POSITIVE PARENTING: FUN!

Just a little example of PP from the Full Spectrums:

Pardner used to be a dawg. Not literally, but – let’s just say he spent his twenties, most of his thirties (there was that...brief first marriage), his forties...even the first part of his fifties, as a single, hunky, zest-for-life-filled, man-about-town chef who had a great appreciation for female beauty of all sorts.

And I do mean all.

When we first started dating, I asked him this highly original question: “What is the most important quality you value in a woman?”

“Fun,” was his simple answer.

Well, I felt very superior when he said that. How trite, I thought. How superficial! And how hard can it be to have fun with no kids, a thriving/rewarding/creative business, excellent health, and that special freedom of the non-married to extricate oneself from any less-fun relationship? A person who thinks fun is the most important thing must be pretty durn trifling, no?

Then I got to thinking about it. Here I was, newly-divorced and unemployed as yet, with two young high-needs kids (neither had labels yet, but the high-needs part was Not Subtle). I was shattered, really, at the time. And yet there he was...into me in a big and, to him, very new way.

Maybe he meant something different by “fun” than I thought.

As we got to know each other, I began to see how fun actually encompasses everything I truly value in life. It dawned on me that a most precious sort of fun was our finding a way to laugh together while courting despite my being in precarious mental, physical and fiscal health.

Fun isn’t just everything always being easy, lighthearted, and effortlessly sparkly all the time; sometimes fun is finding the sparkle in the (heavyhearted, hard, crusty, messy) mud, my friends. It’s choosing to giggle when you get to that giggle/sob crossroad (or at least to gigglesob). As well, fun is exercising our innate capacity to recognize and appreciate that sparkle, that giggle...

Now, we Full Spectrums hold FUN as our High and Sacred Family Virtue. Fun is finding a way to ENJOY each other’s company – even just for a few minutes, even after a crapola day.  Fun is being GRATEFUL for the kids you have and the family you make, whoever and however they are.

Yeah, this isn’t easy all the time; heck, it’s not even happening most of the time. But when it is? That’s fun. Thanks, Pardner!

Positive parentingly,

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

#Positiveparentingday is the brainchild of the Introverted Matriarch. <3

CAN I SLIDE DOWN THIS?

I’ve often said I’ve never in G’s entire life wanted to hit him. Until yesterday.

Leaving Pardner’s basketball game at the rec center, G – who has the balance of, um, a person without balance - casually threw a leg over a slippery metal pole and was about to slide down the skinny handrail that hung over a three story stairwell.

I was about ten feet away, attending to his little sister, when I heard him ask, “Can I slide down this?” Quicker than one would think possible, I was at his side and pulling him off the railing. I pushed him against the wall where he would be safe. I felt a surge of adrenaline such as I’ve rarely if ever felt before and only at great effort prevented myself from punching him.

My voice, when it came out, didn’t even sound like me. It sounded like a very hoarse man: “DID YOU LOOK??? DID YOU? DID YOU SEE THAT YOU WOULD ALMOST DEFINITELY HAVE SLIPPED OFF THAT RAILING AND DIED???”

Here is a picture of the stairwell I took when we returned to discuss this again: you can see the kids’ heads and shoulders waaaay down there. G asked, from below, “Do you want me to pretend I am dead?” 

NO. NOT. FUNNY.

I've written before about trying to get G to Pay Attention to the World. I can’t say my lectures around his almost sliding into oblivion (or, at least, severe injury) felt groundbreaking. But, since it is clearly so incredibly, desperately beyond important, I tried: “You need to think before you act, [G]. Remember how I have been asking you to pause when you leave school and close your eyes and think if you’ve forgotten anything? Well you need to do that much, much more. Like, whenever you are about to do…anything.

“It’s not that something’s wrong with you that makes it necessary to think before you act.

“Everybody has to think before they act.

“Your sister. in particular, has to think before she speaks. Because she talks a lot and sometimes says sassy stuff. But you need even more to think before you do something, like cross the street. Most people already DO THAT. But you don’t.

“You could have been dead yesterday. Look at my face. Can you imagine how we would all be feeling today if that had happened?”

Unfortunately, I don’t feel like he’s really listening or grasping the impact of my words -- or the possible repercussions of his actions. He’s one of the smartest people I know, yet I still honestly have no idea how to teach him common sense in a way that sticks.

Later in the evening Z was doing her usual acrobatics on the living room rug and G said, “[Z], you’re a calamity waiting to happen,” and I laughed – laughed! – “Look who’s talking!”

“Well, mom, a calamity is also a great disturbance in the atmosphere…”

I think I am still calamitized. To see your child almost off himself in the silliest, most-preventable of ways is pretty devastating. Even more devastating: not knowing how to ensure it doesn’t happen again in a slightly different, potentially highly-avoidable way.

But we will keep trying.

I am so grateful this Thanksgiving that G is still alive, in all his huggable glory.

I am grateful for another chance to try to help him to gain some goldang sense.

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

P.S. I am having weird formatting issues. My apologies to those who don't enjoy reading in this format...As you may have noticed there is one portion of this post that is in my old school format. I do not know why...and can't change the rest without making blocks that cover all the words...Le sigh.

CONFERENCE II: FOURS AND TWOS

Whereas Z’s report card consisted almost entirely of threes (“meets grade level expectations”), G’s report card was pretty evenly split between twos (“making progress toward meeting grade level expectations”) and fours (“exceeds grade level expectations”).

Always with the Full Spectrum, eh?

But this was a familiar report card: G is excelling in certain areas, and struggling in others.  Although my report cards tended more toward fours because of my strengths in executive function, I knew G was doing his best and I celebrated the quantified results of that effort.

