Barnmaven

Quality Time

Friday evening, after a long day at work, the last thing I wanted to do was go out, so I kissed my husband goodbye as he went off to represent us at a night out with his parents and brother/sister in law, and I dialed up the local delivery guy for pizza for me and the kids. 

I was fairly exhausted from the long week and the late 4th of July fireworks and all I was really interested in doing was my best imitation of a couch potato.  Race Car Man had other ideas.

He really, really wanted me to go out in the pool with him.  He knows he is not allowed to go swimming unless he is supervised by an adult.  The water comes up to his shoulders in our pool, but he is not a good swimmer and I won't take the risk.   

He's so enthusiastic about this pool that one night last week one afternoon when it was time for a break he wouldn't even buy into my offer of an hour playing Minecraft.  Yes, the pool is THAT AWESOME.  His bravery has grown by leaps and bounds.  Last summer he wouldn't get his face or head wet at all and wasn't happy without floaties or a life vest on.  By last Friday he was dog paddling without assistance and timing how long he could stay underwater.  My insistence that evening that I was not ready to swimming with him until after dinner didn't go over very well at all.

As I sat browsing Facebook and waiting for our dinner to arrive, I could hear him slamming things around in his room and muttering to himself.

He came stomping down the hallway and through the kitchen, and just before I heared him open the door to the garage he shouted "I'm going to the wilderness so I can swim when I want!"

lolwut?

 I hurried up and out the door in time to see him starting to march around the corner of the yard to the side street.

"Where are you going?"

He stopped and turned, glaring.   He had his Sponge Bob bacpack on his back.

"I'm going to the WILDERNESS!"

"Where exactly is the wilderness?  Because unless its somewhere in our pasture, I'm going to have to insist not."

"Well I want to go swimming and unless you agree to go in the pool with me, I'm leaving.  FOR THE WILDERNESS."

This is one of the many moments of parenting where my sense of humor undermines my authority.  Its so hard to sound stern when you're laughing.  Plus he hates it when he's serious and I'm laughing.

"Honey, you can't go live in the wilderness.  They don't have Minecraft.  Or swimming pools."

"I can go swimmng in the RIVER."

"Honey, the river runs too fast, and its too deep.  Plus, remember how you don't like going in the pool unless the water temperature is at least 85 degrees?  Its not even close to that warm in the river."

He stomped his feet.  "I WANT TO GO SWIM."

At this point, the pizza arrived.  

"Look, come in and have some dinner and then I'll go out back so you can swim."

"I'm not eating!  Not until you let me go swimming!"

"Will you at least come in the house?"

It took another five minutes of cajoling before he would come back into the house, but only after he first decided he'd just move into the front yard for the rest of the summer. Lack of a tent and the realization that it would be really uncomfortable when the irrigation clicked on at 10 pm convinced him his own bed might make swankier accomodations.

Yesterday after getting some chores accomplished, he got plenty of time to show me his fancy swim moves.  After we splashed around for an hour or two we took a walk down the street to the river and watched folks zipping around in their boats and jet skis.  He put his hands in the water to test the temperature.

"How cold is it?" I ask.

"Oh, its not bad," he replies.

"'Not bad' enough to swim in?" I query, grinning.

He threw a rock, then another rock.

"Mommy, little kids shouldn't swim in the river.  Its too deep, you know."

I guess I won that argument, but then he declared his little legs too tired to walk all the way home and guilted me into giving him a piggyback ride up our street.  

 

 

 

 

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Rest, Play, Rest, Play

What do you mean its halfway through June already?

Aside from being a great source of career satisfaction, my recent changes in job duties have also played whack-a-mole with my ability to meet deadlines and get things accomplished.  My normal duties didn't go away with the move to our business partner's offices, and so I where I used to work in shorter, intense spurts, now I find I have to increase the intensity and the amount of time involved in order to have any hope of getting even the minimum done needed to keep the hungry hordes at bay.  

By the time I get home I'm mentally wiped out, but with SG working the outage, I'm still flying a bit solo when it comes to laundry and kids and animals.  He's a huge help when he gets home in the mornings, covering those last details of getting the kids ready so I can leave for work.  Evenings when the kids are home are a chaotic, lovely jumble of feeding humans and animals and trying to skim at least the worst of the days' messes before I collapse in my chair with an ice pack on my sciatica.

