Raising Cubby

  My brother and my parents told me my fears were ridiculous and that Cubby would be just fine. I heard their words, but I was convinced they were just saying them to make me feel better. They were not in the room, looking at Cubby. Even if they had been, they had no knowledge of medicine or statistics, the two things that might have offered solid comfort to a logical guy like me.

  I knew the odds of an ordinary, viable infant were in my favor, but I couldn’t help being worried. Psychologists call that thought pattern catastrophizing: imagining disaster at every turn of events. Today I know that’s an Aspergian trait. However, I didn’t know about Asperger’s back then; I just knew my new baby was one more thing to be worried about.

  A few of my male friends offered advice based on their own experience as parents. “We all worry we won’t be good dads. All we can do is do our best.” That was a practical acknowledgment that I could accept.

  The broken-baby fears were less easily allayed. My newborn baby didn’t talk, and I had no test data. In the electronics world, we called that flying blind, and sometimes our creations blew up when we did it. Yet I saw no alternative. One encouraging sign was visible in his mom: Her ulcers went away once he was born. As she got healthier, I felt better about Cubby’s chances.

  Other people acted horrified when I expressed doubt that Cubby would remain alive and functional. Why? When someone goes to the hospital with a heart attack people wonder exactly the same thing, and they say the odds improve with every day of survival. I figured the same was true for a baby. Being born was surely as big a deal as having a heart attack, so every day a baby lived meant the odds for long-term survival increased. What was horrible about that? Other people’s attitudes seemed strange to me.

  Then there was my basic insecurity—my inability to believe that he was really with us to stay. To combat those feelings, I began telling people about my new baby boy right away. For some reason, the act of describing Cubby to others made him seem less ethereal and more real to me.

  Little Bear carried him around with her much of the time when he was new. He slept on top of her or next to her on the bed. Sometimes I would place him on the bed next to me and we’d both fall asleep. I was always afraid I’d roll over and suffocate him, but that never happened. Still, we knew he needed a place of his own. We didn’t have much money, so we lined a nice yellow laundry hamper with a soft blanket and he was in hog heaven.

  One of the problems with babies is that they howl, at high volume and at inopportune times. If some of the accounts I’ve read are to be believed, an energetic baby can make sleep for the parents just about impossible. Cubby wasn’t all that bad, but he sure had his moments. Most of the time, Little Bear would soothe him with nursing or rocking. When her techniques failed to work, I resorted to my own secret baby-management measures.

  First I picked him up, bounced him a bit, and trotted him around the house. That often worked, but his mom always watched me and said, “Be careful with him. His little brain is fragile.” He didn’t seem all that fragile to me, but I was cautious anyway. He still had a soft spot on his head, and there was no telling how mushy the brains inside might be.

  I wondered about things like that a lot. I didn’t want to make any mistakes with this dadhood thing. I knew some new dads had prior experience raising gerbils, hamsters, or snakes, and others had read lots of books or gone to classes. I hadn’t been able to do much at all, and now that he was here, I had to work twelve hours a day to keep my new business alive to support him. I tried remembering what my little brother had been like, but that was many years ago and it didn’t do much good now. So I just did the best I could.

  Cubby would cling to me pretty well if I gave him a chance, but the rest of him was floppy. His head was the floppiest part of all. It seemed pretty big relative to the rest of him, and he usually had trouble holding it steady. When we rode in the car, it would bob around like those springy toys they sell, as we went over bumps or around corners. I could never tell if he was too little to hold himself steady or if he just let it roll because he liked the motion. I was that way myself at times. Bobbing and rocking has always been a comfort, and people used to say I looked like a bobblehead. Maybe he was the same.

  I suggested that to Little Bear, but she dismissed it out of hand. “He hasn’t developed the muscles in his neck,” she said. I wondered where she got that particular idea, since she didn’t have any more parenting experience than me. I realized she must have been reading baby how-to manuals while I was away at work.

