church

We attend this church. Bill grew up attending here- I think his grandparents were even married here, as were his parents and his sister. We were not church-goers at the time we got married (and were married in a park shelter house on a rainy day), but started back to Trinity when Henry was an infant and Kate was 9 or 10.

Things went well when Henry was pre-school age. He would spend the first 2/3rds of the service in the nursery and then come down for communion, another prayer, song, and dismissal. But once he was old enough to go to Sunday school, our troubles began. Really I should say my troubles, because as I try to write about this I realize that some of this stuff is all in my head.

The Sunday school program is very small and I felt unsure about how Henry would do in the class. I didn't want to stay there with him, though, as I felt that would make Henry seem or feel more different, or make the other parents/teachers think he was un-managable or un-teachable. I should have just had a talk with the teacher. But at the time, Henry did not yet have a diagnosis of any kind, so it would have just been me saying "my child has speech delays and you have to say things to him in just the right way and sometimes he won't want to participate and will just want to do a puzzle in the corner. OK?"

He couldn't tolerate an entire church service, and I refuse to have him go to the nursery when he's clearly too old. So we just didn't go to church much. Which was a disappointing solution for all of us. This fall we decided to give it a try again. Unfortunately, the church was being remodeled at the time, so services were being held in the basement, in the coffee hour area, rather than the majestic high-ceilinged, stain-glass-windowed space Henry was used to. That was a disaster. He kept loudly proclaiming that he wanted to go back to the "red room" (the main front doors to the church are red.)

So for the past 5 months or so, Bill and I have been alternating Sundays- one of us takes Kate and Thomas to church, the other one stays home with Henry. It has worked ok. But yesterday Bill had a basketball tournament game, and I had been asked to watch the nursery. So Henry came along to church.

We were all excited to see the re-done sanctuary, which was just re-opening. They had a brass trio or quartet playing. I stopped to have the boys look at the beautiful church and listen to the music. Henry wanted to sit right down in a pew, but I had to force him to come upstairs to the nursery. While we were up there he kept asking to go back down to church, "say a prayer and sing a song." Almost the entire service is printed in the bulletin, so I started reading that to him. He sat and listened attentively, and when I had to get up to play with the kids, I saw him "reading" the bulletin on his own.

Then I tried to sing a song. The first one that came to mind was the Hallelujah chorus from "Messiah". I started singing that, and Henry said "No. We are marching in the light of God." That is a song that we sang months ago, possibly the last time Henry had attended church. And he remembered it. My heart was so touched, and I also felt a little twinge of guilt (don't we always?!)

He really enjoys going to church, and I should not keep him from it. Have any of you found ways to make church (or going to movies, or any other hour-plus need-to-be-quiet situation) work for your ASD kid?

Should we just muddle through Sunday school? Maybe it will go better now that Henry has established some good habits at school. And I might have better information to give the Sunday school teacher.