Despite feeling tired and sore, I'm making more effort this year to ride as often as possible and engage in more social activities.  Last year when SG was out of town I had a tendency to hide when i was down or lonely (which was a lot) and I think that was not so good for me.  This year I'm committed to every other week dressage lessons and riding every single weekend.  I have plans for going out with friends and with SG (once the outage is over.  TWO MORE DAYS!)  Last weekend was the only weekend in months I didn't ride, but it was my 30th high school class reunion, so I have a good excuse.  I was too busy having fun and waxing nostalgic over days gone by, and after being out of town since last week I'm now paying the price at home and at work.  Not to mention I've been trying to get the pool put up for the last three weeks - not by actually doing anything but by continually reminding SG to call his nephew to help me do it.  Monday night I finally bit the bullet and started working on it.  Damn if I didn't get it half done when the skies started thundering and flashing lightning before dumping rain all over me.  Its rained every day since.  

The kids are on their second week of summer break.  I didn't get much scheduled for the month of June, but come July and August they've both got camps to go to.  Amazon Girl will take swimming lessons again and go to a horse camp and then two art camps and a music camp.   It was harder to find camps for Race Car Man.  There are some science camps locally but none with the appropriate staffing or resources to deal with his complex behaviors.  I was torn about signing him up for camps through a local disability resource center, but when I reviewed the curriculum I felt like it would be a lot more enriching for him than just having him at home or at daycare.  I've managed to set up a schedule for him that inludes several weeks at the ARC camp, a vacation bible school, some time at daycare and some time off with me and time at his dad's.  Overall I'm satisfied that both kids will have an enjoyable summer.  I'm avoiding adding up all the various costs for the camps because I'm pretty sure I don't want to look at the total.  Oh, its worth every penny of it.  But its a lot of pennies.  

The last week of school for the kids was a bit poignant for me.  The moving up ceremony for the fifth graders was on Wednesday.  I managed not to cry when Amazon Girl was handed her certificate for a Presidential Award for Academic Excellence.  Thursday was field day, and I spent the morning with Race Car Man.  He wanted very much to do two activities - the rope climb and the sack race.  He was not at all interested in trying anything else.  We talked about it for a little bit and eventually he agreed to try a few things.  When the 11:30 bell rang for his group to go back to class he'd thrown the football through a hoop, tried the frisbee toss, rolled a ball at a stack of cans and chucked a nerf ball as far as he could get it.  I was proud of him not only for making the effort to try new things as I was for his ability to change his mind about doing so.  It was a little bittersweet;  spending time with him in the comapny of other boys his age reminds me in a way I'm not used to just how different he is from neurotypicals.  At the same time, I recognize that those differences aren't necessarily bad.  Yes, he has what might be considered deficits, but he has an amazing number of positive attributes as well.  

Next fall Amazon Girl starts middle school.  It will be a big change for her -- for both of them, really.  Race Car Man has had his sister to lean on ever since kindergarten.  They ride the bus together, go to aftercare together.  In some respects its probably been as hard for them as anything.  They're typical siblings in the way that they both fight with and love one another fiercely.  Next year Race Car Man will have to learn to navigate alone, and as much as I think it will be a challenge I also think it will be really good for him.  Amazon Girl will finally have the chance to concentrate on herself and not need to worry about trying to keep her brother out of trouble.  It will be a most decidedly interesting year, for all of us.

I have a feeling it will be here sooner than I'm prepared for.

Not doing what I can't

I think I'm starting to get better at this grownup thing.  Perhaps, just maybe.

Race Car Man started a few weeks ago with a new therapist, this time one at a place whose clientele are people with autism (as opposed to a therapist who deals with autism among other things, which for us did not work so well).  I think its helping.  He's had more good days at school, he's starting to get homework again.  My ex had a schedule change at work that allows him to go to our son's classroom two days a week for a couple of hours which is fantastico.  If I could only find a way to make life outside of Minecraft even remotely palatable for this child all would be straight up and down.  You can't have it all. 

Amazon Girl also started with a therapist last week, as the doors of pubescent hormonal hell have apparently opened wide and beckoned her therein.  She's struggling emotionally and needs some support from an adult she can talk to about life, about her parents, about her brother -  which means a third party is required.  Fortunately the last therapist she saw, the one I really really liked, is still practicing and takes our insurance. 

Then on Wednesday nights I still have obedience school with TBone.  And Sundays there's church and then Amazon Girl has her riding lesson, and most Saturdays from here until the sun goes away in the late fall again, I have something to scheduled to do with my horses.  SG has guitar lessons every Tuesday and just got started with some group political thingamajig.  And so on.

