4th Grade is not for us . . .

I am not a fan of 4^th grade.  I didn’t like 4^th grade when Tyler went through, but I thought it was all wrapped up with his boredom in math. But no, it’s fourth grade.  We are not friends.

I knew it would be rough, but we did so much work last spring to prepare Scooter for this.  Teachers, therapists, specialists and parents as a team prepped for this big year. His IEP has been enhanced, we’ve lined up an OT evaluation, he’s getting extra help in areas like interpreting idioms and inferring meaning from context clues while reading.  His new teachers are awesome and were prepared for him, while teachers from the past two years have checked in with the new ones to help with a smooth transition. We were prepped people, ready.  Or so we thought.

Change can be hard for anyone, but it’s often the hated enemy in a home where Autism lives and breathes.  We’ve had a lot of change over the last six months.  The cancer in my dad’s leg got aggressive and he had his leg amputated.  Our entire family is still reverberating with the effects of that particular change.  Last September I went back to school, this time on-line and self-paced.  The kids watched me  steam-roll through 36 credits in 6 months and then slam to a stand-still last spring. And then this summer I changed our lives completely by finding a job for the fall with the school district.

Three weeks before school started I went to work for a Junior High school, knowing that I was throwing wrenches in our lives and routines.  Our schedules are different this year and the kids are getting used to an after school program instead of having mom pick them up right away every day.  Scott had to step up and start taking Tyler to the High School every day.  I don’t have the time I once did to pick up after everyone and run endless errands for every little need.  I have to spend more time in the evening doing laundry and paying bills and trying to remember and take care of all of the things. 

It’s different and hard, but the good far outweighs the struggle.  I love my job.  I love what I do and who I do it for.  I enjoy having ‘more’ to my life now that my boys are getting older.  I can already see the boys growing and stretching into something more mature.  They take more responsibility for their homework and their reading and the many papers that come home with them from school.  They seem more structured, which I love.  Structure is always good, especially for Scooter.

But fourth grade still bites the big one, my friend.  More homework, seriously.  Scooter has actually taken to going outside to scream that he hates homework on occasion and I feel like going out there with him to shout at the sky. He gets a lot of it done at school, but we still have to finish at home.  It can go smoothly, but when it goes bad it’s so, so bad. Because he is so verbal, it is easy to forget that with ASD, language is still slippery and confusing to him and slight differences can throw him.   The other day he yelled at me because while helping with his math I said ‘twelve hundred’.  “Don’t say that!” he squealed, “I hate it when she (his math teacher) does that too!”  “Say what?” I asked “What are you mad about?”  He then told me that he doesn’t like it when people say numbers in a different way, 1200 should be said one thousand two hundred, the right way. He gets confused when a number has two names.   

On a rough night he will whine and cry and ask me why he doesn’t know his math facts better and I don’t know how to explain to him that he doesn’t understand the interchangeability of numbers as easily as others do.  For instance, he may know that 3x6=18, but when he sees 6x3 he doesn’t automatically remember that they are the same. He will remember that 7+8 is 15, but will repeatedly ask me for help with 8+7.  Eventually, he’ll have it all memorized and it won’t be so frustrating for both of us, but right now it really stinks.   And I can’t even think about the writing stuff right now.  It’s such a huge thing in 4^th grade and I am grateful his teacher is so awesome and patient with him on it because I just can’t.  Scooter is so imaginative, but getting his creativity onto paper is very challenging.

I think the real reason I dislike 4^th grade is that it is the first year that truly demands our children to grow up.  There is more responsibility, more thrown on their little shoulders, more maturity required, more autonomy.  And not everyone is ready for it.  Scooter is not ready for it.  There are brief moments I can see with crystal clarity the slight misalignment growing within him. Even growing and maturing is atypical for him, slightly different than everyone around him.  Sometimes he’s ready to leap ahead with his peers and other times he’s trailing behind, wishing for the ease and peace of two years ago.  Our only protection against the chaos raging inside of him is routine, ritual, consistency and predictability.  It’s how he copes and it’s how we keep our lives moving when Scooter’s challenges threaten to bring a day to a screeching halt.

The stress of all of our change and the new school year has been building and last week the dam burst. The morning routine took a beating.  Each day it was harder to get him up, to the table, and a longer wait for him to choose his breakfast.  By Thursday he couldn’t decide on a breakfast at all and prodding him only made him more stressed out, more anxious and slower to make a decision.  And if we can’t get breakfast going, we can’t get anything going.

