Friends

Marty and Casey were having a conversation that is painful for a parent to hear...especially one with a kid with Asperger's.

It started off as a simple argument. Marty, who believes in just about anything, holds out the possibility that there are unicorns. While that might sound like an odd thing for a 9-year-old boy to even mention, in his defense, the topic was related to an Annoying Orange YouTube video.

Casey, who is creative in his own right, but without the whimsy of his brother, feels that this is ridiculous.

While this discussion was going on, Marty tried to get Casey to give him a toy that he was holding. The younger brother refused.

Marty tried to point out to him that sharing is very important, and that it helps you win friends. Casey, in his interminably Irish way, said, "I don't need to share to have people be friends with me."

The arguing continued along this line, with Marty pointing out that he had become friends with someone by going out of his way to talk to the person. Casey, never one to switch a defense tactic if it's working, said, "I don't need to talk to someone to make friends."

Shortly thereafter, Marty became upset, feeling as though his little brother doesn't care about him. It was that point that I stepped in and stopped them. It could be argued -- probably rightfully -- that I should have stopped it before that, but my philosophy is that they're brothers and sometimes they just need to try to work through things themselves.

There's a whole team of people assigned to Marty to help him learn how to function socially. He goes to social interaction classes. They have meetings on his progress and discuss other ways to help him recognize social cues and try to fit in with his peers. They've even had talks with some of the children that are most friendly with Marty to try to help them understand better why he behaves the way that he does sometimes.

And, his little brother takes about 15 minutes to wipe all of that out.

Casey does mostly understand the challenges that Marty faces, but he's also one of the people that has to live with it...and he's the one that feels as though attention is diverted from him while everyone deals with his brother. I don't know that jealousy is the right word, but Casey makes it clear that he doesn't have the patience for Marty's quirks that most others do.

The fact is that Casey is just naturally adept at being social. He's made friends easily since before he could even talk. More than any blood relative of mine that I can think of, he has a personality that people gravitate to. If anything, he's more in line with his godparents -- both of whom have rarely been in situations where they aren't well liked -- than with anyone in my family.

Meanwhile, Marty lives in his own world that sometimes intersects with reality and sometimes doesn't. He's always been comfortable playing on his own...usually more so than with another person and definitely more so than with a group of people. For years now, he's desperately wanted a best friend and has no idea how that's supposed to work.

As a father, the whole thing is a killer to try and watch and understand. I keep trying to relate it back to when I was a kid, but in my memory anyway, it seems like I was kind of in between them...and all that really does is paralyze me when it comes time to try to give advice.

One the one hand, from the time that I was 4-years-old on, I always had at least one really close friend...and that person changed depending on circumstances. In the apartment complex I lived when I was really young, I had my friend Jeff. At the Catholic grade school, that I went to I had my friend Billy. And, when I moved to a different neighborhood and different school for junior high, I had my friend Mark. In high school, I had a circle of friends that has continued on for the rest of my life, even with everyone going to different colleges and me moving all over the country. Heck, I'm still at least in touch with both Mark and Billy, despite being geographically nowhere near them, and have tried for years to figure out where Jeff is now.

All that said, outside of those friends, most people don't remember me. If they do, the word that they'll use to describe me is "quiet." I was never popular...my friends were. What I had was I was always funny in my odd, usually sarcastic way. I always had just enough fans of my brand of humor to keep anyone from bothering me too much...or more accurately, to make it worth the people that didn't like me to have to deal with the people that did.

However, in watching my sons, it's become apparent that what works for one person doesn't work for someone else. As much as I might like Marty to be able to use the coping mechanisms that I did when I was a child, in actuality, he can't. He has to figure out his own way of doing it...and the more he struggles, the more I have to try to stop myself from using his little brother as an example. Or from trying to tell him what to do.

I've told Amy that I always come away feeling as though our job is to just try to get Marty through his teens. If we can get him safely to college, then the creative urges that takes over his day-to-day life on a regular basis can stop being a hindrance and instead become an asset. Hopefully by then he'll have learned how to focus and move his projects from start to finish, while working with others.

Hopefully. As long as he gets to a certain point, the world will start working for him instead of against him.

But, as his father, getting him from point A to point B -- while simultaneously not braining his brother for just being himself -- is a bit more of a challenge than I would have ever have thought.

I'm pretty sure that Marty is up for the challenge. I just wish I was more sure about myself.