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My Son Josh

 In one of my favorite stories, by Amy Bloom, a little girl struggles with trauma. The source of the trauma is her parents' separation. The little girl has no sense of perspective--given that she is a child--so she expresses her sadness by staging events from a genocide. She uses her dolls.


My daughter's favorite game is Holocaust. She's been playing it for two years, since fourth grade, and she is unbelievably inventive. She found her old American Girl doll, Samantha from Park Avenue, cut her hair off with kid scissors for that ragged, doomed look, took the poor doll out of her plaid dress, wrapped her bottom in a dirty dish towel, and laid her in a pile of leaves. She crumpled soil into a cup and brewed it with boiling water. She came into the house...

"It must have been like this--for THEM," Abby said.

"Where'd they get the hot water?" I said. That's what I had been reduced to....

My son is not dealing with trauma, but he is dealing with sensory issues and a strong aversion to social cues. I think I feel most things that Josh feels. He wears headphones in public; I have started wearing headphones in public. (There is no greater thing than a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. I'm not sure why I waited so long.) Josh does not determine his own schedule, and he has no say over the camp counselor who is attached to him; given these realities, he occasionally shrieks or says, "Shut up." The camp coach reports this to me, clearly expecting me to be scandalized--or to give a performance of being scandalized. I do *not* say, "Can you really blame him?" (The thought does cross my mind.)

My son expresses his discomfort through a particular stuffed dinosaur. He found this dinosaur at the American Museum of Natural History; he called the dinosaur, "Gouda." I don't know why. The dinosaur has a slightly sad look on his face, so Josh offers solace. At other moments, the dino becomes rambunctious and tries to assault a stuffed Elmo with nail clippers. Josh reports on these events--in a breathless voice.

When I first read Amy Bloom's story, I was childless. But now the story has new meanings for me. My own shrink says that it's generally not helpful to give direct advice--for whatever reason, a kid responds best when you tell a story about your own past. ("I also had a hard time at school. Someone once told me to just not try so hard. That was like the most freeing suggestion I'd ever received. The freedom to get a C-plus!")

Sometimes, my son begins a dialogue with himself; he is both the scolding teacher and the inquisitive child. I hear my own obsessive thoughts in Josh's comments. And we keep on trudging, trudging along.
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