PARENTAL ADVICE
Bussing My Son
To The World with Autism
By James GUTTMAN
I thought they were kidding when they
said my three-year-old son would be
taking a school bus to his preschool.
Let me get this straight. My nonverbal,
three-year-old son would be taking a
bus? By himself? Without me? How is
that even possible?
P
rior to learning he had autism, Lucas was al-
ready the baby of the house. He was always
in our sight, and, like most babies, received
the bulk of the attention. As we began to
find out about his special needs, that mind-
set carried over, and I was always very con-
cerned with keeping him safe.
No matter what we did or where we went, I always
worried about how he would be. No parent wants
their kid to be upset, but when you have a child who
can’t communicate easily, it puts a difficult twist on
things. In the early years, I found myself always trying
to guess ahead of time what he might want or need.
That was my job, and I was happy to do it. I couldn’t
imagine things any other way.
That was a different time, though. Now he would be
embarking on his academic adventure, and the only
way to get him there was through a school bus. Al-
though it came directly to our door, the thought of
letting him go was still difficult.
I pictured the first day long before it happened. As
is usually the case, our imagined perception of how
things will go never matches reality. Thankfully so,
because the scene in my head was straight out of a
Lifetime movie. Tears. Closing doors. My outstretched
hand. “Noooooo! Not without my son!”
Worry doesn’t make time stop, though, and when the
day finally arrived, I braced myself for the sure-to-be-
awful exchange. The moment of truth was upon us.
This is how it went:
Bus pulls up.
“Hi Lucas. Let’s get on the bus to school. Say good-
bye.”
Sound of footsteps, closed doors.
Bus drives away.
Vroom. I stood there for a few seconds, unsure if
the bus would be making a return so we could play
out our catastrophic Lifetime movie. After weeks of
stomach-turning worry, that couldn’t be it. Could it?
It was. In fact, three years later, it still is. To this day,
he’s never had an issue with the bus. It turns out I
was the one who had the real problem. Lucas could
handle it. In fact, he could handle lots of things. I just
wasn’t aware of them because I had spent so much
time trying to play protector to a boy who was far
less fragile than I realized.
Autism Parenting Magazine | Issue 65 |
23