I skimmed through the 56-page IEP to find what I knew was there:  Autism.

If they didn’t want it to sound like everything that matters, I don’t know why it was in bold.  After the word was the only word I could hear or see, they droned on with their terrifyingly objective observances, pallid reassurances, and ended with the advice, “Don’t go home and research, mom.”  They were consummate professionals, prepared with data, but there were no tissues in the room.  Here I was as a high school teacher, focused on the lack of social emotional intelligence in kids these days, yet these adults had no tissues in the room, no one was going to get some, no hugs, not a gentle pat on my hand. In a room full of “experts,” there was a serious lack of social emotional intelligence as I reflected on what I’d heard about autistic people–that they lacked social emotional intelligence.

There was my son’s meltdown on his preschool class’s camping trip.  “Don’t burn it! No! No!”  He wailed as if he were the marshmallows in the fire, not the kid who’d been eating them between graham crackers and chocolate minutes earlier.  It was irrational for me to stay the whole weekend, but I wanted him to have fun goddammit.  I guess I was in shock, had been for so long after seeing him too often, joyless, anxious and shy, that I considered my response normal.  Perhaps I lack the self-awareness that a course on social emotional intelligence might have offered. 

The next morning the thought, the word that would be bold months later, began to take root.  My son ran around the perimeter of others’ play, poorly imitating what they did, stopping short of contact as though a moat divided him from them.  The children moved away, made my son invisible, just as I finally saw him most clearly.  He desperately stared after them, stood paralyzed, his face creased in a how?  How do I play with them?

The Monday after the camping trip with my son, I went to his school counselor and said, “I’d like to rule out autism.  I’m sure it’s nothing, but I’d, well—I just want to, you know, rule it out?  Can you do that?”  After the meeting in which it wasn’t ruled out, I called the diagnostician and thanked her.  She was surprised.  As someone who’s worked in public schools for almost 20 years, I know what comes with diagnosing a child—the threat of litigation, the costs, the repercussions if wrong.  I asked why no one noticed the signs before me.  She said, “It might be because your son is so good-looking.  We live in a ‘looksist’ society.  When was the last time you thought a Victoria’s Secret model might be on the spectrum?”

For months after the diagnosis, I shuffled off to work exhausted.  I ignored the experts and stayed up night upon night researching autism.  I’d replaced the denial phase with a God-complex stage:  I was going to find a cure.  Instead I found dismal statistics and bullet points like—

 –people on the spectrum lack empathy.

What I didn’t know was that my focus on increasing my son’s social emotional intelligence would, starting a day after his diagnosis, leave me wanting to add to the above bullet point to read as follows:

 –people on the spectrum lack empathy, obviously, just like the rest of us, less obviously.

The foyer of the high school where I teach was eerily silent.  Two tall boys were fighting as students watched.  I put down my coffee, screamed for security, gripped one of the kids in an almost-full Nelson (I’m five feet nothing) and dragged him back.  Since no one put the second kid into a full Nelson, it was only fair to let my guy defend himself, so I kept releasing him.   Before first period, everyone had heard about the fight.  I knew I’d end up in the principal’s office at some point—no hands on kids and all that.  I was worried for myself, my back hurt, but I would do the same thing were the situation to present itself again.  I learned this from attending schools that teach social emotional intelligence (SEL schools) in my formative years, from my mom, who’s likely the reincarnation of a French Resister, and from…the Holocaust?  The lessons that came with all that—how dangerous apathy can be–stuck with me, along with the rude awakening that maybe most people suck.

The day of the fight, we were reading Elie Wiesel’s Night about the author’s life in concentration camps, and our unit was on social responsibility. The unit was my idea, not the county’s, so don’t blame the county for the sub-par test scores. It’s all my fault.  Like spectators at the Coliseum, my students were animated, engaged, not about the book, but rather The Fight.  The girlfriend of one of the boys was eager to show me her video footage of it.  It’s normal now to record such events for entertainment rather than to run, intervene, or call for help.  Of the 140+ students I taught on this day, few had ever broken up a fight or even called on authority to do so.  Years later, the majority of my seniors would write persuasive essays on what they considered the biggest deterrent to learning in public schools:  bullying.  Apparently though, they hadn’t been equipped to deal with it.  Why does our Common Core curriculum exclude the explicit instruction of social emotional intelligence?  My high schoolers wouldn’t break up a fight—even without the fear of guns, concentrations camps, or a sociopath in charge–yet they could not understand how the Nazis ever came to power.

How could I deal with a deficiency of empathy in my own child?  I have a lack of empathy for those who lack empathy.  When I told my mom about the incident at school, my son, and that I didn’t know what to do because I’ve always been empathetic, she laughed and said, “No, you weren’t.  We taught it to you.”

Ah, teaching it. Consider my friend, Mia, who asked me to come to her son’s school meeting.  He’d been recently diagnosed with Asperger’s, which we’re now supposed to call high functioning autism, according to the American Psychiatric Association.  Some experts believe Einstein had it.  When I asked Mia if she was inviting me to her son’s school meeting because of my teaching experience and own child, she said, “No.  Because you are white.  And you look like you have money.”

Her son did not receive services by his school.  His test scores were average, so the school is not able to fund social skills, speech, or occupational therapy despite his developmental delays in these areas, and despite my sense that, were he to receive these services, his test scores would be above average, and if you test well, you are well. 

Every day, the same loneliness. My son gets in the car, his face is blank, and I ask, “How was your day?”  Silence.  I’ve been told that I have nothing to worry about, that this lack of information is not because he’s autistic—it’s because he’s a boy.  Recently, though, he looked upset.  I worried—had he been bullied?  It’s one of the fears all parents have, but it’s even more pronounced when your child is on the spectrum.    I asked my son how he felt, expecting him to look out the window, not to respond.  Instead, he said, “There’s no human word for it.” 

…then, “Lewis cried. Lewis was put on ‘parent contact.’”       

         “Did he hurt you? Say bad words to you?”

         “No.  Not me.  Someone else.”

         So what’s the not-human word you felt?” 

  “Rocky.  I feel rocky.”

Empathy, by any other name, is still as sweet, and I am glad that the combination of therapy, social skills pull-out sessions (because my son doesn’t do well on standardized tests), is finally showing results. There is hope. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that courses on social emotional intelligence have profound effects. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, found that in 668 SEL schools in a survey, up to 50% of children improved academically, and 63% behaved more positively and reported a better sense of well-being.   As for my students’ concerns regarding bullying, they might be relieved to hear that at these schools, suspension rates dropped by 44%. 

As encouraging as this is, 668 schools with these sorts of results are not enough. Since most of our children attend public schools, most are subjected to the Common Core curriculum.  The creators of the Common Core not only exclude the instruction of moral intelligence, they include a line in the guidelines acknowledging this exclusion.  It’s passive-aggressive.  And from an individual and societal standpoint, ruinously wrong.

Naysayers will argue that it is the job of parents to teach children social emotional intelligence. But most aren’t home enough to teach it and are struggling with their own lack of knowledge. I, for one, humbly admit that I am not as good at this parenting thing as I thought I would be.  And I have plenty of company. We are doing it alone, working too much, fighting against our own wounds, our own ignorance, and we need help.  We are fighting a culture that does not value moral intelligence.  We don’t teach self-awareness, social responsibility, or kindness. And even if we addressed the most tragic outgrowths of our collective ignorance—homicides and suicides—what of those we raise to become the ruthless CEOs, addicts, abusive spouses with whom we must interact?  Did they score too well on their SATs for anyone to care?