Back to School Jitters

Typically this is the time of year where parents are doing the happy dance.  Well I am doing a partial happy dance… My girl is going back to school after being homeschooled for a year.  YAY! She is so ready and so am I.  However my boy will be starting school this year for the first time… He is 4 and will be attending a special program to help prepare him for Kindergarten next year.  This program is through the public school.  Am I grateful for the program? YES Does that mean I am less nervous? NO

I feel like a major ball of nerves.  The closer it gets the sicker I get.  Lots of reason really..

1) First IEP meeting and no one that will be working with him was there.  I mean literally no one! Excuse was it was summer they were off.. So I have no idea who he will be working with..

2) His teacher won’t be coming until Sept.  So he will have a sub until then.  Which I understand she had a baby and it was in the NICU until just recently.  I get that and understand.  I wouldn’t want to come right back to work either… But why the year my son is gonna be in your class.. Yes I am aware of how selfish that sounds but when your son doesn’t transition well you tend to be slightly selfish.

3) I worry about the bullies! Lord help me if he gets bullied, I will be that schools worst nightmare mommy.  I can’t stand a bully! My son stims in a weird awkward way and I can’t seem to get him to change that to something less awkward.  He says that he can’t change it because it helps him think better when he does it.

4) I worry just because I am MOM.. Telling me not to worry is like telling a flower not to bloom… I am gonna do it.  I have been his soul caregiver for 4 years now.  I have had no help from the outside and dang it I am scared.  I am scared that they will abuse him, I am scared they will judge him, I am scared they will try to turn him into someone other than who he is, and I am afraid he just won’t need me anymore.  Yup there is that selfish thing coming out again.  Sometimes these things are slightly about me.  However while I acknowledge that, I know that is normal as a mom.  I felt that way when my daughter had her first day of school..

I feel like I am gonna also be out of the loop with my sons care.  I feel like someone else is gonna be making decisions for his well-being without me.  People who don’t even know him will have opinions.  This is not sitting really well with me.  Oh and you don’t have to tell me how controlling this sounds I already know.  But don’t you realize that parenting a child with Autism is about control.  We have to control so many things just to get through a day.. Trying to avoid over stimulation, under stimulation, meltdowns, social awkwardness, and we are just trying to make sure our kids have the best childhood possible.

So while I am suppose to reliquensh some of this control to the staff at his school, I am scared to do it as well.  People say “oh you are gonna love the break”.  You are right I might actually take care of me for a change.  However I will not stop worrying that he isn’t being treated fair or being hurt.  In the end the only person who can take care of him the best is me, HIS MOM.  That doesn’t mean I don’t need help and I am trying to let go.  So please be patient and kind with me while I work through my worry, fears and just let me cry when I need too.

See letting my son go to school is way different than when my daughter went to school.  I was sad but happy for her at the same time.  It was a right of passage with her, but I knew she would be fine.  She could tell me if she wasn’t and I would stomp someone if needed.  However with my boy it is scary.  He is verbal but shuts down when things are bad, he doesn’t like to tell me about his day.  Ask him and he says “i don’t know”.  See that scares me, because will he tell me if someone is hurting him? My son is picky about how he eats his food. So I worry what if it isn’t the right temp and he doesn’t eat? If he has a meltdown, will they be patient with him? Will he be punished for something he can’t control? See all these are fears I didn’t have with my daughter.

So when you ask me if I am excited about my son going to school and I respond “not really”.  How about you say “I understand” instead of telling me how much I need this break or how great it is gonna be to have all this time alone. Because truly I could give a rats butt about that time. I want him to be okay and loved.

Did I Get It Wrong

UUGHH…Let me just start this by saying I know people are going to have opinions and I can’t change that ever.  However it doesn’t make them any less annoying and unwanted.  Especially from family!

I mean I get it from strangers, but when it is from people who know your child that is when I want to take my foot to their butts… People just have the need to voice their opinion on what they think Autism means to them.  What they have gotten from media on what it means to have an Autistic Child.

