An open letter about that insensitive move this morning ....

Dear Drop-Off-Lane-Mom,

Hey You - You honked at me in the school drop-off line today.  Seriously.  I’m guessing it’s because we weren’t moving.  I’m guessing it’s because you saw my sweet Riley standing patiently outside my van on the curb, not closing the door and walking into school.  I’m guessing you thought I was having some wonderfully long conversation with Riley while the van door was wide open.  You probably thought I was crazy as I inched forward a few times, door open, and Riley moved alongside.  So you honked at me to get me going.  I don’t know your name and I have a few in mind for you, but for now we will just call you Inpatient and Clueless.

Inpatient.  The line doesn’t change.  It’s a slight U drive, actually more like an extended right hand lane where 10 cars fit snugly.  To get there, most of us have to go past the school and make a U-Turn to get to the other side of the median.  At that point if the line was too long, you could always park across the street and let your kids use the cross walk.  Since you made the turn, you have chosen to wait in the line. Your child can get out at any point in the drive and then you can move back into traffic.  You have a choice, every morning, you can choose to shoo your child out of your car anywhere in that U drive and move on with your day.  Or, you can choose to be patient as you move forward and wait your turn to send your kids off closer to the front door.  There are cute little 6^th graders in bright yellow safety patrol jackets just waiting along the line to open and close doors for you and tell you to have a good day. But, if you choose to wait, be warned that you are choosing to wait.

There are parents who let their kids finish breakfast before they get out of the car.  There are moms who have to get out and open big heavy doors for little people.  There are moms watching their sweet little kindergartener take every single step from the car to the door, every single day.  There are students who have instruments or backpacks stowed in trunks.  And you see a lot of the same cars, because you usually get there about the same time.  So you already know that if you are within the first 5 minutes of the door being opened you can move through smoothly, but if you are even 1 minute later then the line will stretch back a good block, so you will definitely be waiting longer.  But, that’s okay as most of your children will pop out anywhere and you can pull back into traffic.  You just need to get into the ‘U’, you don’t need to go all the way up to the front like some of us do.

I get it, Mrs. Inpatient, I’ve been there.  There you are watching a girl take her time getting out of the car.  Then she reaches back in the car to get her backpack.  Then her purse.  Then something her mom hands her.  Sometimes a second kid will magically appear at this point and just then start unloading from the same car. And you think you are in the clear, but then that sneaky trunk pops open and you know they are coming around the back to get that crazy trombone out. Finally, the kids start walking and the car starts moving …. And then it stops! And the girl turns around because mom has rolled down the window to tell her something more, and she doesn’t hear what her mom is saying and she has to come closer.  But she only comes 2 steps closer and she still can't hear mom.  So she takes two more steps and the process repeats a few times until she is all the way back at the car and receives this all too important message and can finally get back on the sidewalk headed for the door. And the whole time you are watching the clock, thinking: “ohmystars!areyoukiddingme?Iamgoingtobelateforwork.whatiswrongwithyou?can’tyoujustlethergotoschool?don’tyouknowtherearepeoplebehindyou?pleeeeaaasemoveyourcar!finally!ohno.don’tcallherbackforanotherhaveagoodday!fortheloveofpete!urgh.okshe’sgoing.yessssss!she’smovingfinally,thankthelord!”  But, you chose the ‘wait’ route so you wait.  Patiently.  Without honking, for the love of Pete.

Clueless.  You must be clueless, chickie.  You must have noooo idea what it is like to parent a child with special needs or someone that needs extra help on occasion.  When I am rocking my schedule in the morning and I am one of the first 5 cars dropping my munchkins off I will often find myself behind a little car my kids refer to as ‘the wheelchair car’.  When this car is first in line, my kids never complain about having to hop out in the number 2 spot.  I have never met this mom, but I love her.  I have spoken to her son on multiple occasions and he is pure joy rolled into a long lanky package.  This mom arrives early, before there are aides available to help her, and hauls the wheelchair out of the trunk herself.  It’s one that has to be assembled so it will fit in her vehicle and she puts it together on her own.  She gets her son into the chair alone, and he’s almost as big as she is at this point.  She wheels him in to school herself, breaking the ‘don’t get out of the car if you aren’t a student rule’, but she does it very early so she isn’t holding up the longer line that comes later.  Some days her son is doing well enough to use his crutches so she slowly trails him with the chair in case he’ll need it later in the day, but this process is not faster than her normal morning, it is much more deliberate and time consuming.  I cheer silently for this mom, who unashamedly rocks her pajama bottoms in the drop off line, while she’s getting her kid into school.  I have no idea what her battle has looked like for her son’s life, but I can just imagine.  I think she’s probably thrilled to go back home and take her time showering and getting ready and doing ALL OF THE THINGS that need doing while her son IS AT SCHOOL, HALLELUJIAH!!! (Rock on Sister!!!  You are totally winning at this mom thing, even if you don’t know it!!!)  And Clueless mom –you just have no stinking idea. 