  When bouncing Cubby around the house failed to settle him down, we moved to plan B: We went for a ride. That always worked. Cubby went right to sleep in the car. That made him a good traveler most of the time, and it inspired me to take him places. Wherever we went, he found new things to look at and interesting objects to stuff in his mouth.

  The older he got, the farther we ranged. It was good for Cubby to see the world, I reasoned. He was going to have to learn his way around one day, and I figured he might as well start now. I told him the names of streets and described the interesting places we passed. Even though he didn’t answer, I knew he was paying attention. He sat there in his car seat, chewing placidly and watching the world go by.

  I knew how important reading was, so I started showing Cubby words as soon as he was able to sit up in the seat. The words we saw were on billboards, on vehicles, and in the windows of gas stations. Anytime I saw a glowing sign with simple language I read it to my son. “Trucks,” I would say, as I pointed to the sign leading to the truck parking area at the local diner. In that way, he learned the language of commercialism. When he learned to talk, he began with what he heard in ads and what I read him from signs—words like Bud, diesel, bathroom, and food. I didn’t smoke or drink, and neither did he, but we knew all the language thanks to roadside America.

  All babies love to chew, and he was no exception. He had pacifiers and traditional baby rings, but he wasn’t a picky chewer. He’d stick anything in his mouth at least once. If I let my fingers stray close he would even gnaw on me. When that happened, I would yell, and he snorted with delight. Obviously, he knew what he was doing.

  “No bite!” I would tell him. Often as not, he would bite me again.

  He would even attempt to eat metal if given the chance. He would also try and feed me the drool-covered objects of his attention, something I found particularly revolting even though he was just being companionable.

  I had loved the taste of wooden Tinker Toys when I was a kid. Wood is nice and chewy, with a definite flavor. Beavers love it. Cubby loved wood too. He found his in the form of Brio wooden trains and wooden track sections. They were perfect for a toddler—tasty enough to provide hours of enjoyment, yet tough enough to remain basically unmarked by his emerging baby teeth.

  He grew pretty fast and learned new tricks every day. I watched him follow objects with his eyes and make noises and expressions in response to what he saw or heard. He smiled at his mom and me, and reached out his little paws to be picked up. It was remarkable how quickly he learned to manipulate us to do his bidding without saying a single word. He did that better than any cat or dog.

  We set about feeding him, changing diapers, and watching him grow. We both took to the task with gusto and enthusiasm. More so his mom than me, when it came to diapers. As I saw it, my job was to entertain him, make him think, and help him understand the world. I began pondering ways to do that.

  Excited as we were with our newborn baby, we could not help but see that Cubby had some challenges. We noticed the first one before he was even old enough to walk. It started with a triumph—the realization that he was doing something I could seldom do when I was young.

  Cubby mirrored our expressions.

  If I smiled at him, he would smile back. It was automatic. When I came in the door, we smiled at each other every time. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt a connection like that with anyone else in my life.

  Some people might have taken that for granted
. Not me. I remembered my early days very clearly, when my parents and their friends picked me up and made faces at me. Now I know the adults were expecting me to smile back when they made those big smiley faces, but at the time I was just scared and confused. I had no idea what was happening; for all I knew, those big toothy mouths meant that I was about to be eaten. When I didn’t respond as expected, they turned away as if I had something wrong with me. Even now I remember the sting of that rejection.

  The inability to automatically mirror other people’s expressions is very common in people with autism, and I’m still that way to some extent today. My mother certainly remembers my lack of response to her smiles. When I was older, she said my serious demeanor made her worry that I didn’t like her. I liked her fine, but I don’t think I ever smiled about it.

  My maternal grandmother had the hardest time with my lack of response. She would pick me up and make faces at me while holding me at arm’s length. After a moment, when I didn’t do what she wanted, she plopped me on the floor. “You’re just a mean little boy,” she would tell me, waddling off down the hall. Luckily for me, my other grandmother liked me better.