Sometimes in between all of that we sit down for a few minutes and breathe and maybe fold a load of laundry.

Last week Race Car Man's therapist asked if we wanted to start him in her next social skills class.  "Sure, when does it start?" 

Next Tuesday. (Two days ago)

Its a class he needs, BUT - it starts at 3:45, just 5 minutes after he gets out of school, AND its a half hour ride away from his school.  And I work full time.  And my husband works full time.  And if I had some time to sit down and sketch out a plan it we can do it but Next Tuesday just does not work for me right now and I for ONCE in my goddamned adult life opened my mouth and said the magic words:

"I'm sorry but that doesn't work for our schedule right now."

I didn't even feel guilty about saying it.  I felt relieved.  I am doing all that I can do for my family and myself right now and I am not going to try and cram one more thing down our collective throats, not at this moment. 

There have been a lot of times in the last several years where I've felt almost all of my waking time was consumed with trying to frantically get everything done that I am supposed to do and failing miserably at it.  Its a horrible pattern - try to do more than you're capable of, fail, drop two or three of the balls you're juggling and then spend a month trying to dig out of the hole you've just created for yourself.  

Perfectionism just isn't going to happen for me right now.

There will be a point where our schedule will open enough to make the social skills class do-able for us.  It will happen.  Just not two days ago.  

Slow down. The tempo isn't as fast as you think it is.

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Pig Wrestling

The first week always sucks

Pig Wrestling

My mother likes to tell people stories about how, when I was small, it would take five adults to hold me down at the doctor's office if I was about to get a shot or a blood draw.   The fear still lingers, but I have learned to willingly submit, even when I know its going to make me feel nauseated, break out in a cold sweat, and probably fall over.  (This is why I'm more than six months late for my six month dental checkup, why I hate to see my doctor even though I love him and why I frequently turn pale when my father takes his blood sugar or gives himself an injection.  Urp.)

My children have inherited my fear of shots.  Amazon Girl outdid me by miles during her preschool years, though she's much better now.  At her most recent checkup she needed four vaccines.  I requested they give her two and have us come back for the others -- I don't like having that many done at a time.   She sat still for them, but she was super mad at me - I didn't realize when I made the appointment that she would need shots and therefore didn't warn her ahead of time.    After I bought her a treat to compensate for her suffering, the lightbulb in her pointy little head went off and now I'm bound by contract for a trip to the ice cream parlor when the next two shots are given.

Race Car Man, on the other hand, still requires far more than a bribe.  He came home early from school yesterday.  Rather, the school nurse called and said to send someone to come get him right away as he had appeared in her office with pinkeye.  Joy!  Cue the dark thunderclouds and Wagner, because any condition that requires the application of anything - particularly in something as sensitive as an eyeball - falls unti the category of Things That Are Traumatic.

The pinkeye doesn't look like its a raging case. so I opted not to bother the doctor and dug out the antibiotic drops from the last round of the dreaded eye crud. I showed him the little bottle and asked him to stop what he was doing so I could put some into his eye, which immediately resulted in screaming so loud you'd think I'd set the little bugger on fire.  I quickly decided that rather than engage in a wrestling match, I'd try again later.  'Later' turned out to be a text to his dad as he was on his way to pick the kids up:  I'm sending some drops for _____'s eye.  He wouldn't let me put any in."

Ex:  So he hasn't had any yet?

Me.  No.

If dead silence on the other end translates tone, I'm pretty sure he's plotting his revenge.  I deserve it.

I don't blame it entirely on the autism, but I will say that having a child with sensory issues makes certain things much more difficult.  Pills, for instance.  He can't swallow pills.  Or at least he thinks he can't swallow pills, which is pretty much the same thing.  Textures are another thing, but the absolute worst is anything that requires him to submit to something being done to him.  The dentist, the doctor, a sliver in the finger or a scrape needing to be washed out -- all of these things require the person attending him to have cat-like reflexes, the ability to lift and secure the equivalent of an 8 armed chimpanzee and the patience of Job.  I still recall the first time the nurse at the doctor's office wanted to take his blood pressure.  When we finally got his fingernails pried out of the ceiling tiles we gave up because it was a sure bet any reading we got at that point would be abnormally high.  Mine was, at any rate.