Ms. Clueless, you probably would never honk at the wheelchair car, because that would be rude and politically incorrect and so obviously wrong.  But there are so many degrees between wheelchair and your typical children that jump out of your car without a problem every morning.  There are a hundred scenarios that never crossed your mind.  It would never occur to you that the van in front of you is holding not one little boy, but two.  The boy you see is just as confused and as frustrated as you are and you scared him with your honk, because he didn't know what he was doing wrong.  He doesn’t understand why his big brother isn’t getting out of the car today either.  You can’t see the boy that’s still with his mom, begging her to pull forward.  You can’t see the car in front of the van, the big white SUV that always waits for her daughter to slowly walk all the way to the door, turning to wave at her mother at least twice, before pulling away.  You don’t see my son slowly falling apart today because he just cannot do one more thing this week that is flexible or out of his normal routine.

Had I known he was going to have a mini meltdown today, ma’am, I would never have tried to get him out of my car before we got all the way to the front.  I thought our morning was going well and he was receptive to a small swing in routine, it’s not something I always ask of him.  He is always, always respectful of the wheelchair car and gets out.  Sometimes he will get out behind the SUV with the little girl.  Other than that, we always just wait it out and get to the front of the line before I open the van.  Because it took us forever to get here – to be a car that kids just get out of.  It was a battle we fought hard to win.  You couldn’t possibly know that there was a time I had to push him in the door of school every. single. day.  You probably don’t know that we used to have an aide meet us at the car to transition him inside, every. single. day.

Ms. Clueless, we are doing great this year.  As long as we stick to routine, my son gets out of the car and goes in to school.  And every day that is a minor victory for us.  I am not a clingy mom, either, the kids shut my door and give me a little wave and I am out of that line and back in traffic.  But this little boy has had a rough month.  He has had extensive evaluations and some medical tests he doesn’t understand.  He has a new diagnosis of a medical condition, EOE, that doesn’t make sense to him.  It means he has to take medicine he does not like to help with a condition that he can’t see.  He just found out he has a food allergy causing that condition that we can’t do anything about because his diet is so limited.  He started feeding therapy 2 weeks ago and every day he is asked to do very hard things that he doesn’t like to do so he can begin to eat something different than he did as a toddler.  It may not be a big deal to you, but he licked a flour tortilla this week.  That’s a bread and it not only was in his hand (a battle in and of itself), but he touched it with his tongue!  That was like you trying to do that U-Turn thing in one smooth move … a practically impossible feat.  Tough week.  He is done, Clueless, just done.  And I didn’t see it today until it was too late.

As my son broke down today because I broke routine on a day he couldn’t take it, you honked your horn at us.  Which made things worse, because it added to the stress of my urging him to get out and kids walking by and looking in our van at a crying little boy.  He then cried harder because he didn’t want to walk into school crying.  I had to stop for even longer to help him breathe and calm down and eventually I had to get out of my car and walk around and help him out the door.  My younger son waited patiently for his brother so he didn’t have to go inside alone.  Eventually we were able to separate and I could get out of your way.

And I still can’t figure out what your deal was … Clueless, Inpatient.  You gave me an exasperated, dirty look as I walked around the car to help my son.  Your children were already getting out and my car was not blocking your exit.  What was so crazy important that you couldn’t have a little patience?  Or empathy?  Every kid has a rough day.  Every kid has a time they don’t want to go to school or get out of the car or do something that we consider normal or easy.  Every kid.  Even yours.  I just want you to know that if I am behind you in line on that day, I will not honk at you or give you a dirty look or make you feel ‘less’.  I won’t rush you or push you.  And I most certainly won't do anything to cause your child added anxiety or confusion.

