OT: One More Reason to Root for the Houston Texans

[Guest guest]

---Joe Marciano is currently special teams coach for the Houston

Texans NFL football team. Head coach Dom Capers almost certainly

will be fired any day now. Hopefully Marciano will get to keep his

job.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_25_229/ai_n13826626

A special team: an NFL assistant coach has discovered unconditional

love as the single parent of an adopted boy with autism

Sporting News, The, June 24, 2005 by Joe Marciano

Like millions of dads, I'll celebrate Father's Day on Sunday. I just

didn't follow the conventional path to paternity. I'm a single parent

and the adoptive father of a 5-year-old boy with autism.

Six years ago, I was 45, divorced and in my 14th season as a special

teams coach in the NFL. My life consisted of football and fishing--

when I had free time. I felt like I was missing something. That's

when I decided I wanted to experience fatherhood, and I wanted to

experience it from birth.

Let's be honest. Most single men would be rejected if they tried to

adopt an infant. But I was lucky. I knew the right people, and I had

the money.

In October 1999, when I was coaching for the Bucs, I went to a foster

home in Tampa and saw a baby boy who was three days old. He was so

tiny. I held him in my arms and fed him his bottle. His eyes were

open, looking at me, the whole time. He wouldn't go to sleep. He just

held on to my finger with one hand and kept drinking. I was hooked.

Three weeks later, I brought him home. I was a father. I named him

after me--ph Marciano.

At first, it was like, " Wow! " --here's this 3-week-old baby, and I'm

responsible for his life. I set his crib next to my bed, and I slept

with one eye open. When he wasn't moving, I'd get up and put my

finger under his nose, just to make sure he was breathing. It didn't

bother me to get up a couple of times at night to feed him because I

enjoyed it. I made up for any lost sleep at work by taking a power

nap after my special teams meeting or before practice.

I never had any doubts I could balance my career as a football coach

with being a single parent. I've had several good caregivers who have

helped out, both in Tampa and in Houston, after I joined the Texans

in 2002. And I've been fortunate to work for two understanding head

coaches--Tony Dungy and Dom Capers. There were days when the

caregiver didn't come on time and I had to show up for a 7 a.m. staff

meeting with ph in one hand and his diaper bag in the other. That

wouldn't fly in a lot of places.

When ph was an infant, it was pretty easy because all he did was

eat, sleep and cry. And I became a whiz at changing diapers.

One time, I had ph with me in the Bucs' locker room and he needed

a diaper change. When no one was looking, I stuck the dirty diaper in

Brad Culpepper's locker, under his helmet. Culpepper later accused

Warren Sapp of putting it there because Sapp's wife had just had a

baby.

Sometimes, I'd take ph out in my boat. I'd fish while he napped

in his little cradle. As soon as he woke up, we'd head back in. As he

got older, he'd cry when I turned the motor off. He wanted it running.

A couple of scary things happened when he was an infant. Once, ph

woke up at 2 a.m. crying and gasping for air. He was all clogged up

and couldn't breathe. If I stood up and walked with ph, he was

OK. But as soon as I put him down, he'd cry. I was in the parking lot

at the doctor's office by 7, even though it didn't open until 8. As

it turned out, he had croup.

When I talked to my mom the next day, she said I should have started

a hot shower and let the vapor clear out his breathing passages or I

could have rubbed some Vicks VapoRub on him. She had all kinds of

solutions. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking straight at 2 in the

morning.

Later, when he started to pull himself up on furniture and hold on to

walk, he would drag his right foot, like it was numb. The doctor took

an X-ray but couldn't find anything. A few days later, ph started

running a fever, and I couldn't get it under control. He had to be

admitted to the hospital, and this was in the middle of training camp.

The hospital was only 10 minutes away. I'd make two or three trips a

day over there--I'd be in my coaching gear, all soaking wet--and then

spend nights. I just wanted to be with ph. It killed me to see

all those tubes and IVs coming out of him. I was crying more than he

was. It took them nine days, but the doctors finally got it under

control.

It was right after we moved to Houston that I realized something was

seriously wrong. One night, I asked ph to pick up his blocks. He

threw himself on the floor and started kicking and screaming. When I

pulled him up, he took off and ran straight into a window. He didn't

get hurt, and the window didn't break, but it was scary.

After my brother, Tony, was hired as an assistant by the Texans, I

invited his family to move in with ph and me while their house

was being built. ph would take his toys into his room and not

associate with my brother's kids. , Tony's wife, was the first

one to recognize it. She said she thought ph had some social

issues. She was being kind.

I took ph to Texas Children's Hospital, where he underwent a ton

of tests. The diagnosis was that ph had autism, a developmental

disorder with symptoms such as impaired social interaction,

difficulties in communication and repetitive behavior. That was not

shocking to me. What was shocking was the doctor gave us no hope. He

painted a bleak picture: ph would need adult supervision his

entire life, and he might never be able to vocalize.

I sought a second opinion. That doctor concurred that ph was

autistic, but he said it was a hurdle that could be overcome with

early intervention and intense training in ABA applied behavior

analysis--which rewards appropriate behavior and ignores behavior you

don't want to recur. It was going to take a lot of hard work on

ph's part, but it was a battle he could win.

Just as in football, you have to have a game plan. I just hired a new

caregiver, Sotelo, who was ph's first teacher in

Houston, at a Montessori school. ph will start kindergarten in

the fall. will get him up in the morning and put him on the

bus to public school. Then the bus will take him to her school in the

afternoon, and she'll bring him home.

He currently is being home-schooled by Seth and Claudio

, two ABA-trained therapists who are working with ph on

reading, writing and arithmetic. Basically, ph has to stay ahead

of his peers. What he's doing now most kids are doing in first grade.

ph's issues aren't academic. They're social and verbal. Those are

the two main challenges of autism. ph will be mainstreamed with

typical children. And the other kids will be his role models for how

to behave in the classroom and in public.

So how has all this changed me as a football coach? I think it has

helped me be a little more patient with players, young ones and

veterans alike. It has helped my time management at work. I'm a lot

more structured. There's no more " I'll get this extra workout in or

go for a steam and come back to my office and work until 6 or 7 "

because I have somebody to go home to, someone who needs me.

For the first year of ph's life, I exchanged letters with his

birth mother. I sent her pictures of ph and told her how great he

was doing. She was a teenager who had gotten into a tough situation,

and it would have been hard for her to raise a child. I thanked her

and told her how much I loved her for what she did.

She also wrote ph a letter, which I'm going to give to him when I

know he can understand. Eventually, I will tell ph he was adopted.

Right now, through a video and books, he's learning the story of Baby

Moses and how he was found floating in a river. I'm trying to teach

ph that's kind of what happened to him.

I want to tell him: This is how I found you, ph. When you were

born, you didn't have a dad and your mom couldn't take care of you.

So God chose me to take care of you.

Hopefully, he will grasp it.

No question, being a father outweighs anything that will ever happen

to me in football. If we win the Super Bowl, that will be great. But

the rings and trophies are so temporary. Living this unconditional

love I have for ph as a parent outweighs all that in a heartbeat.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Sporting News Publishing Co.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group