  Cubby was totally different. He smiled all the time. I can see the difference instantly when I compare pictures of us. Old photos of me show a stern, serious tyke. Images of Cubby show a happy, grinning toddler. Smiles were one way Cubby had me beat, and it delighted me to see that.

  But although Cubby mirrored smiles right away, he was not so quick to imitate behavior. Little Bear found that out when she tried to play patty-cake with him. I never did stuff like that, because I thought it was foolish, but Little Bear was very enamored of such inane baby entertainments. She’d spend hours on the floor with Cubby, touching her palms to his while reciting the patty-cake rhyme. The idea, of course, was for him to follow her lead. He never did. He just sat there on the floor, giggled, and let his mom touch her paws to his and sing to him. The idea that he was supposed to do the same thing just didn’t seem to sink in.

  The problem was not lack of interest; she could see how much he liked having her arrange his little forelegs for the game. He grinned and babbled with delight whenever she did patty-cake. He just didn’t do it himself. It was as if he enjoyed watching rather than participating.

  I wondered if he was like me in that regard. When I was little, I watched the other kids play and never joined in. There were all sorts of reasons: I didn’t know how, or I wasn’t invited, or I tried and failed. Whatever the explanation, I spent my toddlerhood alone, watching the other kids play from the sidelines. Now I worried that Cubby might be headed in the same direction.

  He wasn’t sad or troubled. We could see him smiling and bouncing. He just didn’t take an active role and play along. What did that mean? We didn’t have any other babies to compare him to. My own social skills were not very good, and it simply did not occur to me to look outside my own family for answers. I pondered the situation without reaching any definite conclusion. So did his mom.

  “Maybe he needs glasses, like us,” said Little Bear. She thought he might be nearsighted because we were, and when things passed before him he didn’t respond. I didn’t agree, because there were times he’d see something go by and grab it right away, and I knew vision troubles didn’t come and go.

  My secret fear was that his behavior meant that his brain did not have enough computing power. Maybe he was seeing fine but not figuring out what he should do next. Could a game like that exceed a baby’s cognitive powers? Was a baby smarter than a puppy? Dogs didn’t play patty-cake, not even smart poodles. I considered ways to evaluate his intelligence, but in the end I made no progress because I knew of no standards for baby brainpower.

  I thought back to my own childhood and how important being smart was to me. When I recalled the things people said about me, most were negative. I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that. Because of my Asperger’s, my social skills were almost nonexistent. When you can’t read the unspoken messages in other people’s faces and bodies, how can you know how to respond? We know a lot more about autism today, but back then grown-ups just assumed I was poorly behaved. The one complimentary thing they said was, “You’re a really smart little boy.” The idea that Cubby might not share my best and most important attribute was very scary.

  What is smart in a baby? I continued to wonder. How do you recognize it? I watched him play with the toys we gave him. When left to his own devices, he was very inquisitive. He figured out how to stack rings from large to small and small to large. He knew how to make cubes, lines, and even buildings from his blocks, and he knew all the different colors. We gave him wooden puzzles with pieces that had to be placed into a tray in a certain way to make a pattern. He figured them out all by himself. If I tried to do them with him, he often took the toys away from me so he could do them on his own.

  Cubby was a very opinionated tyke. When I got down on the floor and played with him, it quickly became clear that he had definite ideas about how his blocks and rings should be arranged and which pieces went where. He was too young to voice those opinions in words, but if I deviated from his play plan, he would make his displeasure known by howling loudly. In fact, he had no trouble expressing his wishes even before he could talk. I couldn’t always tell exactly what he wanted, because he didn’t utter words that made sense. However, there was no mistaking when my response made him happy or annoyed; words were not needed to send those signals. He did that with great emphasis and at high volume.

  All those things told me his brain was working somewhat normally, though he wasn’t much of a team player. I wasn’t a team player either as a kid, so I didn’t make too much of that.