This parenting thing is a really rough gig, but I am not the hero in my own story, it’s Scooter.  We call these kids ‘special needs’ because they need extra help or time, but truthfully we ask so much more of them than we do of kids that are ‘typical’.  My other two kids are awesome, but I don’t ask them to stretch outside their comfort zone every single day just to go to school.  Those two don’t have to manage the world with extreme sensory sensitivities, transition issues, and social struggles.  When they see a look on my face they know exactly what it means.  They don’t have to go to therapy 3 days a week to learn how to eat.  Yep, Scooter needs some extra stuff and time and care, no question, but we ask him to give way more than he gets.  And I’m betting that he is nowhere near the only kid in that line who is a hero, either.  In fact, I know he isn’t.  Scooter is a fighter and he's resilient, he came out of school with a smile and a laugh today despite both of us.

Ma’am, I will make you a deal – how about you don’t honk at anyone in the drop off line?  How about you either let your kids out further back in line if you are in a hurry or you patiently and quietly wait your turn?  I would love it if you tried to remember that every mom in that line has a struggle you couldn’t possibly know.  If you can show some empathy and patience, then I will do my very best to not laugh at you every day when you try to make the U-turn to get into the line and fail miserably. Every. Single. Time. I don’t get why you have to use both lanes on both sides of the median to make this turn, and then still have to stop and put your car in reverse to avoid hitting that fire hydrant.  Every time!!! I don’t get it, just like you totally don’t get my kid and our process.  But, I promise if you leave moms and kids alone in line then I won’t laugh at your awful driving!

Yours Truly, 

The U-Turn Queen

(Because I've earned it, Thank You)

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,

Kisses, Tears and Gratitude . . .

Scooter is 9 today.  9!!!!!  Where has the time gone?  It's flying by .... seriously.  It was just a heartbeat ago that I brought him home.  It was just a moment ago that I swaddled him in two blankets and kangaroo pouch and he passed out as soon as he was wrapped up like an egg roll.

I was thinking this morning about my three children and all the wishes, dreams and prayers I have for them.  Some of them are universal: peace, joy, happiness, love and safety.  Others are specific to their talents, skills or even fears:  Tyler's love of music and his need to build and his shyness, Riley's tiny body and his ferocity on a soccer field and his charm and soft heart, Scooter's sensitive heart and his need to draw and create and his constant struggle to navigate the world. 

Parenting is such a crazy experience.  There are so many moments that meld one into another, you think you will go insane from the boredom and the looming horizon of forever.  Bedtimes, baths, homework and chores.  And when something happens that is out of the ordinary, you think you will never forget it.  Because it was unique and different.  But the truth is, what you remember is the ordinary, the mundane.  As the children get older you long for the moments that you did the same thing over and over again, a long, long time ago.

There's a video/poem thing racing across the web this week where a father focuses on just those emotions.  He basically says cherish this very moment because you don't know when the last time is coming for each "event".  You can't know when the last time will be that you carry your child or they crawl into bed with you or run to your arms.  It's the last time and you don't know it until it's gone, and you can't remember the exact last time. 

I kind of hated this video.  ( I had a few reasons, beginning with the fact that it is NOT a poem, it's a monologue ... but that's an argument for another day.)  It was sweet and poignant and everything but there was something about it that bothered me.  I think I finally figured it out this morning.  All of the things this father focused on were things you do with every child, things I did for all my children.  And it's true, we focus so much on the 'firsts' because they are special but we have no way of knowing when the last time we do anything is going to be until it's long gone.  But what if you can't remember some of the 'firsts' either?

And that's what I don't like about it.  This stupid video made me realize that I can't quite put my finger on the moment that things shifted in our world.  I can't remember the first time that Scooter turned his face from me and wouldn't let me kiss his cheeks, eyes or lips.  I don't know when the first time he balked at a photo being taken happened or when he refused to walk on sand the first time or when he ran from the smell of bread.  I can't recall what the first food was that he stopped eating.  I don't remember the very first moment that Scooter's 'mask' fell across his face. Those first times, they were last times as well.  They were the end of 'typical' in our life and we had no idea at all that our little world was changing so drastically.

It's Scooter's 9th birthday, and just like every birthday and holiday I'll ask him a question.  Same question every time.  "Scooter, it's a special day today, can I kiss your face today?  Just once?  Very light, I promise.  Just one kiss on your lips or your cheek?"  I'm not holding my breath ... it's been a very long time since he's said yes.  I don't ask often because I don't want to badger him with it or make him feel less than he is because he can't handle this bit of affection.  Just birthdays, Christmas and an occasional special moment that feels right.  But I keep asking because I will always want just one more and I never want the last one to be the last time.

