When Your 10-year-old Doesn't Live With You

Kent Miller's three children---16-year-old Austin, 13-year-old Chloe, and 10-year-old Ethan---are all on the autism spectrum. In an essay in the January 15th Babble entitled Home Away From Home: Why my autistic children don't live with me, Miller explains why Chloe and Ethan live in a group home, a "palatial tract home," where "they're safe and clean and well cared for." All three children were diagnosed around the same time, Chloe and Ethan with autism and Austin with Asperger's Syndrome. Miller writes about how his wife quit her job to take care of their children; how they divorced; and about why he decided to place his younger two children in a group home:

........while Austin was learning, Chloe and Ethan hit a plateau.

The group home has lifted a planet of worry from my shoulders. The group home has lifted a planet of worry from my shoulders. Now I can focus when I'm driving Austin from his psychologist to his Shakespeare camp, when I'm teaching him how to cook and clean, and when I'm taking him camping on Cape Cod or the canyons of New Mexico. Because of the group home, I am a much better father for Austin. Because of the group home, I can breathe.

Nobody has criticized me for placing Chloe and Ethan in a group home. Sometimes I wish someone would, though. Then I wouldn't feel so lonely when I get down on myself. Logic, reason, not to mention vivid memories of my own rapidly vanishing sense of sanity in those last few months, all tell me that placing them was the right thing to do. But sometimes, in the still of the night, I get this gnawing sense that they should be home with me. It's a haunted feeling that I don't think will ever go away.

With all respect to Miller, whose honesty in writing about such a difficult decision is more than appreciated (especially as I've had residential placements on my mind of late), I would like at least to raise some complications concerning a complicated choice.

As Austin, Chloe, and Ethan grew older, Miller writes that Austin continued to learn, while his younger children "plateaued." Miller notes one child's continued growth, even as his two other children's seems to have leveled off. As is often said about individuals on the autism spectrum, every child, every individual, is different. My own son, as far as his challenges, seems more like Chloe and Ethan. Charlie can be said to "plateau" all the time---one day he's reading his sight words; the next day and then weeks, he does not seem able to. One day he'll say a whole sentence clear as the day and the next it's slurred syllables.

It was years ago I gave up "measuring" Charlie's learning and growth according to the "milestones" the parenting magazines and books and websites say too much about. We chart Charlie's learning in reference to himself.

While we're both parents of autistic children, Miller's situation and mine differ significantly in one way in particular: Miller has three children and I've one.  Jim and I have been able to refocus everything in our life around Charlie and it's impossible to know what we would have done had we had another child, whatever they might "have" or not. Miller made the choice of being able to focus better on one of his sons and to be a "better father" to him and, while rationalizing his decision, is haunted that all of his children should be "home" with him.

I know I would be haunted if, when I went to look in Charlie's room in the morning, he wasn't there wrapped in his yellow fleece blanket. It wouldn't be home without Charlie.

Photo from The Truth About.