Looking back, I now realise that from a very young age, Aidan was more focused on household objects, toys, and on what he was doing, than on people. I can’t ever remember him gazing up at me and studying my face, like most newborn babies do. I have a bajillion pictures of him from birth till now, and I still look at them frequently. But as I scroll through them, I recall how each picture of him looking at the camera was one in about ten or twenty I took, with him looking elsewhere. I had to work pretty hard to get that glance up at me! I made funny noises, shook rattles, or handed him my phone before bringing it up to my face, and directing his gaze towards me. Being a first time mom with very few friends with little babies at the time, I was completely unaware that this was unusual. And as I continued to put lots of effort into getting Aidan’s attention, it became second nature for me to create a small distraction to get a smile on film.
Aside from the fears and tears caused by Aidan’s early medical issues, he developed fairly typically up until he was about 12 months old. My husband and I were milestone-trackers, and noticed that some neurological and physical developments were on the slow side to be sure, but we weren’t overly concerned back then. It was only as Aidan neared his first birthday, and we began to pick up on a loss of skills, that we began to feel quite worried. Around the same time that Aidan lost the only three words he had, “mama”, “dada” and “baba”, we realised that he was also beginning to increasingly avoid direct eye contact. He would still look at the camera at times, but he was looking at the phone itself, at my exaggerated tomfoolery in the background, and not at my face. It was becoming harder and harder to capture a direct gaze. Almost in tandem with this Aidan stopped responding to us calling his name. It was if he didn’t hear us! But he would respond positively or negatively to other sounds at other times. We were so confused at this point! When Professor Claudia Gray put Aidan onto Dr Birgit Schlegel’s waiting list at a year old to be evaluated for autism, we decided to get proactive and seek help from a Speech Therapist in the meantime.
Dr Nola Chambers came onboard to help us figure out what exactly was going on for Aidan. It was so enlightening to finally speak to a professional who had a lot of autism-specific experience. She told us that Aidan was not making eye contact because it was way too intense and overwhelming for him to do so. And that he had started to ignore us when we called his name because he knew it meant that we were going to stop something he was enjoying doing, to redirect him to another activity he wasn’t as excited about, or perhaps even a dreaded diaper change. Nola told us that Aidan had learned through experience, not to place value on responding to his name or any other directives from us. As I’m sure you know, this is an atypical response to a parent calling your name. Neurotypical kiddos learn to place a social value on responding to their name being called early on. Kids on the spectrum are not neurologically wired the same way. They respond better to positive associations and repetitive reinforcement. Nola encouraged us to begin calling his name and then engaging him in something extremely fun and stimulating, such as being spun around or being thrown up in the air. This became pretty effective with repeated reinforcement, and we were slowly able to secure his attention once again. With regards to eye contact, Nola suggested we use his favourite toys to encourage it along. We were eager to try anything that might help! She suggested we pick up a toy he wanted to play with and hold it against our bodies. As soon as he glanced at the toy against our body, if even for a moment, we would hand it straight over to him. We started doing this with Hot Wheels cars against our midriffs. We then very gradually moved the cars up towards our faces. Eventually, we were holding cars, and other preferred items, directly at eye level, and he was inadvertently making eye contact with us in his quest to get a hold of the toys he most wanted. This was a very organic and non-intimidating process for Aidan, and we soon found that it worked very well! Since then, we’ve had to repeat this type of program on and off to really lock-in and cement this skill.
It is only recently, at age three, that Aidan is comfortable enough to gaze at our faces for extended periods, and bring his face close to ours in order to stare deeply into our eyes. The first time this happened with me, I remember feeling unexpectedly unsettled, but I didn’t know why. Maybe because I’d never experienced this level of keen observation from him before. I realised that my little cub, who I loved more than anything or anyone else in the whole world, was properly connecting with me for the first time ever, and I felt unsure of how to respond. I decided to stay still and silent, and let him explore my face and features in his own time and way. It was such a profoundly intimate moment between the two of us that it made my heart beat in my chest like a drum. Before turning away from me, he cocked his little head to one side thoughtfully, and he lifted his hand to my cheek. He softly stroked my face, and then brushed his fingertips lightly across my nose. It was such an incredibly beautiful and emotional moment, I couldn’t help by cry a few tears of exquisite happiness afterwards. These are the moments I talk about – the ones that fill your heart to bursting, and stay with you forever!
