Autism Vox

Delayed Reactions

by Kristina Chew, PhD on August 13th, 2008

Yes, third day at the beach was the charm and on the fourth day, we were back in beach business, so to speak. As the afternoon wore on—when the sunlight was not as intense—Charlie stood at the edge of the water and deliberately, unhesitatingly, walked in and started swimming. Almost every day this past summer, he and I have gone swimming at the YMCA pool and while Charlie doesn’t exactly do full laps (he’ll be swimming across the pool, flipping onto his back, and then suddenly disappear under the water—he’s sinking down to the bottom)—he’s been getting some solid workouts. All that swimming showed as, Tuesday afternoon, Charlie headed into the waves and then went back and forth, forth and back, between the rock jetties, swimming on his stomach and back and sometimes dropping down literally beneath the waves. Several times.

Since last year’s summer at the beach, Jim and I have been worrying about Charlie swimming farther and farther out into the ocean; out to sea, literally. We’ve struggled and wondered how to teach Charlie to “swim between the flags,” the orange flags that the lifeguards stick into the sand to tell you where it’s ok to swim on the beach. The idea that there’s some invisible, but still existing line from each orange flag out into the ocean has been hard for Charlie to grasp: With no evident boundary, why should he stop swimming?

It is only the fourth day here, but Charlie seems, possibly and maybe, to be getting the concept. Or, he’s at least all right with following our instructions to go “this way” and “swim flag to flag” and “swim with people.” As he’s been nearing that invisible boundary, Charlie has sometimes been catching our eye, getting out of the water, walking on the sand over to the other flag, and going back in—-that was what he did on Tuesday afternoon and in deep and vigorous he swam.

As the photo suggests (if you can see it), Charlie did at times head out to sea (and, in that photo, on his back). Jim was out in the water with him and got him to turn around and I did some elaborate (and probably quite futile) elaborate hand, arm and body gesturing to direct Charlie which way to swim.

Charlie’d been quite excited the whole day, too, as friends (with a son his age) visited, and Charlie said, a couple of times over as we were waiting for them “friends today!” Our usual schedule is to go for a short swim in the morning and then a long one in the afternoon; Charlie got in an extra 1pm swim (as that was when our friends came) and a very late burger lunch (during which he showed great interested in my onion rings). Our friends gave Charlie a kite, and he examined its multicolored panels very seriously.

New things, different things, changes and new surroundings take some time to examine and then absorb: I’d say that Charlie’s been having (as he often has) a delayed reaction in the face of something new.

And well worth the delay.

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POSTED IN: Friendship, Water