yet after two years of trying I am still considered unemployable by the Kansas City area's leading employers. I have a large collection of rejection letters. I have been rejected by a temporary agency. I have been rejected by numerous employers that only require a high school diploma. I have even been rejected by Costco (now that hurts, sob).

The problem is that the gap on my resume is interpreted by human resource departments as proof that I am a bad person. I am not to be trusted because I am a Dad who took time out to try to teach my child to talk. I have had two cases where management offered me a job and human resources later vetoed it (No, I don't have proof -- the job offers were verbal -- but I'm pretty sure that's what happened).

Currently I have a part-time customer service position with a credit card company. During the day for the next three months, I will be supervising my fourteen-year-old son, my eleven-year-old daughter, and my ten-year-old son with autism. The latter has to be watched constantly. He does not know that cars are dangerous. He does not know that hot things can burn. He does not know that poison is bad for you. We have locks on the insides of all the doors. Even the refrigerator is on a lock and chain.

I love all my children equally, as far as I know.

I write limericks.

I blog.

Watch this space.

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