This morning, pulling out after dropping The Boy off at Grammy’s, I actually thought, “Why do we always have rough mornings when I am the most stressed?”
I must be new here.
Autism knows no time schedule. It doesn’t take a break because I have a million things to do between now and this weekend, and not enough hours in the day to do them. Nor does it sit back and say, “Your right. This is completely irrational and poorly timed.” It is what it is, whenever the hell it wants to be.
But there’s more to it than that. The Boy doesn’t get upset and wound up in spite of my stress. He gets upset and wound up because of it. There’s no lack of empathy – that’s a complete myth. There is an overabundance of it. The Boy picks up on my stress, nervousness, anxiety, and mirrors it right back to me.
For some reason, this is a lesson I find myself having to re-learn again and again. Someday I’ll catch on.
The Boy is verbal. He can speak in short and long sentences, has quite a vocabulary, and is an incredible speller. But not always.
I suspect this is common for those of us with kiddos on the spectrum, at least those of us whose kiddos are not-exactly-verbal. In my experience, The Boy becomes a kid at school that everyone knows, or at least knows of, but because we have limited social interaction with the same students outside of school, I know none of these kids. It is also due to the fact that The Boy is fairly nonverbal about anything that happens at school. This is why I try to go on at least one field trip per year, so I can put names with faces.
I had come prepared with a list of applicable laws, just in case, and a list of modifications and alternatives. Turns out, I didn’t need the laws (since he wasn’t “closing the door”), and when I suggested the first alternative, they both seemed receptive. After hashing out some details, we devised a plan: The Boy will play at Friday night football games only, and will play his sousaphone in the “pit” section, which is where the semi-stationary percussion instruments like xylophones and timpani are. This will allow him to participate without having to learn the “drill” (complicated moves), and without having to rehearse after school every day. He will be in the marching band class, but if they are not rehearsing music, the band director may send The Boy to English with the special education teacher, where he can work on any homework he may have, or get a second “dose” of a subject in which he has deficits.
Last Friday, The Man, The Boy, Grammy & Poppy, and I went out to eat as we are wont to do at the end of the week. We decided to go to a place that is a bit trendy, but also has good food, reasonable prices, and is a favorite among the hipster-ish crowd in the area, small though it may be. The Boy likes it because they have a tabletop multi-cade video game that he can play, and in fact chooses to eat at that table while he’s playing. As we’re eating and enjoying each other’s company, I watched The Boy get up to get more lemonade. And I watched as two boys waiting in line watched him, as well. They seemed to make particular note of his footwear (crocs), and begin making comments to each other.
Simple. I Just Do. 