Remembering When….

I have always known that Lukas had a wonderful memory. I remember the day that he learned phonics. It took him about 20 minutes to learn the sounds of all the letters. He would jump on the bed and I would say, “What does A say?” and he would tell me, “Aaah or ayyy” and then jump up and land on his rear end. From that point on, he knew all of it and he was barely three. What I didn’t realize was just how much he could remember events as well. When we began ABA, we were so focused on filling in his gaps of knowledge, fretting about his future, and wondering what went wrong yesterday that we tended to forget about the here and now.

Lukas is always in motion and his mind is always running. Sometimes he hits us with a thought or memory and it seems to come out of the blue. It just never occurred to me that he would start talking about his therapy sessions, especially about one that occurred almost three years ago.

A few months ago, we were in the car and Lukas was sitting very quietly. He usually reads a book or plays with a toy. He was doing neither at this time. There was silence in the car.

“Whatchya thinkin’ about Lukas?” I asked.

“I was remembering our old house.”

We lived in a small rental home when we first moved to the United States. We set up his therapy room in his bedroom and his formal ABA program began in this house.

“Yeah? What about it?” I replied.

“I was remembering Jackie and Andy. I was building a pile with my bulldozer and Jackie kept knocking over the pile.”

“Oh?” I frowned. My mind flashed to this day too. It was a hot summer day. Andy was the next therapist to have a session with Lukas. She was a young girl who also served as our babysitter. Jackie was our lead therapist who had five years experience in ABA. Jackie and Lukas were playing with the tractors and bulldozers on our porch. When Andy came, she came over to the porch to join them. She accidentally knocked over Lukas’ sand pile. Lukas screamed. Jackie immediately said “uh-oh. An accident.” She then had Lukas rebuild the pile and as soon as it was rebuilt, she knocked it over again, prompting him to say “uh-oh”. Unfortunately, Lukas wasn’t game. They spent the next 30 minutes doing this over and over again while Lukas screamed. Finally, Lukas gave a sorrowful uh-oh and Jackie accepted it. Jackie came inside to fill out the final behavior notes. Andy came in sweaty, hot, and unhappy. She was only 16 but I think there are times that she was able to see situations more clearly than other therapists. She just looked at me, shook her head, and said, “I wish I hadn’t stepped on his pile. Why did she keep knocking the pile over? “ I shook my head as well. I wasn’t comfortable enough to approach my lead therapist with disagreements. [1]

I looked over at Lukas. “Yeah. I remember that time too.”

Lukas, “what was her problem? I didn’t like her doing that.”

“Well, you both were stubborn. You wouldn’t be nice about it and she wouldn’t let it go.”

We then pulled into the Wal-Mart.

“Mom? Lets go to the toy section!” Lukas said with a big grin.

“Okay.” I replied knowing that guilt was about to get the better of me.

[1] For a look at how I now believe that this moment should have been handled, see “power struggles-mistakes we made in ABA.”