Really, what's love got to do with it?

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"He responds well because he knows you love him."


My son's former teacher reached this conclusion when she observed that all the while that we were talking along the sidewalk, my son was sitting quietly behind me in our bike.  It was the first time that she saw my son in more than four months.  Before I came to Thailand, my wife could not talk to anyone she met on the street for more than a few seconds if my son was with him.  He would wail and wriggle until his mom began to pedal again.  Now, due to the intervention that I have been implementing since December, he doesn't mind if I stop to say hello and have a chat with friends we see on the streets.  He patiently waits, and if ever he gets bored, he tells me that he
wants us to leave.


I often hear our friends make similar remarks whenever they see the improvement in my son's behavior.  Like my son's former teacher, they have not seen my son for months.  Most of them have witnessed my son's transformation from a baby to a young boy so they were expecting him to display the undesirable behaviors that they are used to seeing.


While I feel a sense of accomplishment each time they compliment me for managing my son's behavior, I find their association of my son's progress to my love for him to be rather vexatious.  My son's behavior is better now because I used the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA) in dealing with him.  I took an online course, and passed the quizzes and the final exam.  My son's developmental pediatrician, who specializes in learning and its disabilities, monitors his progress, and sets goals that my son needs to reach.  I had to endure watching tears flow down his cheeks during meltdowns, and I had no other choice but to be firm.  I had to restrain myself from giving in to his demands even if he is already throwing tantrums, and be quick in stopping him from hurting himself (fortunately he does not exhibit self-injurious behavior often).  Irritated, I had to remind myself to disregard his whines.  I had to carefully watch his every move, to guess how each behavior functions, to think of ways to react to encourage the good and to minimize the bad.  Does love give every father the capacity to do these things without first getting the right training and immersing oneself in self-study?  I love my son, but what's love got to do with all these?


I find myself annoyed every time I have to volunteer the information about my training in using the principles of ABA to help children with autism reach their potential.  If they were only willing to listen, I might explain to them that I am helping my son to behave properly in public areas because I want him to learn how to avoid disturbing other people, not because I wanted him to act like neurotypical people.  Perhaps I might educate them a bit on embracing autism as part of human diversity, as others before me have emphasized.  But many of them would say their goodbyes as quickly as they made the conclusion that it was indeed my love that spelled the difference.  The science behind what I've been doing to my son is often drowned in the sea of pointless emotion.