I do remember the last time.  It was on my 40th birthday, I talked him into it as a gift for me.  I got one brief, very special moment where Scooter allowed me the pleasure of kissing his cheek, just below the cheekbone but not too near his mouth.  He pointed out the spot I was allowed after some negotiation on just how far I could go.  I will hold on to that moment forever, or at least until he allows me another chance and I'm hopeful that he will someday.  And as special as that birthday was, in so many ways and thanks to so many people, the kiss was the highlight, trust me.

There are also last times in our lives as parents where we almost celebrate the chance to forget.  Scott and I were thrilled last year when we realized we had spent our very last night sitting outside Scooter's room, within his view, while he fell asleep.  Late last spring Scooter had his very last assist from the van with an aide and finally took his first walk into school of his own volition. I look forward to forgetting the last time Scooter fights me about going to school or throws a fit about someone sitting in his spot on the couch.

Right now I remember the last time I tucked Scooter in as an 8 year old.  I remember the last time he told me he loved me, just a few days ago.  I remember the last time he let me comb his hair or hug him tight or kiss the top of his head, they were just this morning.  I remember the last time he made me laugh, after dinner yesterday. And I remember the last time I planted a kiss on the only place allowed on his face, just next to his hair line, right above his ear.  That was yesterday afternoon.

I cannot tell you how many tears I've cried for my children or how many prayers I have prayed for them.   I would never venture a guess at which of my three beloveds has received more of either.  But I can say that I remember more specifically the cause of the tears and the purpose of the prayers on more occasions for Scooter. I think that's because although he changes and makes progress and triumphs, there is a part of him that never moves forward, or moves so slowly it's hard to detect.  Those prayers and those tears linger with me because his struggle is ever present and those prayers don't change as much in content as the prayers for my other two do.

I'm sounding fairly melancholy today, which isn't my intention.  I just want to remember how I feel in this very moment.  Grateful.  Grateful that although I can't kiss my sweet boy a million times in a million places, he is affectionate ...  So many children on spectrum cannot handle even the slightest touch or expression of affection.  My heart aches for those mommas and I pray for them all the time.

I am grateful that Scooter is in a school with people that strive every day to help him succeed. I am so very grateful that Scooter is healthy and happy and has friends and loves to play legos and read silly stories and tell jokes and play games.  Grateful that even though our lives are alphabet soup and non-typical, they are blessed beyond measure with love.  And, as always, I am eternally grateful that God chose me to be the mother of this amazing, special, smart, funny and BRAVE 9 year old.

God Bless.

Finding The Man Within . . .

It's more than a little unnerving living with a teenager on the verge of manhood.  And when I say 'more than a little unnerving' what I really mean is that there are days I think that one or both of us are not going to make it through these years with any bit of sanity left.  And those days far outnumber the normal, boring, sane days by a factor of about 15:1.

It can get downright funny.  For example, the day I discovered little dark hair man growth on his upper lip and burst into tears in the middle of SAM's.  Poor Tyler was begging me "don't do this in the middle of SAM's mom!" but that's where I discovered it so that's where I fell apart.  Or there was the day I had to try and figure out how to measure his inseam without embarrassing us both, all the while trying to explain what 'dressing left or right' meant as I struggled to keep a straight face.  And if I start making jokes about how much food he inhales, I won't stop for about an hour.  Seriously, how can he eat all that and still be so rail thin?  How can he consume a huge man-size meal and in the next breath tell me he's starving?

He is growing at the speed of light and he hasn't even hit his BIG growth spurt yet, that's at least a year or two away I think.  He looks me straight in the eye now when we stand together which for some reason totally freaks me out.  His feet are officially the size of Scotty's and I won't be surprised if next month I have to buy him an even larger size dress shoe for a wedding we will be attending. I refuse to buy the actual dress clothes until a week before we leave on our trip because I only want to have to buy them once.  I am totally not ready to have to yell at a child that towers over me.

But that's the thing, isn't it?  He won't really be a child.  He already is not truly a child.  He's become half a man while I was busy driving car pool and cutting coupons.  He looks at me and asks huge questions that I don't know how to answer because I am still figuring life out myself.  We have grown-up discussions about colleges, careers, politics, faith and autism. He cares for his brothers and helps me around the house and tries to 'parent' the little ones.  I sit here this morning, just 2 weeks away from the end of school with tears streaming down my face because in a couple months he starts high school.  It's the beginning of the end, so to speak.  There are only four, precious and startlingly short, more years left of serious parenting to do for this boy-man and me.  Oh, I know that there will still be parenting to do after he graduates and I know that I have already lost a modicum of influence over him, and even that will decrease very rapidly once he walks in those doors this August.  I get it, I really do.  I just hope I've done enough to this point and I hope I make the right choices with what little influence I have left over the next few, volatile years.

