by Julia Romp
After that, we had to think of something else if our games night was going to work. We had to have a big plan. So Michelle and I decided that the best way to advertise the bats and balls was to have a family fun day on the green to let people know what we were about. After talking to my family, who agreed to help us out with money, we bought a cheap paddling pool and hired a bouncy castle for the day. We were so excited by it all that it was only as we stared at the paddling pool on the morning of the fun day that we realized it was going to take more than just a few buckets to fill it. The pool could have been used for Olympic laps.
“We’ll have to use our kitchen taps,” Michelle said.
So we hooked up hoses down to the pool, and that day turned out to be one of the best of my life. Loads of people arrived, and the kids jumped in and out of the paddling pool or on and off the bouncy castle, with Michelle keeping an eye on them all, while I started up a game of rounders to get people playing. George had come out and kicked his football as he watched lots of people play rounders. Even the man from the end of my block, who was so drunk he could hardly see straight to hit a ball, joined in.
“Now I know you like a drink, and I do too,” I said, even though the most I ever had was a brandy and Coke and he must have had at least eight cans of beer inside him. “But I’m not sure you should have lager in your hand as we play games with the kids. It sets a bad example, doesn’t it?”
The man looked at me, cross-eyed, before throwing his can up in the air with a smile. Later we talked and I found out his parents had died, and he’d become homeless and gone on the drink. Just shows that you can’t judge what’s on the outside, doesn’t it? There’s all sorts in this life, and I think the man had fun, even if he couldn’t focus on the ball. We all had a good time that day, and the only bit of trouble came when the water tank on the roof burst because we’d left the taps running. As all the old biddies started moaning because they couldn’t get a drop out of their taps, we had to phone the council to send someone out.
“What’s been going on here?” the man asked as he stared at the massive paddling pool, loads of wet kids and sopping grass.
I had to tell him, but thankfully the man just laughed and went up on to the roof to fix things.
I always look back on that day with a smile. There were loads of us from all different flats, all different ages, who’d never really spoken to each other before, and the fun day broke the ice. After that more people started coming down to play bats and balls. It got so popular in the end that old people would come to sit on a bench and chat, and kids would be waiting for Michelle and me when we went to unlock the shed where we kept everything. I loved doing all that stuff and learned from it that behind every door there’s a different story: the old woman I thought had lots of family was in fact lonely; an Asian family who’d always felt a bit unsafe on the estate were now comfortable enough to come out with their kids because they’d realized that most of us were friendly. Most of all I learned that when you do something for other people, you do something for yourself too, because as George and I got to know our community it felt as though we were beginning to have a place of our own. Maybe the world was opening up for both of us.
George’s school was a real mix of kids. As well as all the ones who learned at an average pace, there were children who found it harder because they had special learning needs. By that I mean things like attention deficit disorder or physical disabilities that meant they needed more help than average kids. Some were taught in the special needs unit, while others had the help of a teaching assistant who sat with them for anything from a few hours a week to all day every day, giving them one-on-one attention during regular lessons.
Ever since seeing the counselors and doing the parenting course, I’d felt as if George was being forgotten by school, as I’d gone in and out almost as much as he had—either because he’d gotten into trouble again or to ask for something to be done—and it had felt as if I was bashing my head against a brick wall. Poor Mum had almost had her ear chewed off about it all as I talked to her about it over and over.
But something finally happened when George moved from the infants part of the school, where children spent their first three years, to the juniors, where he would be for another four until starting secondary school at 11. The school decided that from now on he was going to get some help from the special needs unit because he wasn’t learning properly. Now that was more than a bit of an understatement: George was seven, couldn’t read a word or write one, say the letter “A” if you held an apple up in front of him or recognize his own name when it was written down. I was glad something was happening because I can’t tell you how it had all made me feel: some nights I’d lock myself in the bathroom and cry into a towel because I didn’t want George to hear me upset. I felt lonely one day, sad the next, and then I’d try to be hopeful on the third.
As George started with the special needs unit, I was asked to go in to meet his teacher, Miss Proctor, who wanted to know all about his very specific behaviors, likes and dislikes. She didn’t give much away as we chatted, but when I finally stopped talking, Miss Proctor looked at me with shock in her eyes.
“What on earth has George been doing since he started school?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” I replied.
“I know you’re worried, and you are right to be, Miss Romp. George is very behind in class. He does not respond to anyone or show emotion to other children in a group. He also has outbursts which upset his classmates and he can be very violent at times.”
For one awful moment, I wondered if Miss Proctor was yet another person who was going to decide that George was just a naughty child. Then I realized she wasn’t: there are always two sides to every coin and instead of seeing him as a naughty and uncontrollable boy, Miss Proctor saw something different.
“It’s been worrying me sick,” I said in a rush, wondering if I was going to start crying on poor Miss Proctor, because it’s amazing how emotional you can get after you’ve been coping for so long and someone suddenly says “That’s a bit of a load, isn’t it?”