My good friend whose son not only has an autism diagnosis but also has a congenital heart defect deals with this but multiplied by an easy thousand.  I not only don't envy her, whenever her son has to go for tests or a procedure I want to give her a trophy and a bottle of vodka.  They make it through, and so through our small challenges do we.   

Its one of the harder aspects of parenting for me, that situation when I have to ask my child to tolerate something that hurts or causes them discomfort, especially if I'm asking them to deal with something I can barely deal with either.  Do you suppose that if we'd had an inling that parenting came with an honorary degree in greased pig wrestling we might have at least had a moment or two of doubt about the whole thing?

If wishes were fishes

I love the way memory is so intricately connected to the senses.  A smell, a taste, a song can take me back along the timeline of my life, often to a place or person or event I've not thought about in years.  There are times when the reverse is true as well -- a memory will evoke a sensory response.  I look at a picture of me cradling my infant daughter and I can smell milk and lavender-scented baby wash.    I can flip through an album of old remodeling pictures and remember the feeling of being caked with soot and fine black dirt from taking four layers of roofing material off our old house.

I have tons of photo albums full of images I really should put in digital format to preserve them.  For every picture that was developed and put into an album, there are about five more that didn't make it into the highlight reel of my life.  Those photos and all of the duplicates that didn't get given to friends, relatives or grandparents, they are all in a plastic bin in the extra bedroom.  The last time I really went through them is when my ex and I divided our belongings and I needed to go through and give him an equal sampling of our joint history as captured on film.  The problem with going through that box is that what started off as a planned one-hour project quickly turned into a four-hour journey into the recesses of memory.  I need to go through that box and get its contents put into a more durable format, and right now I don't dare.

I would love to tell you I live life with no regrets, but the hubris of saying so would only invite the Universe to go right ahead and unleash the Kraken. 

There are people I've lost touch with that I wish I hadn't.  There are people I've hurt that I wished I hadn't.  There are people I've loved that I wished I hadn't.   Choices I've made that were so monumentally stupid that I'm shocked it was me that made them. 

As many regrets as I may have, marrying my ex and having our children is not one of them.  Sure, there were times during our separation and divorce that I wondered if it had really been worth it, but that was mere misery beating its breast.  My children are the greatest treasure of my life, and I would not trade one moment with them for any amount of money, comfort, or success.  I don't make that statement lightly; In the past months I've had career opportunities dangled in front of me that were definite steps up the ladder in terms of title and income.  Two questions I asked myself: 

1.  Is there anything so wrong with my life right now that I would consider making a dramatic change?

2.  Would this career advancement make me less available to my children?

The answers were and are crystal clear.

My babies are not babies anymore, but they aren't teenagers either.  The years remaining where they will really need me the way they do now are few.    I see no gain in wasting what small time I have left of their childhood.   Its not selfless; I worry less what they would think of me if I treated my career as being more important than their needs.  I worry more what I would think of myself if that were true.

When it comes to my children, the only possible regret I have is that I have only two.  Before I met SG I didn't give it much of a thought.  In the last year or so, however, its been an oft-discussed topic.  I've examined every ramification and rejected all of them up until the realization that one reaches a point in life where it is no longer optimal to be pregnant or raising an infant.  I don't want to be depositing my youngest into Kindergarten when I'm 52. 

Its just water under the bridge now, but that doesn't mean my soul is yet fully convinced I should be done having babies.  If anything I wish that I'd started earlier.  I was already considered to be in "advanced maternal age" when I had my daughter.  Three months shy of my 40th birthday I delivered my son.   By the time it would have been about right to consider another baby, we were in the throes of a cross-country move which was soon followed by a string of diagnoses and eventually the end of a marriage.  

I'm left to imagine who a child of this marriage might be.  Every time the kids say they wished they had a little brother or sister I feel a sharp pang of loss for the alternate life's journey where I wasn't on the wrong half of my forties or had gotten my shit together a lot sooner.  An alternate timeline where I met SG more than a decade sooner, or wasn't so old now or where we hadn't chosen permanent options regarding fertility.

The days for babies are over for me.  All that's left to me now are pictures, videos and the occasional pang of regret.  The reality I live in is truly sufficient; I am fulfilled by my relationships with my family.   There is nothing that I need that I do not have in abundance.  Sometimes, though, its not the things you need that trip you up; its the things you think you want.

 

This dance

I was going to post about our awesome new dog Little Sister, the one I sweet-talked my husband into letting me adopt while he was on the road.  She's a Mastiff/Dogue de Bordeaux mix, so fairly big.  Instead, though, I am writing about a meeting I had this morning with  my son's teacher and principal. 