These are such challenging years.  I am constantly torn by my overwhelming love and emotion for my son and the need to smack his head into oblivion for the obnoxiousness that sometimes spews from his mouth.  Just a few weeks ago on our way to soccer practice I was completely worn out by the time I met my husband on the field with our 3 boys.  Scott took one look at me and asked what was wrong.  I said 'I'm just done' and glanced Tyler's way.  He was currently arguing with me about whether or not we were late because I had said 'I wish we had gotten here a couple minutes early, I don't like to be late' when we pulled up.  It didn't seem to matter to him that I wasn't actually arguing back.  Scott asked and so I said 'I'm just tired.  He disagrees with everything that comes out of my mouth whether or not if affects him or whether or not it's something to disagree about.  I could say the sky is blue and he would disagree with me today.'  Tyler caught the end of this exchange and said 'No I don't! I don't argue about everything!'....  'nough said.

The attitude sucks.  He knows absolutely everything and so, of course, we know nothing.  And the emotion .... oh. my. goodness.  What????  For some reason I thought boys weren't moody.  I look back at my years (literally years; my poor, poor mother!!!) of crying nightly to her about how no one liked me and how I was never going to have friends or a boyfriend and who knows what else and I think thank goodness I have boys! I cannot remember my brother being moody or crying or throwing fits.  Then again, my teenager angst lasted FOREVER and by the very definition of being an adolescent I was self-centered and had no clue what was happening with anyone else in the world except for ME.  I guess I just missed it, because evidently it happened.

The emotion is the scariest part.  I am so caught off guard by the outbursts and most of them are so self demeaning that I can't breathe.  Is that truly how he sees himself or are the hormones blinding him?  He takes things so seriously that when there is a problem he escalates to hysterics and the only way I can get him to calm down is to raise my voice to be heard and then I feel like a louse for yelling because he sees it as me yelling at him instead of me yelling to get his attention.  I hate hearing the words 'I'm so Stupid' when he is anything but; I despise phrases like 'I give up', 'I hate this' and  'I can't take it anymore'.

Recently at dinner he said something resembling 'No one likes me, I have no one that's really family' and it chilled me to the bone.  I got very still and very quiet and asked what he meant by that.  "THIS is your family.  THIS is who you are.  It's different, it's sometimes complicated, but you are a part of TWO families that love you more than you will ever know.  You are very, very blessed." And then he broke down crying because he knows that and he didn't mean that and then the stupid comments began again.  Oh boy.  This poor, torn up kid.

Where I see the emotion take hold the most is in physical projects that he works on.  He's always been a builder, a creator.  He has wanted to be some kind of design engineer since he was 9 and has only wavered in wondering what type of engineering he might want to do.  He looks at something solid in front of him and immediately tries to figure out how to make it better.  He has even redesigned some cheap plastic guns from the dollar store into ones that shoot projectiles and make noises and his brothers are in awe of what he can do.  And he's relentless.  If a project doesn't work, he keeps going back to the drawing board to improve it because he can't let it go.  Because he can't let it go, the emotion will get the best of him and he'll fall apart when something doesn't work.  And all I want him to do is take a break, let it go and calm down.  But he can't, because he's obsessed, but if I say he's obsessed then I get an earful.

Last night as his design 'adaptation' for the science class bottle rockets didn't work out and he began to lose it over the time he had wasted and how if he had just done the rubric like everyone else he'd be done, he got so upset that he almost passed out.  I think he just wasn't breathing properly because he was so angry, but it scared me.  I gave him some firm rules for finishing the project within an hour, calmed him down and then got down on the floor and looked straight into his eyes.  I said something like "You are going to design something amazing someday.  You are not stupid.  You are very, very smart.  You look at everything and want to make it better, do it smarter and design it greater.  That's a good thing.  But there are 10 days of school left, it's 8:30 and this thing has to fly tomorrow.  This is NOT the project that is going to be something different and amazing.  It's just a bottle rocket."  He calmed down, he finished.