So basically my Father-in-law doesn’t feel I am acknowledging the fact that my son is extremely smart.. Well he says “genius”… What he fails to see is that I see how smart my son is, however I know that this isn’t uncommon for Autistic children.  He likes to point out that my son is meticulous, methodical, precise and thorough.  Heck I don’t know, I am only the mom here and lived with him since birth, I guess I failed to see that in him.  **face palm** How could I ever have missed the very things that make our life so different from most peoples.

See here is the thing, people feel they need to point out the obvious.  Well people let me just tell ya, WE DIDN’T MISS THAT and we are WELL AWARE of the quirks our kids present in life.  NEWSFLASH BEEN HERE 24/7, 365 DAYS A YEAR and I promise I wasn’t checked out.

See when people start to question his Autism diagnosis I start to wonder “Did I push to hard for a diagnosis?” “Could it be he is not Autistic and I am just to focused on it to see it?”  The answer to all these questions is NOPE!  But I let uneducated people get in my head.  I have never wanted to be a special needs parent, I have never wanted to have an Autistic child.  However that is what I am. I am dealing with it the best way I know how at this time.  How about instead of questioning the diagnosis you offer to help and be supportive.  The last thing we all need is another opinion. Yeah Thanks but No Thanks! Trust me I know we all have one but it doesn’t mean we need to say them out loud.  Here is what we do need:

• Someone to listen when Autism takes over our life, because it will trust me.  Therapy, doctors appointments, IEP’s, and learning how to incorporate it into life!
• Someone to give us a breather.  Believe it or not, even Super Moms as we are often referred to as, need a break.
• Bring us a coffee: Yup just a small gesture will sometimes turn a day of meltdowns into a tolerable day.
• And LEAN in because here is the hardest one to do and believe: USE COMMON SENSE, help us as you would any other parent! There is nothing in this list that any parent doesn’t need from time to time. We are all human, we are all tired, and we all need help.  So just be there for us as you would anyone else..

Your judgment and opinions need to be checked at the door, trust me we get that enough from strangers.

Sticker Cowards: A Message to Anyone Judging our Children

So yesterday we all seen the article about the mom who found the stickers on her car calling her Autistic son a “spoiled brat”, “undisciplined” and “entitled”. ( if you haven’t read this please click here)  This really got to me yesterday.  I literally thought about nothing other than this mother and how she must have felt seeing those words on her car.  How violated she must have felt, how angry she probably was, how helpless she felt not knowing who it was and how hurt she must have been feeling for the world her son would have to grow up in now.

I put myself in her position.  As a mother of a son who I feel is stared at and often categorized as these very stereotypes, it left me feeling like: “Well we have gone a long way backwards in educating people on Autism if this is how they still think and feel!”

I will give you my an example… Yesterday was hot as Donkey Kongs balls in a jungle.  We decided it would be a good day for a swim.  Me and my best friend, got our kids ready and we headed down to the pool.  We jump in and I am instantly hit with the thought “wow this feels like a sauna, oh crappity crap crap crap!”.  See Chris hates his water to warm, his food to cold and everything has to meet in the middle… But since our weather is so freaking hot the pool has gotten confused and thinks it is a hot tub.

Everyone begins to comment and I do that mommy look like “Shut the front door up my friends because I don’t want him to notice!” lol  He gets in and does his things.. Jumps off the side about 20 times and rolls up in his ball on his back floating with his ears under water for peace…. I think ok, we are going to be fine… Then it begins more people show up, the pool begins to fill up and he starts to freak out!

Chris: “Mommy I want to go home, I am hungry!”, (he likes to chew on things when he is stressed so hungry is his go to word)

Me: “Chris we just got to the pool lets stay a little longer..”

Chris: “Mommy I just want to go home!”

See here is where it gets bad and the whining starts.. We are pushing him a little and he is pushing back… This is hard for him but his sister is having fun so we want to let her swim.. My husband asked me a couple of times “Babe do you just want me to take him back” and I resisted just to see if we could get through it.

Then came the loud screaming and the harder pushes from him “Mommy I want to go  home, I want to go home, I need to go home!”  Then the words that almost made me cry… “It’s just to hard being here” …

See he was getting overloaded, water was to warm, to many people, kids were screaming, people were splashing, and it was later than we normally swim.