  He kept getting bigger and figuring out more puzzles, but he never mastered patty-cake. Actually, mastered is the wrong word. He never even tried. That particular game just passed him by. Even after months of practice, he just sat still, watched his mom’s hands, and smiled. I found his behavior perplexing, and so did his mom.

  As he got older, Cubby became steadily more aware. He looked at mobiles we hung over his head, and he picked up and played with anything in his reach. Soon he learned to crawl, and overnight he was on his way, grabbing anything he could see and sticking his fingers anywhere they would fit and some places they wouldn’t.

  He shrieked like he was being eaten alive when he became stuck, but when he got in the groove, he just played and played. I brought him into the garage with me, and he’d stay busy for hours, chewing the car parts I’d left on the floor. His mom would find him out there and bring him back inside, hoping to keep him clean. Whenever I got an interesting car in for service, I’d bring him out and set him behind the wheel. If there was a camera handy, I might even take his picture. By the time his birthday rolled around, he had driven a Gull Wing Mercedes, a Ferrari Testarossa, an Aston Martin DB5, and more Porsches than we could count. His favorite—or so I told him—was a Shelby Cobra with an electric blue finish and an engine that rumbled like a WWII fighter plane. He’d grip their steering wheels with his little paws and stare at the gauges as I wondered what he was thinking.

  The most peculiar thing was Cubby’s lack of interest in others of his kind. When we put him in a playpen with other babies, he mostly just ignored them. I would have thought a real live kid would be more interesting than a Playskool ring puzzle, but Cubby didn’t agree. He paid no attention to the child as he dominated the puzzle.

  Today I realize that behavior is another marker of autism. When we are small, our limited ability to sense the inner feelings or even just the proximity of other people causes us to ignore them, even though we want very much to have friends. How I wish I’d known that when my son was growing up! My own version of autism—Asperger’s syndrome—entered the diagnostic lexicon in 1994, when Cubby was four years old, and it took some time for that knowledge to percolate down to me. His diagnosis was still far in the future.

  In the meantime, like all hopeful parents, we glossed over his struggles and told ourselves he was
better than us. He seemed happy and healthy, so we encouraged him when we could and hoped for the best.

  I never did figure out how to ascertain intelligence in infants, but the bigger he got, the less I worried. Instead, I thought about the bigger questions, like whether he would join me at work someday and what he might become when he was full grown. One day we were playing in the backyard and I announced, “I am the King of Bees and Rodents!” Cubby just laughed. Later, when he could talk, he remembered that and said, “I will be King of Everything. Even you!” He laughed even louder at that. I snorted, but I liked the size of his ambition.

  For the first few months we managed parenthood by ourselves. Little Bear took care of Cubby while I was working, and she tended him at night. In between those times, I brought him interesting places and showed him things to occupy his mind. His mom would say she did all the work and I had all the fun, but I don’t think it was that black and white. I certainly gave Cubby many unique and stimulating experiences. In fact, like most dads, I believe I taught him every useful thing he knows.

  When Cubby was five months old, Little Bear returned to school. She had gotten her bachelor’s before Cubby was born, but that wasn’t enough to get her a teaching job, so she had applied to and gotten accepted into grad school in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts. She’d started the program before getting pregnant and figured Cubby could just tag along for the rest of it. This ought to tell you how little experience either of us had with babies.

  At first she brought Cubby with her to class, but he made noises, acted in a loud and unruly manner, aggravated the teachers, and distracted the students. When he started hollering he could disrupt a hundred people, maybe more. The commotion he created at college was way out of proportion to his size. The only thing Little Bear could do was take him outside and hope he calmed down. Bouncing and jollying usually worked, but it always took a while and made attending school essentially unworkable. Seeing what happened when she took an infant to college helped me understand why colleges don’t recruit kids until they are teenagers. By then they are somewhat more manageable.