Scooter cannot do steps B, C & D in his routine before he completes step A.  Period.  That’s it.  There is no deviation or change up or flexibility.  He will not brush his teeth until he’s dressed, but he won’t get dressed until he has his milk.  The milk will not be sipped until his breakfast is done.  On and on, from the moment I wake him until he walks into school, our routine is concrete.  Mornings can devolve over something as simple as a particular blanket being misplaced or the syrup running out mid-waffle. If I want to add or subtract from this routine (or any others), I have to start that prep weeks in advance.  It’s not happening on a whim.

So, last Thursday, when Scooter COULD NOT decide on his breakfast, we COULD NOT move forward with the rest of our morning.  The best way to deal with this is to stay calm, to speak in a soft, gentle and yet, firm, voice.  The best way is to give Scooter some time to catch his breath and find his footing and come at the list of choices from a different angle.  Eventually he’ll right himself and come up with an answer.  It doesn’t help when I get frustrated and edgy and sometimes even whiny while I try to get him moving.  It’s always bad when I have to throw in the threat of changing the routine if he doesn’t decide NOW.  Once we recover and it’s over, it’s pointless to berate him for making us late because he’s not in that moment anymore and it just sounds like yelling at him and meanness and he doesn’t understand it.  And yet, I did all those things because I was so frustrated myself and I was running late for work, and, well, I’m human and hopelessly flawed.

When I dropped the boys off at school, Scooter was back into his routine of the day and was fine.  It was harder for me to let go of the morning blah.  I was mad at myself for losing my patience.  I was frustrated that I can never seem to come up with a way to get Scooter around one of these ‘stalls’.  I usually avoid looking too far ahead, but that morning I braved a glimpse past Elementary school and then shrunk a little bit in fear of the unknown.  And I was sad.  Just. So. Sad.  My poor baby.  And so I prayed for him.  Again.  I prayed for forgiveness for losing patience and faith.  I prayed for his day and his soul and his precious heart.  I prayed for his future which I know is not in my hands.

And I was struck with a memory.  My Grampa Brawand (Dad’s dad) suffered from Parkinson’s Disease. It was as heartbreaking to watch his physical deterioration as it was to watch my Grandmother take care of him and try to hold on to the life they had together.  Grampa had previous physical injuries that exacerbated the symptoms of his disease.  One of the biggest problems he had was that he would walk along and then suddenly not be able to take another step.  Sometimes it was a visual or physical change in the terrain that caused it, but not always.  He just couldn’t move forward, and he couldn’t go around.  He would stand there with his leg trying to take a step and eventually he would either succeed or have to go backwards.

 While I was living in Wisconsin my roommates and I decided to host a dinner for my Grandparents so my Grandma could see where I was living.  We cooked all day, I even made fresh bread.  When the door buzzed and I went down to let them in, I found my Grandma crying at the door.  She was so upset because Grampa couldn’t get inside and they would have to go home.  She apologized over and over.  Grampa couldn’t make it up the walk and through the door to come in the apartment.  He just couldn’t.  There wasn’t an around.  And there wasn’t a thing my Grandma could do for him.  So, she cried.

I took her inside to meet my friends and see my place and fix some plates of food to go home with her.  Grandma wouldn’t stay long since Grampa was waiting for her in the car.  I remember when we walked her out and loaded her plates Grandpa had a smile for me, mixed with some sadness.  He was sad too, that he couldn’t do what he once had, or be what he used to be for us.

I wish my Grandma was here so I could tell her that I get it now, that I understand in a way I never could have before.  I know exactly how she felt that day, standing beside someone that needed to take a step that they could not.  I know how excruciating it is to want to help someone and make it better when there is nothing to be done.  I feel just how much it hurts to love someone so much and not be able to ‘fix’ what is wrong.  I wish she was here to cry with me now. And oh, how I wish they both knew Scooter.  Sometimes when Scooter grins at me, I see my Grampa within his little smirk.  I think they would have gotten each other, clicked in a way that would have been special for both of them. Scooter has my Grampa's 'corny' sense of humor.

I think I was surprised by my memory of that day with my Grandparents because I needed to remember that this wasn’t the end of their story.  We had two more years with my Grandma and four with my Grampa before they left us.  Those years had their share of tears and frustration, but they also overflowed with smiles and laughter and love.   

Fourth grade is not my friend.  I am not a fan and Scooter isn’t either.  He told me tonight that he doesn’t want to be in fourth grade anymore.  He said it’s too much hard work and there isn’t enough time to run around.  It is hard and it is maddening and it is heartbreaking, but it is within our power to overcome.  I told him we would get through it together.  I also told him that I believe in him.  It was enough for tonight, he fell soundly asleep.  I wish it was always that easy.

 Thanks and God Bless,