What people on the outside seen was a 4-year-old calling the shots and throwing a fit and getting his way. What I seen was my son telling me when he had reached enough and me (in trying to meet another child’s needs) not listening to his need of removing himself from the stressful situation.

What these “cowards” and “uneducated idiots” that left these stickers on that window fail to see is these children aren’t “Spoiled”, “entitled” or “undisciplined”.  They are fighting a war inside their bodies, they have no control over winning or loosing that war.  All they can do is try to remove themselves from the situation and sometimes as parents we are trying so hard to be “socially acceptable”, we push them to hard to be that with us.  This is true for me at least… We want them to fit in with their friends and family, so if we just stay a little longer maybe it will pass.  “Oh Silly Mommy Trix are for the Neuro-Typical Child” because Autistic kids will smell a trick coming a mile away.   See they are beyond smart.  So smart we can’t even wrap our minds around this level of intelligence sometimes.

So in all the pondering I decided that really in the end these people are the ones missing out on knowing what is probably one of the most amazing gifts God has placed on this Earth.  An Autistic Child will unlock doors for your mind that you didn’t think was possible, make you think outside the box when all you want to do is jump in the box and tape the lid shut.  If you hold on though, for just one minute, you will start to enjoy that ride… Then you will never want to get off..

Yup, so for all you out there judging my son (or any Autistic Child) know this, my son is braver than any of you. Why? Because he wakes up each day and faces a world that judges him endlessly for something he can’t change.  Yet he still thinks you are all his friends!

PS Learn to spell before you get all ballsy and judgmental publicly like this! Just saying!

Basic Aspergers for you Dummies

We all know that our Aspie’s (or the High Functioning Autistic children now as they are called) hyper focus on certain things in their “world”.  It becomes their obsession… Since my son was 18 months old it has been Mario Brothers for him.. He has self-taught himself how to play the games, now he YouTube’s the games and teaches himself how to play.  Most of the time he has taught himself how to play the new games through video’s and when the game comes out he is almost bored with the game after a week… Hence why we love GameFly…

Here is why I give you all this background… Every evaluation we go to they ask me the same question: Is there any one topic he seems to fixated about and loves to learn about? —  My answer is always “Educationally NO, but he is super fixated on video games, especially Mario.  He loves to learn about games new and old.  How to level up, new gear coming out, how the amiibo works, and just anything Wii related.”

It is INTENSE when he is talking about Mario… If he is talking about Mario and he thinks you aren’t listening he will say “Mommy are you listening to me!” over and over until he is acknowledged… He gets absolutely giddy over it.. It’s hard to explain but if you have an Aspie you know what I am talking about… 🙂

But what makes me so CRAZY is every time I say this, they look at me and say “oh no I mean like Dinosaurs or Space”.  I always shoot them a look like “Wait who the freakity freak are you to tell me what my sons obsession should be? So to be an Aspie it has to be Dino’s or Space? Educational only? ummmm last I checked these kids have different personalities and different interest… So are ‘normal’ children only allowed to like video’s games and non-educational stuff?”

My question is WHO THE HECK TAUGHT THESE PPL!  I know my son isn’t the only gaming Aspie out there because I have a good friend whose son is equally obsessed… so I told my husband that next time a teacher or Dr. tries to dismiss this I am gonna have to do some serious educating… I am gonna offer “Basic Aspergers for You Dummies”…  I am going to have to start asking for creditials if this keeps up.. Make sure they aren’t coming out of a Cracker Jack Box… yummm Cracker Jacks.. Oops sorry, I’m back.. lol

But is it me or do these people really think that we as parents are this slow.  That we aren’t paying attention to the stupidity that comes out of their mouths sometimes.  Whether be a Dr. discussing a treatment plan or a Teacher at an IEP meeting.  I want to look at them and say, you know how do you think we got to this point? It wasn’t because Mama was slow on the uptake people.  Someone had to get him here.  Are you feeling me?

Please guys I am always looking to hear from you guys and what you are hearing from the “experts” on your children… I know I am not the only one around here thinking they need to slap somebody sometimes…

note: please know I am not saying that obsessions about dinosaurs or space aren’t acceptable, but that drs have to be open to other non-educational type of obsessions sometimes.