by Ayaan Nambiar
How does that old saying go? ‘Silence is golden’, or something like that. I never did understand how silence could be golden until I became a mother to my second child. You see, silence can mean different things to different people. Silence can be peaceful for some and relaxing to others. Silence can also be unnerving or scary. And in my case, for the longest time, silence meant my child’s speechlessness.
My little girl was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder when she was almost three years old. Now, this is not every autistic child’s story. As it is a spectrum disorder, it impacts every individual differently. It impacted my little one by making her reluctant to socialise or understand speech. And autism didn’t come alone: it brought a host of friends along for the ride – sensory processing disorder, hyperactivity and micro symptoms, too many to enumerate. But newbie autism parents that we were, we became obsessed with the only outward sign of her difference that we thought we could “fix” – her silence. My daughter was not completely nonverbal. She had some vocalisations – laughing, crying, ear-splitting screams when she didn’t get her way, humming, and a handful of words. There was nothing wrong with her vocal cords, the doctors said, so we continued to plague her with regular sessions of speech therapy. But much to our chagrin, her preferred method of communication remained expressive silence, punctuated by gestures and some sounds.
I won’t lie; our daughter’s silence made us uncomfortable. Late at night, sleepless and confused, the question that filled my husband’s and my mind was what if she never talked. What would her life be like? The only thing we knew was that we loved her, and we wouldn’t let her condition define her. It became a mantra that we repeated to ourselves over and over, to stop ourselves from unravelling.
We so desperately wanted to hear her speak that we never actually stopped to consider why. Why was it so important to us that she be able to speak? We felt locked in different worlds – one silent, one noisy, each not understanding the other. This became the starting point of our deep dive into the nature of human communication – our need to understand the silent world that she inhabited. What is language really? What other ways of communicating exist in this world? What if we were never able to talk to her? These were the questions and fears we armed ourselves with in our quest to communicate with our silent little girl.
Since I was the reader in the family, as my husband put it, I started reading about language. I read books about the history of language, the complex structure of language, etc. Most of the books were filled with jargon beyond my comprehension. Language, they intoned, was a complex sociological process and is one of the greatest reasons for human advancement through two millennia. That it was language that helped humans evolve over other species, so much so that we now have dominion over this world. But I also learned something valuable: that speech was not synonymous with language, as I had always believed. Speech was only one of the five parts of language, the others being grammar, writing, words and symbols. One didn’t necessarily have to be able to speak to understand and use language. A small glimmer of hope flared up in my heart.
I turned to the natural world next for ideas about silent communication. I studied ants and bees and all manner of living creatures I could see. As an experiment, our whole family would stalk lines of worker ants going about their business silently. What fun it was to see two little ants solemnly “talk” to each other through the twitching of their limbs. I read later that what we were witnessing was, in fact, a sophisticated mode of communication comprised of body language, pheromones and vibrations. See, I told myself, it was possible to talk without actually talking. I read about how every living tree, bush, and flower was connected by a complex biological network that could transmit information in the form of electrical impulses, which could travel for miles and miles. Just like the Internet, but without all the annoying marketing. A new layer of reality opened up to me. There was communication happening in silence all around me; I’d just never taken the time to observe it. The world was alive, exchanging ideas and thoughts at a rate beyond my paltry human imagination.
Having explored the natural world, I decided it was time for me to re-join the human world. Do neurotypical human beings communicate without words too, I wondered. I started exploring nonverbal human communication. Here’s something that astonished me – almost two-thirds of our communication is, in fact, nonverbal. Meaning, even without speaking, our bodies are telling stories about us and our lives. Most of our first impressions about another person are formed by these nonverbal cues. Some of the biggest actions of our lives like falling in love, making friends and more, all happen in silence. Nature, it seems, had already built a failsafe in the form of body language, when it came to human communication. And even though her autism would always interfere with the complete processing of nonverbal cues, we’d always had and would continue to have, an alternative means to communicate with our little girl.
Now with a little more understanding under my belt, I started studying people without speech, something I hadn’t been brave enough to tackle before. I read biographies of famous people who communicated in silence, like Stephen Hawking and Helen Keller. We watched inspirational talks by speakers who were autistic or nonverbal or had speech difficulties. We even met some adults who were without speech. The more people we connected with, the more we understood, that to these amazing people, silence did not signify disability. Rather they perceived their silence as a jumping off point: into creativity, lateral thinking and in some cases, even world-changing ideas. We looked at our daughter for the first time without blinkers on and saw how many wonderful gifts she had. Gifts we hadn’t noticed because we’d been obsessed with our agenda of making her speak, something that was starting to look less important with each passing day.
And as time progressed, along with my understanding, something odd began to happen to me. I started listening to silence intently. The more I listened, not spoke, the more I understood. Every day I woke up earlier to listen to silence, and increasingly found that silence was composed of layers of diminishing sounds. At first, I would only hear immediate sounds like the birds, creatures, cicadas, and calls to prayer. Then I started hearing my own heartbeat and the blood rushing through my veins. And then nothing. No thoughts or fears or doubts. Pure silence. And I realised that silence was a thing of beauty. Could it be that my three-year-old had understood an eternal truth that her parents had failed to grasp? If, I reflected, this was how my daughter lived every day, it wasn’t a bad way to live at all. I finally began to accept her decision to stay silent. I would honour her choice and defend her right to stay silent if that is what she desired.
My journey through the world of silent communication had left me speechless. I was overwhelmed and ashamed at the same time: overwhelmed at seeing the world truly for the first time, and ashamed for ever having doubted my daughter’s chances at life, love and happiness. From being worried about her future constantly, to looking forward to seeing her grow up and succeed, we’ve come a long way. We resolved to never worry about her future again and for the most part, we’ve been able to keep our promise.
Through her silence, my little girl has made me a better person and continues to bring our family closer. Of course, her autism poses many other challenges in her life, but you know what? We all love a good challenge, and use it as an opportunity for creative thinking. We’ve come to see speech as a more impersonal means of communicating, when contrasted with our language of gestures, signs and animated silences, as a more intimate way of communicating with each other. See, here’s the thing we missed when we started out on our quest – communication, not speech, is the key to love. Does it matter if the communication is in silence?
And now, when friends and family ask us when she is going to “talk properly”, we just smile and say nothing. We know that she talks. Just that it’s in a silent language that’s reserved only for a chosen few.
Beautifully written! Very heartfelt, deeply touching and full of such profound wisdom!