Interconnected

Life to me is intriguing, magical and mysterious.  It can be beautiful and also brutal.  Rather than search for answers for why life is as it is, I prefer to respect it for what it is.  I feel everyone has a story about how their life crossed paths with another in ways that, at the least, caused them to pause and, at the most, led them to praise God (in whatever form they found him/her/it), the unknown, or fate for their introduction.  In my own life, I have had many of those moments.  Tonight, as I read an article my father-in-law (FIL) has just had published, I am yet again humbled by life's mysteries.  I'm also intrigued by the path that I have taken which has led me to this very moment, particularly the one that led me to being the parent of a child with autism.

My father is a retired psychologist.  My husband's father is a psychologist.  I have a BA in psychology.  You know what they say about too many psychologists in one's family?  I don't know but I'm sure it's not always good.  Seriously, though, I was raised in a family that was accustomed to self-reflection.   I'm pleased to say that my father, as a practicing psychologist, never was one to arrogantly carry his profession around with him like a stamp of omnipotence.  Not only is he too humble to think he understands everyone and all their motivations, he isn't interested in delving into people's minds for the sake of exercising his "powers."  If anything, my father has always been a tremendous resource for people seeking assistance.  He has such a natural way of helping people get through difficult times without making them feel inferior, and he helps them find their own strengths and inner guidance.

Out of respect for my father and for a love of people, I became interested in psychology only to become disillusioned by the professors I encountered and their immense egos.  Perhaps I simply didn't have what it took or it just wasn't the right path for me.  Either way, my education, albeit limited, has come in handy over the years and I find myself recalling several of my classes as I work with my son.

My husband and I were amused when we discovered that both of our fathers were psychologists.  We weren't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing at the time.  Mostly we found it odd.  I soon learned that, unlike my father who provided therapy to people with a variety of mental illnesses, my FIL is a clinician, a data cruncher so to speak.  In one of life's interesting twists and turns, he began working in an autistic research group at the university near where we live shortly before our son was diagnosed.  The article I was reading tonight is an article in which he is the lead author.  I can't help but pause.

The article he wrote (along with a team of other psychologists which he would want me to point out) is almost indecipherable to anyone unfamiliar with genetic terminology.  I am grateful that he summarized it for me prior to my seeing it because I would have had to do some research to understand the title itself.  Although I'm tempted to explain the study, I realize that for most a description would be tedious.  To summarize the results, the study discusses how it may be beneficial to search for genetic risk markers for specific ASD traits rather than for a global genetic risk markers for ASD itself.  My understanding from him is that previous research has failed to consistently find the same genetic risk markers in different populations.  His research is focused on two specific traits ("insistence on sameness" (IS) and "repetitive sensory-motor actions" (RSMA)).  In this particular study, the genetic risk markers for each trait were linked to different regions with little overlap suggesting that perhaps these ASD traits have their own unique genetic markers and, thus, ASD may be a collection of a variety of genetic traits. 

Of course, that is my understanding of what my FIL explained to me and what I understood from the article.  Either way, I find it fascinating to think that my son's condition may be due to a variety of genes contributed from both sides of our family.  My life and my genes crossed paths with that of my husband's.  Together, our genes passed on to our son and now we know that part of that result is that our son is autistic. 

As I said previously, life is mysterious and magical yet it can be brutal.  Although I am often saddened and even angry that our son's life may be more difficult that most due to his autism, I try to accept it for what it is because this is the path we are on and the best we can do is use the tools that we have gained over our lifetime to help him prosper.