G’s conference wasn’t spent talking about ways to get him to work harder. His teacher and I both know he is working his fanny off. Even for those twos, he is working. His conference was spent on other concerns. Conferring about how he’s mostly with adults on the playground – and how he says, “Thank you for hanging out with me” to them. How he sits with his teachers on the bus – and thanks them for letting him sit next to them. How, during winter sports, he, again, stayed back with the grownups and told them, always, “Thank you for playing with me.” [I’m thinking, please, no, I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR THIS YOU ARE KILLING ME! I thought he was playing with other kids! He said he was!]  That combination of pathetic and clueless and kind and grateful and well-mannered is also very familiar.….

What do you say to your child about this sort of news? “G, you need to be less thankful and also not go near adults?” Clearly, he’s making these choices for reasons that make sense to him. For one thing, according to his teacher the preteen girl posse he’d been rolling with since the start of school was still somewhat friendly and protective, but now they were more teens than pre- -- with the attendant changes and concerns that come with that shift. For another thing: sixth grade/sixth graders. Blech – who can understand it/them?

Then his teacher explained how he has a hard time working with groups: first, he gets very upset if people don’t do exactly what they are assigned to do in the group or what they say they are going to do; second, others try to do his work for him to “help” him because of his slow processing, which is insulting. Group work is big these days – so it’s a big issue for kids for whom it’s not a natural fit.

Feeling a wave of despair at this point, I wondered if this was all just too much for G, and if he would be better off in a different setting, perhaps a specialized classroom. His teacher replied – quite vehemently – that he would not. She admitted that he does struggle in the mainstream classroom setting, but that she is certain that it’s the best environment for him, just as I have always believed.

There’s a child in G’s class who is more obviously “autistic” than G. This child receives a lot of attention and is doted on by many of the girls in the class. I’ve already had to explain to G that the reason all the girls “like” this other boy is because they want to help him and take care of him. I asked him if he wants people to “feel sorry for him” in that way and he replied with a very strong “No!” In his teacher’s words, G “is not quite different enough to be a mascot and don’t want him to be!” Yet he’s still “different” in ways that set him apart, for example: “He still hugs me – sixth graders do NOT hug teachers!” Well, his teacher is pretty durn wonderful…

Again, what does one say in this situation, as a parent? “No hugging!”????

G is trying to integrate sixth grade social rules…at his own pace! For one thing, as I mentioned at the end of the conference, he studiously and elaborately avoids me at All School Sings. Except – one time, when we were singing “You are my Sunshine,” he looked over at me (because he knows he is my sunshine) and I was **sobbing** and that was the end of even looking at Mom during such events.  

And rightly so! I am so embarrassing. No, I am. Thank you, dear reader, for reading this, for playing with me, for sitting with us on the Full Spectrum bus.

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

Oh, Thank God, YES!!!!

Not long ago, I ran into someone I vaguely recognized at an event the children and I were attending. As we purchased tickets, I remembered that we’d met maybe six or seven years ago and that she’d had a son who at that time was being evaluated for some differences. G hadn’t been diagnosed with autism then, but had been tentatively labeled as having a Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). *

With G and Z sort of doodling around behind me, I initiated a brief conversation with this woman:

Me: ““Hi. You’re blah blah, right? Yes, I think we met over to the blah blah when our boys were little…”

She: “That’s right! How have you been?”

Me: “Great, thanks. You? Do you still live on xyz street?

She: “Yes.”

Me: “And didn’t you have a son with asperger’s or something like that?”

She: “Oh, thank god, no!”

CRINGE.

I look around immediately, furtively to assess damage. G’s back is to me, uncharacteristically still.

What do I do????

First, I say, helpfully, “Well, I do. Have a son with asperger’s. He’s really great!”

“Oh…Sorry!”

Awk-ward.

“Yeah, um, no problem. Really, it’s…great…See ya…”

Next on the agenda? Make a list, of course!

Why I thank whatever forces in the Universe brought me this child who is the best kid (boy division) I have ever known (abridged version)

He is super-kind

He always tells the truth

He is generous

His attempts at eye-rolling show just how little of a real eye-roller he is

He is goodhearted

He is selfless and has no guile whatsoever

He doesn’t care what people look like

He doesn’t care what people have – money, status, possessions

He loves his teachers and makes them feel extra-appreciated

He is a gentle warrior for justice

He would never intentionally hurt any creature, except in self-defense or defense of another

He loves animals for the whole, worthwhile beings they are - with all his big heart

He always does what he says he is going to do

He always has good intentions

As they say, “If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism.” But I can safely say that ALL the people I now know with autism – though they are as different in size, shape and temperament as any other bunch -- share these traits.

Well, some of them may be better at eye-rolling than G. But not much.

A dear friend recently shared a blog post with me where a mother was expressing her anguish about her child’s SPD* diagnosis (http://www.scarymommy.com/somethings-not-right-with-our-boy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ScaryMommy+%28Scary+Mommy%29) .

Sure, anguish is a piece of the autism/difference picture  – but for me (and most other people I know with autism and parents of children with autism) it’s anguish about how the neurotypical world will treat us/them, NOT about the “condition” itself!

I’m not saying this discrete anguish is wine and roses, baby -- it can get you down. But it is separate – at least for me – from feeling that something is WRONG with my boy (or me, or my friends, or their kids…). 

For many of us, getting through the diagnosis and labeling morass, and, dealing with well-meaning and/or thoughtless ignorance are the grueling bit.

Not the autism.

And so I say unto you, Praise the Universe, YES, I do have a child with autism.

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

* Sensory Processing Disorder is generally related to the autism spectrum, although not considered on it per se. These two neurological conditions may co-present in some individuals.