Ron Fournier: How my son taught me to be a parent

It was my wife Lori's idea to send Tyler and me on the road together after he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. We needed to bond, she said, and Tyler needed real-world experience to learn how to socialize. One of Tyler’s obsessions was history, and my job was covering the U.S. presidency. “You can use a job that took you away from Tyler to help him now,” she said.

Lori told me to take notes on the trips. She told me to write a magazine article about them, then a book, so that Tyler would forever remember how much we loved him. But first I had to learn to love my boy for who he was, rather than what I wanted him to be.

We’re at Sagamore Hill because Theodore Roosevelt is Tyler’s favorite president, though I’m not sure why that is. On the drive, I had asked Tyler whether he identified with Roosevelt because TR was a sickly child. Tyler, 13, stared out the windshield at the approaching Manhattan skyline. “No,” he mumbled.

Well, was it because, as a boy, TR was taunted by class­mates?

“No.”

Was it because both of them loved animals and science and history?

“Nope.” Tyler cut me off. “He was just cool, man. Kids don’t have to have reasons. He was just a cool dude.”

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The first exhibit we see commemorates Feb. 14, 1884, the day Roosevelt’s beloved mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, died within hours of each other. Roosevelt wrote in his diary that night, “The light has gone out in my life.” He hardly spoke of Alice again.

A knot of tourists at the exhibit share funereal whispers until startled by Tyler’s booming voice. “Talk about a hard day!” he laughs. “Two for the price of one!”

This is what they call a learning moment, exactly what Lori had in mind when she conceived of the road trips that I had renamed guilt trips. Help him read people, she said, and understand when jokes are appropriate and when they’re not. Yeah, well, that’s going to have to wait until we get back to the hotel.

I nudge him, say, “Be respectful, son,” and nod apologetically to the tourists.

We move quickly to the exhibit on Roosevelt’s childhood — his debilitating asthma, his scrawny build, and a reference to two boys who bullied him on a camping trip. I think of Tyler — his Asperger’s, his social awkwardness, and the bul­lying he is starting to experience. It’s not physical, at least as far as we know, but middle school is at the age when kids are most likely to be the source and subject of verbal abuse. At his age, even as an Aspie, Tyler is now self-aware enough to under­stand that he’s a target.

I delicately ask, “What do you think?”

He chuckles. “I think you’re trying too hard.”

The foreign policy exhibit, titled “Stepping onto the World Stage,” triggers a thought. Roosevelt led the United States away from its isolationist instincts and into the global community, stronger and more confident than at any previous time in its history. Tyler is just starting to learn how to emerge from his shell and embrace the broader community. I excitedly share my theory: “America had Asperger’s, and TR showed the country how to cope.”

Tyler chuckles again. “Nice try.”

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Desperate now, I point to a picture of an adoring crowd of thousands cheering the toothy Roosevelt. “He was sick and mostly alone as a kid but then grew up to be wildly popu­lar. Do you want to be popular, buddy? Do you want more friends?”

“That is not why he’s my favorite president. He’s my favorite president because he kicked butt!”

“Do you want to kick butt, buddy? Roosevelt muscled up so he could fight bullies. Do you want to muscle up?”

“No,” he says with a shrug.

“But ..."

“Dad, stop.” His tone is flat, firm. For a moment, it feels we have reversed roles and my son is now teaching me. He says, “Remember the Freaks book?” Just 10 days ago, Tyler brought home from school a memoir, Freaks, Geeks & Asperger Syndrome, and pointed to a passage. “First of all,” wrote the 13-year-old author, Luke Jackson, “the biggest gem of advice I can give you on this subject is never force your child to socialize.” The boy author added, “Most AS and autistic people are happy just to be by themselves and do their own thing.”

“Remember the book?” Tyler repeats.

I nod as I stare at the picture of Roosevelt. “I remember, buddy.”

“I’m happy by myself, Dad. You don’t have to force things so much.”

I admire Theodore Roosevelt for the way he struggled to temper his expectations. "I am entirely satisfied with your standing, both in your studies and in athletics," Roosevelt wrote his eldest son, Ted Jr., on May 7, 1901. "I want you to do well in your sports, and I want even more to have you do well with your books; but I do not expect you to stand first in either, if so to stand could cause you to overwork and hurt your health." 

The original sin of parenting is the baggage we drag into it. Too often, rather than accepting our brilliantly unique children, we reshape them. It was President George W. Bush who, when he first met Tyler, gave me the advice I needed most: "Love that boy."  

Ron Fournier, a former White House correspondent for The Associated Press, is a senior political columnist for The Atlantic and National Journal. This piece is adapted fromLove That Boy: What Two Presidents, Eight Road Trips, and My Son Taught Me About a Parent's Expectations, coming out Tuesday. Follow him on Twitter @ron_fournier.

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