While we've had a lot of very good days since the medication change, the teacher has also seen an amplification of sensory behavior.  The day they used clay in art, he spent the rest of the afternoon obsessively washing his hands because he could still feel the clay.  His shirts bother him, his socks bother him.  Even though his focus improved, his anxiety worsened.  And then yesterday, oh yesterday.  Yesterday prompted today's meet and greet.

My son has three loves:  Video games, computer time and Kindle time.  Everything else in life is something that interferes with that time.  He hasn't yet been able to understand that notgoing to school isn't going to magically increase the amount of time he gets to engage in his digital universe.  He resists doing schoolwork of any kind either at school or at home.  Once he is finally convinced to do the work, he finishes it in mere seconds.  If he brings home a book to read that he has already read once at school he simply recites it to you without even opening it.  (They really need to challenge him more)  He loses more play time by resisting than he gains, but he's not yet gained the ability to recognize the cost of this tradeoff. 

Yesterday afternoon he had earned all but the last two letters he needed in order to get his evening dose of post-homework electronic joy.  However, he was asked to complete some tasks that he refused at school.  Sensing he would not earn enough letters to be able to play Skylanders Cloud Patrol on my Kindle Fire, he attempted to rip pages out of his binder, which is his daily communication between home and school.  Then he tried hiding it so his teacher wouldn't be able to find it.  When it was time to go home, he cooperated to go in line, but once on his bus he refused to sit down.  His teacher ended up having to ride the bus with him in order to keep him in his seat. (I'm not sure why the aide on the bus wasn't willing or able to do this, but I'm grateful that his teacher cared enough to keep him safe.)

Needless to say, we all sat down this morning to review what the school is doing and how we can best support Race Car Man. 

We're adding a couple of options to his daily sheet of letters earned.  This way if he ends the day without having gotten all of them, he will have a chance when he gets home to earn one or two more at most.  Doing his homework without fighting is one option, eating his dinner and putting his dirty dishes away is another.  This way he still has the opportunity to turn his behavior around, and doesn't send him home without any hope of playing his beloved games.  Even though he can eventually calm down enough to just play with his toys, it takes a while to get him past the attitude that life no longer has meaning.

We'll also talk to his doc about med changes next week, and we're going to work together to come up with a reasonable reward system for cooperation in completing tasks at school and homework at home. 

I write all this with optimism, assuming that we will see a change for the positive in his behavior. 

It is such an intricate dance, trying to anticipate the way I ought to move to meet his needs.  One miscalculation and I've mashed his poor feet without meaning to.   There is no formula for the perfect mix of what keeps Race Car Man's engine humming.  We just have to measure things and try them and change them again if they don't work.  The pattern of this dance just keeps evolving and changing, and I must do so as well so that we don't lose step with one another.

What we pass along

Parent-teacher conferences were last week, and all things considered, I am happy with where the kids are at.

Race Car Man continues to have areas of concern around his ability to control his reactions, but the biggest issue I see with him is a real streak of craftiness when it comes to getting out of work.  I think he sees his hierarchy of needs in very simple terms:

Good:  Gaming time

Bad:  Anything that interferes with gaming time

You know, like meals and homework and baths and those really awful times when mom bans all electronics and locks the kids OUTSIDE.  (I'm only joking.  I don't lock them out.  At least not after the first 10 minutes.)

What's super frustrating about his report card is how he's testing AT grade level on everything.  Except that I know for a fact he's capable of doing math well beyond his grade level and in terms of ability to read he is also beyond his grade level.  Reading comprehension may be an entirely different animal, as he just doesn't see the world and human interaction the same way the educational system would like.  Still, there weren't any surprises and I am satisfied with that.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Amazon Girl's conference.  At our last psych appointment she complained about being distracted a lot in class.  She was afraid she wasn't understanding as much math as she is supposed to because she doesn't think she's listening well.  I hadn't seen any homework come home that indicated she wasn't understanding, but at the same time, I half expected to walk out of her conference with a referral slip for a math tutor.  Much to my happy surprise, Amazon Girl is doing spectacularly well in school.  Her teacher thinks she's an absolutely delight, and her art teacher wrote that she is "exceptionally creative" in the comments section of her report card.