“It’s been hard ever since he was born and no one will listen,” I told Miss Proctor. “George is almost like a stranger to me. I know that sounds awful, but it’s how it feels, and I can’t let him mix with most kids because I never know what he’s going to do.
“He just doesn’t seem at all interested in anyone—even me a lot of the time. There’s no cuddling or laughter with George and all anyone has ever told me is that he’ll grow out of it. It’s hard because it’s like he doesn’t know who I am at times. I mean, he knows but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s like he doesn’t really understand that I’m his mum.”
Miss Proctor looked at me with her kind eyes. “We are going to help George,” she said. “There are many techniques we can use and ways of getting children who’ve never been interested in learning to start. George obviously has difficulties but there are ways around them.”
I liked Miss Proctor from the moment I met her and was glad she was going to oversee George as he moved between lessons in the special needs unit and the regular classroom. Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t as though a magic wand had suddenly been waved and the good fairy had come to rescue us; Miss Proctor was working in a school with loads of kids. But at least George was getting some help, and within a few months an educational psychologist called Michael Schlesinger came into our lives. I was told he was going to assess George to try to find out exactly what level his learning and social skills were at, and I waited anxiously to find out what he decided.
“I saw a man today,” George said angrily when he came home on the day I knew he’d seen Mr. Schlesinger.
“What kind of man?” I asked.
“He smelled of coffee.”
“Really?”
“He sat close to me. He had big, stick-out eyes.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. I don’t want him to ever sit near me again.”
I could
tell George was worried but just hoped that Mr. Schlesinger might be able to do something for him. For so long, it had felt as if I was standing with George on a beach after a shipwreck as people out at sea waved at us before sailing by. Maybe now someone might try to rescue us just a little bit.
A few days later I went to meet Mr. Schlesinger and found a really tall man, well spoken and with kind eyes. I immediately felt comfortable because he had a real air of calm about him. Mr. Schlesinger started by telling me what he’d done to assess George—a range of tests like showing him picture cards and asking him what they showed.
“Brown,” was the only word George had said after staring at a piano for several minutes.
Mr. Schlesinger told me that most children said music or singing when they saw the picture and that George had also had difficulty identifying facial expressions.
“He has severe learning difficulties and significant problems with social interaction,” Mr. Schlesinger told me. “George’s learning age is about that of a three-year-old. It’s a very complex situation and we’re only at the beginning of understanding it. But I can say that while George is going to need a lot of help, we are going to identify the problems and tackle them one by one.”
I stared at Mr. Schlesinger silently.
“Are you all right, Miss Romp?”
I wasn’t quite sure to be honest. After all those years and all that worry, a 24-carat expert had finally spelled out in black and white just how bad things were. But I didn’t feel sad; I felt relieved. Mr. Schlesinger had seen past the blond, blue-eyed, perfect-looking boy that George was to the lonely, frightened child who was struggling inside him. I swear it was as if a ray of sunshine had peeped out from behind the clouds and I could almost feel it beating down on me.
PART TWO
Finding Ben
Chapter 6
Little did I know that a stray cat that looked as if it had gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson when I first saw it would be the key to unlocking all the love and imagination that had lain trapped inside George for so long. Ben arrived in the summer of 2006, just after George had turned 10 and a few months after I’d finally been told that he had autism. During the two long years it had taken to get him diagnosed, after meeting Mr. Schlesinger, I’d thought that one of the many people who had got involved with us—from doctors and psychologists to teachers and a speech therapist—would hold the key to unlocking George. But life isn’t logical, is it? While all those people had huge experience and put a lot of hard work into helping George, it was Ben who changed his life forever—and mine too.
Diagnosing George’s problems had taken a long time because there were so many of them. First I was told he had ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which explained why he couldn’t sit still in class or at home. But it didn’t feel right when I was sent to a group for parents whose children had ADHD and watched as some of the mums and dads stayed silent while their kids smashed up the furniture. It was almost as though they were giving up on them, and that wasn’t the way I wanted to deal with George. The pieces fell more into place when he started seeing a psychiatrist who assessed him for autism. She was the first person to talk to me about the condition and as she did, I realized it might be the key to understanding George’s world. The doctor told me autism had a huge range of characteristics, which presented themselves in many different ways, and George was unusual because he had other problems as well, including ADHD and paranoid tendencies. The other thing that complicated the situation was that although George was quite talkative compared to some autistic children, he refused to speak to anyone who tried to assess him, so it was hard for them to work him out.
