The Boy Who Fell to Earth Read Free Page A

journey through the labyrinth of social workers, speech and occupational therapists, top paediatric psychologists … For the next year I trekked here, there and everywhere, in the endless search for experts. They ranged from National Health doctors locked away in sooty Victorian mausoleums flannelled with dust, linoleum floors overlaid with reeking antiseptic, to the private clinics of Harley Street with their low, plexiglass coffee tables laden with copies of
Country Life
. I hate to think how many specialists’ kids I’ve now put through law school. (When visiting a private doctor, be sure to note carefully where you leave your car, because you will probably have to sell it to pay off their astronomical bills.)
    My son had so many tests, he must have thought he was being drafted into the elite moon mission astronaut programme. I had to hold him as he was measured, weighed, blinded with torches, probed, prodded, pinched, stethoscoped and syringed, despite the fact that his body would twist into a spasm of despair as he wept inconsolably.
    And, oh, the constant battle to keep my gaze neutral and unperturbed though I was dying inside as various labels were hurled his way – dyspraxia, dyslexia, dysphasia, aphasia, attention deficit disorder, sensory defensiveness, Fragile X, chromosomal abnormalities … Apparently autism was only the tip of Merlin’s diagnostic iceberg. How it made me burn with love for my strange little son.
    Meeting after meeting, in government buildings full of grimacing cracks, social workers told me that being the mother of a child with autism would be a challenge but an exciting one … This is as accurate as the captain of the
Titanic
telling his passengers that they were in for a diverting little dip in the briny. Mothering a child on the autism spectrum is as easy as skewering banana custard to a mid-air boomerang.
    Denial was my first response, hence the years of alternative medical rounds. I tried everything from cranial massage to karma maintenance and other areas of scientific expertise based on medical ideology that’s been rigorously and methodically proven by Goldie Hawn and other well-known academics.
    Anger came next, mostly towards the farcically solemn, flat-shoed educational psychologists with their expressionless expressions. The way to recognize an expert is by the clipboard. A parent needs United Nations headphones to decode what these clipboard-wielders are saying. ‘What a fascinating child’ decodes as ‘He’s retarded.’ ‘A true original’ means ‘I’ve never met a child quite so retarded.’ ‘Your son is differently interesting’ translates as ‘Your life is screwed for ever. You might as well put yourself up for adoption immediately.’
    I found myself snapping at all clipboard-wielding, euphemistic people. ‘So, let’s stop beating around a dead horse and cut right to the conversational mustard, shall we? Will my son ever lead a normal life?’
    ‘What do you define as “normal”?’ asked a social worker with ferrety alertness. As her eye twitched and she chewed on her half-gnawed nails, I got the feeling there might be a very fine line between social worker and sociopath.
    While I ricocheted from psychologists to bio-feedback practitioners and other nouveau-voodoo nut-jobs until my own inner child wanted to throw up, Jeremy retreated into work. When Merlin was born, Jeremy had been so besotted. He’d spend all day planting kisses on our baby’s soft, plump belly, warm as freshly baked bread, before wriggling and giggling him in and out of his little pyjamas. Jeremy, an only child, had happily professed he wanted three, four – no, five – more children. He took every second day off, left for work late and came home early, his face alight with joy.
    But not any more. Now he left for the office pre-dawn, getting home at ten or eleven. Saturdays he indulged himself with a little sleep-in till, say, 6 a.m. His only son was damaged goods. Humiliated, he