This morning when I opened her backpack to put her lunch in it, I noticed at her binder was so full of papers that it could barely be zipped.  As I periodically do, I went to work sorting and removing the completed assignments and reviewing her current projects.   In doing so, I found a group of study sheets about our presidential elections.  One of the sheets asked the students to pretend they were running for president.  They were asked questions about what qualities they thought were important for the president to have, who they would choose as their running mate, what their campaign slogan might be, and what planks they would run on.

My daughter, my Amazon Girl,  wrote that her primary issue would be to teach people that "Its OK to be gay."  She went on to say that people needed to learn that we need to accept each other and our differences and make sure that everyone gets the same chances no matter what. 

This is not an issue I've heard her talk about, but its an issue that's been on our televisions and our radios and a subject of adult conversation in our homes this past election season.  Washington voters were asked to approve or reject SB 6239 which extended marriage in Washington to include gay and lesbian couples. 

My ex and I certainly have our issues, but we both feel very strongly about the rights of all people to be treated with kindness, dignity and compassion.  As adoptees under the closed records system, we both have an inkling of what its like to be treated differently because of the way we were born.  We are both advocates of equality for all regardless of things like race, gender, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. 

When I consider the things I want for my children I would have to say that their happiness tops the list.  Beyond that, I don't care if they are doctors or gas station attendants.  I don't care if they are gay or straight so long as their relationships are mutually loving, supportive and respectful.  While it would be nice if they share my faith, I happily accept that they will form their own beliefs in their own way and their own time.  What I DO care is that they grow up with a core value system that includes acceptance, kindness and compassion for other people.

Despite my failings as a person and a parent, my daughter will carry on the mission of grace and love that I consider to be one of the highest callings we as human beings will ever know.  I could not be more proud of her than I am at this moment. 

 

 

On Guilt

My post from last night got me thinking.

I don't know about other moms, but I suspect its the same thing.  Whenever I hear a new theory about the causes of autism, I feel defensive. 

I mean, if vaccines DID cause autism, then I, the parent who made the choice to vaccinate my child, am part of the reason my son has autism.  Or if its the things in my house that made him sick, I bought those things.  I exposed him.

Even if its simple genetics -- those are my bad genes he got.  Well, mine and his dad's, anyway.  Which all leads me to consider inherent Mommy Guilt and to ask myself what good does it actually do?

If one stops to consider that even the best lives have times of pain, sickness, heartbreak and struggle, then it stands to reason that the simple act of bringing a baby into this world is automatically going to cause your child to suffer.  And as your child grows and you have to make decisions about where you live and where they learn and who you interact with and what they wear and what faith you follow (or don't) -- all of these things lead to other things which at some point in time will cause your child pain.   Just choosing to take a certain route to the grocery store might be the one thing that caused you to be in a car accident in which your child was injured.

In this life, it is a certainty that we will all suffer, we will all struggle and we will all ultimately die.  Why then, do we have children?  If we only consign them to certain pain, what's the point?  (Rhetorical question, by the bye.)

Does parental guilt serve a purpose?  Why does it exist otherwise?  (Not a rhetorical question.) 

It stands to reason that the concept of parental guilt is not a new one.  Surely when Cain slew Abel, Adam and Eve must have had more than a few terrible nights wondering where they went wrong.  The instinct to protect our children is incredibly powerful and nearly universal.  We've all heard the stories of adrenaline-fueled parents lifting cars off of their toddlers, of parents hurling themselves in front of buses to push their child out of the way, of parents braving flames in order to free a trapped baby.  The need to protect is instinct, there is no decision process involved.   It would naturally follow, then, that when our child suffers, we feel somehow responsible for not having prevented it.

A little guilt goes a long way.  The parent who feels guilty about working long hours may be prompted to make more of an effort when they are home to spend quality time with their family.  Guilt causes us to try to make the best parenting decisions we can, to learn from our mistakes and to continually improve.  When we want our children to be happy and healthy our parental conscience drives us to be and do better. 

But I think guilt can also go too far.  The parent whose child is sick or has a pervasive disorder - what good does guilt do for that parent?   The parents whose children got sick and died in Holbrook, MA from playing in toxic fields behind the chemical plant, what good does guilt serve them?  They couldn't have known.  The truth is that there are things in life we are never going to be able to prevent.  There are pains and truths everyone must learn as they grow.  They are part of the maturation process, they are the stressors that build our character, our resolve and our resilience.  If we never had our hearts broken, how would we learn to make better relationship choices? 

