Shared attention

Anyone with an AS child knows that this capacity is severely limited in their offspring.  It's a cause for great celebration whenever a breakthrough is made.  I'm used to working on this with Primo, but as always I'm rather more confused when it comes to Secundo.  Rather than a diminished capacity, S has always seemed to not have room for another perspective alongside his own; he's been so consumed with the need to be in control that whenever we actually do something "together" like read a book, I feel more like a tool in the process.  The alternative is that "together" feels like a competition; if I try to model something or draw attention to something, I get that the same thing back; OK Mum, you've told me about the penguins, now I'm going to tell you about the penguins ... There is no relationship in that.

But now, a few weeks into the new school year, my youngest son is hungry to sit down with me and look at books or TV shows together, in the traditional meaning of the word.  He smiles, makes eye contact, shares the moment, the experience.  I don't get the impression that it's something he's just learnt, I feel like it's suddenly become safe, like he's been experiencing it or watching it happen at school, and he's put his mind to extending it to home, with Mum, with whom it is presumably particularly pleasurable (Mum as ally rather than sparring partner).  It's as sweet as honey.  It also makes me self-pitying -- the years without this fundamental, this cornerstone of human relationships.  I could just never get it to happen.  Now it's there and I don't know why.  If only I did, perhaps I could have unlocked it a long time ago.

That said, just a little afterword -- with every success, every step forward a child makes, a mother has to adjust to the incremental loss of dependence, even if it has been a tempestuous, draining dependence.  So this new phase for Secundo, and Primo in his new class so far happy and settled, meant that I was finally starting to settle in to my own headspace a bit this morning, really able to concentrate, but as time went on I was aware of something flitting past the corners of my consciousness, and then it was a bright flash like that meteorite over Russia the other day: I miss my little boys!  They are away all day and I'd so love to see how these happy little creatures are living their lives.  I think I'm allowed to feel that aren't I?