GBE2 Challenge: Mirror

This family has a significant amount of trouble getting out the door.

A child is walking at a snail's pace.

Another is going through a million OCD rituals before it feels "right" to leave.

Ooops! Someone forgot a comfort item up in his bedroom

"Hon, have you seen my car keys?" I just love that question. Sigh.

Chat. Chat. Chatchatchatchatchatchat inserts our younger son into the mix, deciding that a dissertation on the Japanese railway system was just the thing to discuss before we walked outside.

Today was not much different and yet at the same time a world apart from our usual departure.

I stood at the door, holding it open, when my husband rounded the corner without our older son.

"Where is he?" I asked.

"Looking at himself in the mirror," my husband said. "And lovin' every minute of it!"

It couldn't be, could it? Were we really being delayed by our older son looking in the mirror? Really?

In that very moment, I was taken back in time more than eight years ago when he was officially diagnosed with autism, his first of many diagnoses.

Cramped in a clinical office entirely too small for our Energizer Bunny, we watched as a developmental psychologist pulled out one object after another to measure our son's reaction. With each failed test, my disdain for this man grew.

This was lame.

Bubbles are lame.

Toy cars are lame.

I'm rearing Einstein here. Challenge this child, already! Seriously, a mirror? Now he's pulling out a mirror? This guy is a quack!

Silently, I willed our son to grab that mirror. C'mon, darn it! Grab it! Show interest in it! I don't know why it is important, but JUST DO IT!!

He did not do it.

At that time in his life, he showed no interest in any person around him, much less that person staring back at him from inside the mirror. I felt as though I'd been punched in the stomach.


Actually, mirrors are a pretty useful-but certainly not definitive-test when considering an autism diagnosis. A Mirror Self Recognition Test is used to determine if a child can pick out a reflection in a mirror and relate to it as his own. Does he stick out his tongue in order to see it in the mirror? Does he furrow his brow, touch it and look at the effect in his reflection? Or, does he do what our son had done with mirrors over the years?

He ignored them completely for an agonizingly long time.

As a young mom to autism, I viewed mirrors as a sad reminder of the mountains we had yet to scale. And, when that day finally arrived when he finally did start to notice the mirrors in his environment, he still wouldn't look at himself. Instead, he'd take note of other objects in the room and how they appeared in the mirror. He'd turn the mirror on its side or upside down to test if the objects still looked the same.

I'm not sure that anyone could ever imagine how it could be that something seemingly so benign as a mirror could cause a young mom to special needs such sorrow. But, for me, it did.

For years, I've had very few mirrors in our own home. I don't know that I did it intentionally, but, perhaps on some level I did. And, because we were fighting so many battles on so many fronts, I can't tell you when it was that I finally started to face the battle of the mirror.

I don't remember when, but I remember how.

I started with hand-held mirrors that could go in the bathtub. Then, I got mirrors that stood on their own and could be placed at the breakfast table, art table or anywhere else in the house. I placed tall mirrors within reach, so that our son could stand in front of them and see themselves in all his fine glory.

I put hammer and nail to plaster, actually hanging some mirrors on our walls. Then I placed mirrors in bedrooms. I opened up this house and allowed our son to SEE. It was subtle. It took time. And, it also took countless hours of therapy in other areas of his life.

As with everything, it takes chipping away at the problem with the results not immediately visible.

Until one day, as in today, it struck me that we were waiting for our son to leave the house because he was admiring himself in the mirror.

On this issue, we have come full circle.



This entry was written in response to the word prompt "mirror", issued by The Group Blogging Experience 2 (GBE2).