Life to me often seems like a continual progression from one hot stove to the next.  As I blow on my singed fingers from the last character-building experience, I often wonder from whence the next lesson I learn will come.  And so it is, so it will be, for my children. 

I think its possible to be happy without having to experience pain, but I also think that I'm more grateful for being happy when I can contrast it to the times I have suffered.  The joy of being in love is clarified by the experience of losing a relationship.  The enjoyable and relaxed trail ride is even more satisfying in contrast to the memory of the ride where my horse and I parted company - painfully. 

Still, I find as a parent, that I have yet to learn when it is OK to ratchet back on that guilty defensive posture.  I suppose its natural to react strongly to a perceived sense of being blamed when in fact there have been many times since my childrens' various diagnoses that I have very much felt entirely responsible for every single one of those issues.  Rightly or wrongly, that self-searching is a process I think we all go through when our child experiences something greater than a scraped knee or a cold. 

At some point, though, I had to recognize that blaming myself wasn't going to get me anywhere.   in order to be the parent my children need, I have to let go of self-recrimination and be in this moment, making better choices.  Andyou know, even in the worst case scenario where a parent does indeed make the wrong choice about a babysitter or a pet or a medication or any myriad number of things, self-blame is not a constructive thing beyond the initial recognition of "I could have chosen better."  Recognize it and move on, because the next time you will make a better choice. 

So yes, I recognize that I tend to overreact and jump on my soapbox.  Those moments, though, are useful to me, because they help me recognize the areas in my life that could use a little growth. 

 

The Queen of Managing Everything

As crazy as my life can be structurally, in terms of schedule, it is highly organized.  It has to be.  There are a lot of things we can slide on, but my kids being where they are supposed to be and in the care of the right person at the right time, this is not negotiable.  I work 45 miles away from my home; two hours of my day is spent commuting.  Because my son rides the special needs bus, pickups and dropoffs have to be orchestrated through the school and schedule changes take up to five days to implement.  Knowing ahead of time what's going to be happening and when gives me an enormous (and highly illusionary) sense of control.

So you can imagine when, on a Tuesday, my husband announced he would be leaving over the weekend to go to Nebraska for six weeks, I put my head between my knees and hyperventilated just a little bit (well, maybe more than a little bit). 

I'd gotten pretty spoiled having a stay-home man all summer.  I didn't have to worry about schedules and buses and where to be and when - I just had to get up on time, get ready on time and show up to work. 

My husband was not impressed by my impending sense of doom.  "You'll figure it out," he said.  "You always do."  BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT, DAMMIT.  DOESN'T ANYONE CARE THAT I'M PANICKING HERE?  And I did get it figured out, with the help of my friend Debbie and my mother.  BUT STILL NOT THE POINT.

So we're sailing along pretty splendidly here.  I get to see my parents at least four days a week when I stop after work to pick up the kids, who have completed most of their homework and been fed.  Four days a week Debbie comes over and makes sure they're out the door in time to get on the bus and then feeds and waters all the animals.  Did I mention I have some pretty awesome friends, not to mention parents?

It never pays to feel too much like you've got things under control.

Yesterday afternoon I discovered that my ex's schedule would be dramatically changing - ON MONDAY.   All of my arrangements for morning and after school care just got flushed down the commode. 

My husband had the bad luck to call me about five minutes after that.  I treated him to about thirty seconds of hyperventilating and exited the call.

He hasn't called me back since, and I'm not sure if he's avoiding me completely or just too busy.  I'm fairly sure its avoidance.  Hell, I'd avoid me right now if it were possible.

Its not that I can't manage it, of course I can manage it.  Its that I would just once in a while like some empathy for the fact that its not easy, that its stressful, not to mention lonely and thankless.  It would be nice if there were some kind of monetary compensation or fancy award for being the "Queen of Managing Everything."  Oh, yes, it would.

 

 

 

Partway there

This school year has been markedly different for both of the kids.  My daughter is coming along swimmingly in the personal hygiene department, and you busy moms out there will know what I mean when I say that its a quantum leap forward to have one kid who doesn't need your help in the shower.  Race Car Man is better too.  He now takes showers instead of baths, and his biggest accomplishment has been to teach himself to tolerate the water on his face so that I can wash AND rinse his hair without major histrionics. 