As the psychiatrist saw George week in, week out, she talked to me about what she had observed in him and everything she pinpointed—his sensitivity to smell and noise, his inability to make eye contact or bond with anything, his outbursts of temper and his obsession with rituals and routines—seemed to fit the diagnosis. The more the psychiatrist spoke to me about autism, the more sense it made. She told me that George’s senses were much more powerful than the average person’s, so the noise of a car sounded like a freight train to him, smells were overpowering and someone’s touch felt threatening rather than comforting. As I listened, I began to understand so many things better—why George wouldn’t let me near him, why he stared through me and even seemed to think at times that I was his enemy; and I was glad to finally see into his world, because I found it as hard as ever that George still didn’t seem to know I was his mum, the person who loved him no matter what.
On a morning like any other, we had been rushing to get to school because George hadn’t gone to sleep until 5:00 a.m., so he hadn’t wanted to get up. Then his dressing routine had gone wrong because his T-shirt wasn’t soft enough, so we’d had to take everything off and start again; and breakfast had been held up because I’d overcooked the toast, and then George had told me the crusts were too brown on the next loaf I opened (sometimes it was as many as four loaves before George decided on one he could eat), and I’d slapped butter on the toast so quickly that I’d dropped the knife on the floor as I put it down.
“I’ll sort it out when I get home,” I said as I gave him his breakfast.
A few hours after I got home from taking him to school, the phone rang.
“Miss Romp?” a voice said on the other end.
“Yes.”
“I work for Hounslow social services. I wanted to speak to you because your son has made an allegation that we are investigating.”
“What do you mean?”
“George has said that you stabbed him.”
“Is this a joke? George hasn’t been stabbed. I’ve just dropped him off at school.”
“Well, I’m afraid he’s told a teacher that he was stabbed in the side with a knife.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, Miss Romp.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Of course there was a big investigation. I was interviewed, George was interviewed and it all went on until everyone realized that I hadn’t attacked him. But somehow that knife falling on the floor had made George think I’d tried to hurt him and the way he looked at me for days afterward turned me cold. It was as if he was made of glass and couldn’t see me. He stared straight through me and wouldn’t say a word.
“My mum tried to kill me,” he said again and again. “My mum tried to kill me.”
Can you imagine hearing those words from your own child? But the psychiatrist helped me to understand them, by telling me that George’s autism meant that everyday things, even a knife dropping on a floor, could seem threatening.
At first the word “autism” scared me, because I didn’t properly understand it. But after the doctor had patiently answered all my questions, I’d go home with the notes I’d written to look things up on the computer and began to see into his world more.
Don’t go thinking life was perfect now that the professionals were involved. We didn’t always see eye to eye and it’s hard to disagree with people who’ve got degrees and certificates. For instance, the psychiatrist told me that George’s ADHD might improve if he was given medication, so I agreed to let him have it. But I stopped the pills after watching George lie on the sofa with dribble coming out of his mouth and a dazed look in his eyes. I didn’t need textbooks or a white coat to know it wasn’t right.
“I’d rather deal with him just like I always have than see him like this,” I told his doctor.
Part of me was scared that after all the years of asking for help, we might not get any more because I hadn’t taken the advice I’d been given. But I had to do what I thought was right. Drugs might be tested and people might have been trained for years to hand them out, but while pills were obviously the best thing for some children, they weren’t for George.
But although his psychiatrist and I had a difference of opinion about that, she was very good to me otherwise; and while a diagnosis didn’t suddenly make things right, they felt
a bit easier because at least I knew what I was dealing with now, and that meant I could learn to help George cope with the world a bit better. The only thing I found really hard, though, was when the psychiatrist told me that George would probably never learn to show his love for me in the way most kids do with their mums.
“This is a condition he will live with for the rest of his life,” she said. “You can improve your life by understanding autism and learn how George works, but autism is never cured. George is never going to be the cuddly boy you wish for, Miss Romp. It’s all part of his condition and there’s no magic cure.”
That was the thing that almost did it for me. Forget the behavioral problems, the food issues, the tantrums and mood swings. The fact that George didn’t seem to need anyone or anything, even me, was what I’d always struggled with most and I’d fought against it all his life. I’d tried to give him what I’d had as a child in the hope that he’d one day find some happiness in the family and friends around him. But maybe I’d been stupid to hope for so long, because the doctor seemed to think it would never happen.
So what did I do? Give up? Get realistic and accept George would never show me his love? No. Never. I told myself that the doctor was a doctor and I was his mum. I would carry on trying while there was still breath inside me to show George that he could be part of the world and help him find his place in it. It was the worst thing in the world to watch George struggle each day with his frustration and anger, and while I had learned to accept that he was different and love him for who he was long before he had been diagnosed with autism, I would not stop trying to help him improve now that his condition had been given a name.
Deep down I felt sure that somehow, somewhere, I would find the key to unlocking some of what was inside him and give him some peace, if not the happiness that I’d always wanted for him. But you could have given me a thousand years to find that key and I’d never have imagined it would come in the shape it did: a fluffy black and white cat with bright green eyes. So when I first saw it on a morning just like any other, I had no idea this cat was going to change our lives forever.