Ryan is in 5th Grade. Ryan is a Cub Scout. He loves legos, movies, reading, quoting movies and books, science, and though I can’t prove it, torturing his sister, Sarah. He goes to Sunday School every Sunday. He loves to play and to talk. He is handsome and has an infectious smile. He is smart as a whip. He is trusting and open. Ryan has Asperger’s Syndrome. This also means that he wanders off. He gets over-stimulated in the lunchroom and has meltdowns in the afternoon. He doesn’t know how to cope with changes to his routine. He prefers to spend most of his time alone. Even though he wants to play with other kids, he only wants them to play on his terms, and he can’t handle it if they won’t. He’s in Special Education and has aides to help him in class even though he’s an A/B student (the B is in communication). PE with its chaos – kids running around and loud, open spaces – is hard for him to deal with and recover from. When he gets upset, he still cries like he’s 3, instead of 10. When someone asks him how he’s doing, he’s just as likely to tell them about his favorite movie character. It means the world, with all its rules, is a very confusing place.
In our family we do not deny the reality of Ryan’s condition, but neither do we dwell on it. Ryan is a wonderful, if quirky, kid and we have every hope that he will grow up to be a fine contributing citizen, able to support himself and a family. We have the same hopes for our daughter of course. We feel that they both need the right tools to prepare themselves for the world that they will face as children, as teenagers, and on into adulthood. With Sarah, it’s a fairly standard set of tools, love, discipline, self-confidence. With Ryan, he needs all the regular tools, but we’ve also had to add a few more to his list, social appropriateness, speech and occupational therapy, special education, aides to help him in class, calming techniques, and others. Since Ryan has been approved for an Autism Assistance Service Dog, we have been excited to think that we will have another tool to help him out.
The Service Dog (SD) will be trained in several techniques that will be key in helping Ryan cope with the world in a more typical fashion.
- Tracking – The SD will be trained to track Ryan. It’s not that Ryan tries to get away from us exactly. It’s just that something catches his attention, he gets distracted, and off he goes. If you don’t have a good grip on him, or at least an eye on him, it’s a challenge to keep up with him. Every teacher he’s ever had, from preschool to current, has lost him at some point. They have all been able to track him down before too long, but he still manages to get away. What happens that time that they can’t find him? I won’t take Ryan to some of the larger parks in the area because I can’t keep an eye on him and his sister at the same time, and I just can’t trust him to stay put. We don’t go to places like the zoo, the fair, or to crowded places very often because the risk of him getting away is so high. It frightens me to think something could happen. A SD who can track Ryan when he wanders away would be a great relief to me and to teachers who take him on field trips. We would be able to go more places because of the added confidence of being able to find him should something happen.
- Behavior Disruption – The SD will be trained to disrupt some of the more Autistic behaviors Ryan has. When Ryan has a meltdown, he screams fit to wake the dead. He also has some odd hand and head movements when he gets upset. The dog will be trained to recognize these things and to move in toward Ryan to help distract him from the cause of the thing that has upset him. The SD will also help disrupt the odd movements so that Ryan will learn to quit doing them. Because the dog will do this in a non-judgmental manner and with consistency, we hope that over time Ryan will learn more appropriate ways to express his displeasure, frustration, or upset.
- Emotional Support – The SD will be trained to give emotional support to Ryan in the form of physical contact and constant companionship. The dog will be able to go with Ryan to school, to the store, to crowded places, to his room, to restaurants, and anywhere that Ryan would go. This “safety net” should provide Ryan with a measure of constancy that no matter what the change in routine, he will still have his dog and the comfort his dog will provide. Ryan does not recognize the more subtle emotions in others, and a dog has none of the more subtle emotions. This makes a dog an easier companion for Ryan to have. He will never have to guess what the dog is feeling or if the dog is really mad at him even though it is smiling. He will be able to take the surface emotions at face value, and get very consistent feedback from the dog, emotionally speaking. This means that it will be less stressful for Ryan to deal with the dog than with another person.
Our hopes for our son are monumental. We hope he always has love in his life. We hope that he finds happiness in what he does. We hope that he succeeds in his aspirations. We hope that with the right tools we can aim Ryan at a wonderful life, and let him go.
