I tried to post this last night, but due to either the effing blogger software or my own computer, it got lost in the effing ether.

That weirdness out of the way, I had a moment of exquisite dad-ness on Saturday afternoon, albeit one that ended strangely. As background, when our kids were diagnosed with autism, I set out two parenting principles that I’ve pretty much managed to live up to: 1) I’ll attempt to give my kids as many “normal” childhood experiences as possible; and 2) I won’t be embarrassed by their behaviors. Both of those came into play on Saturday.

We bought our boys bicycles for Christmas, hoping that they could learn to ride them in the next year or so. Both bikes have training wheels. Kids with a dual diagnosis of autism and mental retardation have steep learning curves, except for those things that they really, really want to learn–then they become so focused that they can’t help but get it.

I took Toby and his bicycle out into the street on Saturday afternoon. Since Adam wasn’t around to scream bang his head on the front window, I was safe in taking Toby out solo. We started with Toby on the bike and me with my hands cranking his feet on the pedals to make him go. I had to crank one foot, let the bike move to a stop, then go and crank the other foot. Toby figured out how to brake, so he was frequently stopping the bike. We went this way up and down our street. He let up on his braking as we made our way around a very long block, and it looked like his next visit home would see major biking progress. I tried to turn him to the right to go back home, where DW was waiting with the digital camera. No luck; he wanted to go left. I asked if he wanted to go to the park, and he said “park!” Okay, I thought, we can go to the neighborhood playground 4-5 blocks away. We got to the turn for the park, and Toby fought my attempts to turn him in the right direction. Hmmm, I wondered what he had in mind. Oh well, best not to incite a temper tantrum.

By this point, he was pumping his feet on the pedals by himself; pushing down with one foot, then lifting both feet, then pushing down with the other foot. I maintained a gentle hand on his back, giving him an occasional push. This continued for a while, until we got to the entrance of our subdivision, just under a mile from our house; we had gone slightly over a mile at this point. Okay, time to turn around. Nope, he wouldn’t go for it. Again, best not to incite a tantrum.

We went across Airport Road and onto the bikepath. Toby took off like a bat out of hell. I had to move quickly–breaking into a full run at some points–just to keep up. Oh no. We have different ideas about the bicycle, I realized. I saw it as a fun activity and a rite of passage. He saw it as a way to get himself wherever he wanted to go. To his mind, what good is a bike if you can’t use it as a mode of transportation? The bikepath runs for maybe a mile and a half, ending at the local Head Start preschool about 100 yards or so before the Target parking lot. I had no choice; I had to stop him. Airport Road is too busy and too dangerous on a Saturday afternoon to take any chances. Toby exploded. I had to place him in a restraint hold in the Head Start parking lot as he head-butted, bit, hit, and screamed. This in view of dozens of passing cars. I hoped for either DW or some good Samaritan to come along. One nice thing about living here is that good Samaritans are not all that rare. Sure enough, a woman pulled up and offered us a ride home in her Suburban. Toby tantrumed for 15-20 minutes after we got home, then we went to Target in the car.

Public tantruming be damned, this was a triumphant moment for Toby. It was also a great moment for me as a father. To me, seeing him ride that bike was better than seeing a "typical" kid earning an Eagle Scout award. It was a real high.

Last night, I was tossing and turning about one aspect of this story I didn’t mention at the outset of this post. My own father was extremely impatient about my ineptitude when learning to ride a bike, especially when it came time to take off the training wheels. I remember vividly one time I began to tip over. My dad grabbed the bike from under me and threw it at the curb. He couldn’t hide the fact that I disappointed him in things like sports, even something so irrelevant as learning to ride a bike. As some of you know, I have some very deep insecurity about my masculine identity, and that hit hard last night as I tried to sleep off a very active weekend. Some things just can’t be suppressed, no matter how hard you try. However, I don’t want this to be about me, so let’s savor Toby’s triumph.