This morning on the way to school he said it frustrates him that he builds things all the time and someone in his class made something very cool and he never does building projects.  I pointed out that none of them had flown yet so there was no way to know how cool the other kids project really was.  And then I asked him how many different light bulbs Edison designed before he found the one that worked.  Tyler laughed and told me he didn't have time to make 1000 rockets.  Not my point.  But I told him again "You are going to design something amazing someday. Someone is going to come to you with an idea that you are going to look at and just know that it can be done and it can be done better and you are going to design it.  You have it in you.  I can see it clear as day.  You have always had it in you.  We just have to find a way for you to let off steam when your projects have a setback. You never give up and that's a very, very good thing."  Was it enough?  That's an answer I won't have for many, many years.


I wonder sometimes if Edison's mother wanted to strangle young Tommy too.  The relentlessness, the obsessiveness are sometimes so frustrating.  I have an overwhelming urge to hide his hot glue gun for the summer so he can't use it on another project that will make me crazy, but then I feel terrible for the thought since said action would stifle his creativity.  The Robotics Magnet Tyler got accepted to for high school will help him refine how to take his ideas and mold them into reality.  I'll probably get over the fact that he is going to learn to weld and solder before he learns how to drive, just as long as he doesn't try to do it in my garage.

He is working on a project for Algebra that is also a contest for ideas on how to develop some land that the district owns in a way that is beneficial to the community.  Tyler came up with some great ideas but when he looked at Google Earth the area showed an existing parking lot and plans for a road that his teacher didn't include in their instructions.  So he took it upon himself to email the district for clarification on whether or not to include those details in his design plan.  He told me after the fact and read this amazingly mature email to me.  Then he launched into details for his nature preserve/reflection garden/dog park plan (It's a really big plot of land, and Mandy - it's right across the street from you).  Sometimes he'll wonder aloud if he really has what it takes to be an engineer or to design or invent anything and I wonder how he can't see what I can see - how every cell in his body is geared toward designing, inventing and improving, he just needs time and space to let those skills evolve.

What a beautiful mind he has, choosing Latin and Violin while trying to figure out what he wants to invent or design or create.  I wish he could see it, but then like all teenagers he feels alone, isolated, out of place and disconnected.  I hope I'm doing enough to ground him in reality while giving him space to test his wings.  I hope that when I cut off his rants with sometimes short, unkind words that he will forgive me someday and know that it was to help him calm and refocus.  And sometimes I just hope that he has a kid someday that is as much like him as he is like me.  I am getting repaid the headaches I gave my mother, he should be repaid as well. 

So, mom tells me that with boys there is drama and angst and emotion, but it's more short lived.  By the time you get through years 13-14 it's pretty much winding down.  That's good, right?  Except that what you are left with after that is post-puberty man-ness.  Not a half-man/half-child, but a young man.  Mom says by the time Matthew was 15 and we had a life/death scare for my dad while those two were on a trip, she never saw my brother as a child again.  Just a young man. Which means I don't really have 4 more years to try and help shape this kid into a decent human being-type man.  I have got about a year.  One year left to pour in as much motherly influence as possible for his moral fiber to soak up.  After that, I'll be dealing with a young man more interested in his own ideas than mine.

I think of Proverbs 22:6 often: "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."  That verse means different things to me all the time.  Sometimes I use it to remind myself that all this stuff I'm pouring into my kids will be the cream that rises when they are older (and all the adolescence and angst and rebellion is over).  Other times I focus on the 'should go' so that I remember it's not always about what I have done or even what I would choose, but about what God wants for my boys that should sway my decisions.  And still other times I focus on the 'he' in that verse.  Train a child in the way he should go.  It's about this unique child, loved by me and cherished by his Creator.  I have to figure out the best way to teach this child how to master his emotions and harness his skills and be the best man that he is capable of being.

There is work to be done.  Just one more year (or 4 or 8, however you choose to see it), which will race by as High School takes over our lives.  I have a long list of things to work on like finding a youth group he can connect with, helping him improve communication skills with loved ones and learning how to actually HEAR his alarm clock so I don't have to yell at him every morning to get out of bed. Urgh, and the kid still can't write or read cursive.    And that is just the tip of the ice berg. Oh my goodness.  We have so much to do!!!!

For years I've said that I am not raising three boys, I am raising three men.  I truly believe that, but the reality of the first man I'm raising staring me in the eye as an actual man is kind of terrifying.  Time is growing short and the man emerging from inside my little boy is becoming more evident every day.  Boy, I sure hope we don't kill each other before the work is done.

Bless you my friends.