They've both gotten medication compliant, which is another huge relief.  They were pretty good for SG over the summer, but I noticed that if I was home when it was meds time, at least one of them would raise hell for no apparent reason.  I surmised, probably correctly, that the drama was simply for my benefit.  After all, don't most kids behave better with people who are not their parents?  With that assessment of the situation in mind, one of the things I was most dreading about SG being gone this fall was mornings.  I was completely prepared for the marathon mornings I remember so well from last year.  I spent quite a bit of time girding my loins, as it were, for the morning battle, only to find myself completely shocked (and about as delighted as a dog rolling in horse shit)  when no one actually wanted to engage in it.  I put together their meds and deliver them to my kids...and they take them. 

While you finish picking your jaw up off the floor, let me also say that Race Car Man has improved so much over last year with his efforts to manage his behavior that he actually got an award at the school assembly last week.

I KNOW, RIGHT????  I'm shocked the local paper didn't see this as a newsworthy event!

There are still struggles, of course.  Last year my son's nemesis was a bigger kid I'll call "Abel."  Abel is the same age as my Amazon Girl and he is on the spectrum, as are all of the 10 kids in Race Car Man's classroom.  For whatever reason, Abel was my son's kryptonite.  Everytime he made a noise or soothed himself with rocking or flapping, Race Car Man would lose his MIND.  He got suspended for three days because for no apparent reason whatsoever, he hauled off and hit poor Abel while the kid was doing nothing more than sitting on a bench and talking to himself.  We worked very hard at challenging these behaviors, removing desired activities and having many many discussions on making choices about behavior.  There were a few times I simply lost my temper and yelled at him, I'm not proud to say.   How long does it take to teach a kid with ASD that hitting people when you're a grownup doesn't just get you in trouble at school - it gets you fired, and possibly even arrested. 

I anticipated we would see continued problems with Abel, but since the universe frequently likes to remind me I'm not as smart as I think I am, Abel and Race Car Man are best pals this year. 

We are not free, however, of the joy of a mortal enemy.  Race Car Man's kryptonite presented itself this school year in the form of a boy I'll call "Sam."  Sam, like Abel, tends to make a lot of noise as he copes with the messges his brain is sending him.  He also - in my opinion - is kind of a little shit.  (And yes, my son is kind of a little shit too, sometimes, but he's MY little shit and therefore adorable).  Almost every day my son comes home in tears because Sam has called him names or made fun of him.  The day my son got in trouble for hitting Sam, it was (according to Race Car Man) because Sam called him a 'DUMBASS.'  I was so tempted not to punish him, because dammit, I think being called a Dumbass is pretty antagonizing even if you don't have autism.  BUT, I know we need to reinforce the hitting is a bad idea thing, so I made him write "I will not hit" twenty times before doing his homework.  Then I gave him ice cream.

Each week I get an average of three emails from his teacher, updating me on the latest thing my son has done to Sam.  Then the other night I was looking through some schoolwork he had brought home.  My son's class, which is a special program for children with autism, works on social skills and behavior management.  They do a lot of work on identifying emotions and interpreting facial expression.  In his folder was a sheaf of papers stapled together.  On the front of each page, he had colored in the face of a monkey making various facial expressions, and he had correctly identified the emotions the monkey was displaying - sad, mad, happy.  On the back of each sheet, he had written a series of sentences about his own experiences.  On the sheet for "sad," I read:

I feel sad when:

I get (sic) bullied.

The next day I sent an email to his teacher requesting more information on how these two boys are interacting.  I told her about the name calling incident and other things my son has told me Sam does to him, such as enlisting other classmates in making fun of Race Car Man or deliberately excluding him from activities.  I inquired as to which kid was instigating the conflicts.  I suggested we might need to meet to discuss ways to help my son cope with this other boy in a more positive way, but that from what I was hearing from my child, there may be more going on than two boys who just don't get along.

In her response she promised to investigate the name-calling and to pay closer attention to the dynamics between the two.   I trust her judgment - I know she will fairly evaluate each child's part in the conflict and report back to me,  and do everything she can to help them both make better choices.

When my son was enrolled into his current program, I was kind of in love with the idea that he would be with other kids just like him.  I had this picture in my head of some sort of Autism Utopia, where all the spectrum kids hung out together and were a big support group.  Because they all were coping with the same differences, they wouldn't seem...different.  At least not to each other.  And because they don't always share recesses with the other kids, they wouldn't have as many opportunities to get picked on by the neurotypical kids.  To find out that my son is being picked on by one of his own is enormously deflating.  I guess its not that crazy to assume that kids who struggle with their behavior would struggle with their behavior in regards to each other.

Still, I think we're making progress.