Autism As A Whole

It has been a really tough week. It has been filled with meltdowns and screaming. These are the times that I realize how different my planet is since we fell off of Earth. The intense tantruming and lack of self control that he is exhibiting is driving me insane. Everyone in my house feels like they have to walk on egg shells.  I know I usually have positive posts and an enlightening way to look at it but I just feel very overwhelmed today.

Yesterday when Charlie woke up he was upset because he had an accident. I instantly tried to calm him and stripped the bedding off the bed so that it could be washed. He started screaming and yelling that I messed his bed and for me to put it back. I carried him downstairs to give him a shower and he was kicking and screaming. This lasted a while. He ran into the kitchen and was banging his head on the cabinets screaming that I messed the bed. He wanted me to fix it. But, he didn't want the wet spot on his bed either. It was a no win situation.

He quivered when I touched him as he swatted my hand away. I felt helpless. I didn't know how to reach him and he was so upset. As a mom, I wanted to hold him and tell him it was ok but he was not receptive to it. I hate it when he gets like this. After about 15 minutes he came into the bathroom but was still screaming and yelling. He was putting his hands on the toilet banging his head into his hands. I lifted him up and put him in the warm shower. He screamed some more but calmed quickly into the water. He didn't want his hair wet or washed. I didn't attempt to piss him off any more. LOL.. The back of his hair got a little wet and as I put his shirt on he started flapping his hands because he felt the wetness on his hair which then gave a damp feel to the collar of his shirt. Mind you all of this is occurring at 7 am in the morning, and I haven't even finished my cup of coffee, which by the way is cold.

He was really upset that the collar was wet but we moved past that really quickly. His eggs, which I prepared while he was in the shower, were waiting at the table and he started eating them right away. He wanted his show on which was fine. Then it was time for the bus. I was silently hoping this would be a calm event. Well, my thoughts were completely opposite to what would occur next. As I went to put him on the bus he discovered that his comfy, you know the one the teacher doesn't want him to have, was in the house. He started crying and fell to the ground. I got him up and coaxed him on the bus. The driver said that he could get his comfy when he got back home. That did not work!! He threw a fit on the bus and she pulled over and called for me to bring his comfy out. LOL... Guess he does need it.

Well, now that I am done ranting about how horrible I felt. I wanted to say thanks for the get well wishes, I am still pretty sick but a little better than yesterday. Charlie's morning today was much better than yesterday's. Hopefully the whole day will go this smooth.

Today was a pretty rough day. Charlie woke up and didn't want to got to school. I am not sure that I blame him. He said that his teacher will not allow him to have his comfy at school. While I can try to relate and understand what the teacher is trying to accomplish this is putting an emotional stress on my son. He uses his comfy as a calming technique and although I may not understand it completely, I don't see it harming anything. Earlier this year Charlie started coming home with wounds on his legs, neck or arms. After some thought and investigating we realized he was picking his skin during nap time. Now, he does this at home and we were working on it, but it wasn't occurring at school. I approached the teacher and spoke to her gave a few suggestions while I was at it.

Soon after the teacher stopped nap time, which was when my son was picking, and told him he didn't need to bring his pillowcase into school. I visited the school and observed my son in class. He was sitting in circle time and not participating. They sing certain songs every day so he should know them, and when his classmate went to shake his hand he didn't even reach it out to the kid. The other child actually picked my son's limp hand off his lap and shook it as they said hello to him. Charlie didn't even grin. I then listened as the teacher yelled at my son for chewing on his shirt. I approached the teacher about this at a later time and told her I didn't see a problem with it and unless she was going to redirect him to an acceptable "stim" then leave him alone. The teacher was not happy but I feel as if my son needs this stimulation in order to process what is going on around him. Anyone else have these issues with teachers? What do you feel is acceptable for our children's comfort? I mean this is an integrated special needs school. This teacher is in a setting where she must adapt to the children. I thought. Am I wrong?

Tonight, he came home from school and was not in a good mood at all. He wanted pumpkin pie and well, I didn't have any. Watch for yourself.... I stopped recording after a while because he wasn't calming and I needed to intervene differently, but, in the end he was happy eating an ice cream sandwich and orange sherbert. The funniest thing is I had asked him if he would like that instead like 5 times. Grrrrrr...........

              It did NOT look comfortable

Last night I sat in my house with no children. I know, amazing right? I sat here all night pondering on what to do with my time. Wondering how other Moms deal with this situation. Where has my life gone? Why is it that we want alone time but once we get it we spend our time thinking about the little boogers we needed time away from? I mean, after we tidy up all their messes that they left behind, organizing their games, making their beds, we sit wondering if they miss us.

Pondering about what they are doing. Are they thinking about us? I actually found myself stunned and confused at what I was to do with my time. I could sit down and write, amazingly without interruptions, but I was drawing blanks. I didn't have any huge accomplishments to write about for the day or even a miserable screaming child to rant about. So, the question remains, What am I to do with my "alone time"? I guess it really isn't alone time. They are still in my head and thoughts.

Image via WikipediaIt was then my realization that my children are my inspiration. They give me the drive to wake up in the morning, make breakfast, etc. No, etc. is not an abbreviation for the Excedrin that we need throughout the day. LOL They give me all the material I need to write my blog. What better to write about then all the interesting, and in my case, odd dilemmas my family experiences? Where would Autism As A Whole be without my four children? What would I do without them? I probably would not be the same person I am today.

 Although with them away for a couple nights, I am able to put more thoughts together for the next week. It does give me some time to manage all the anxiety that comes with the job. I could prepare myself for the week ahead including trying to predict when melt downs will occur. I know I know, now that is an absurd thought!! But, hey I have nothing to do but sit here and think. That could be trouble. Well, I could do more constructive things like put the movies in ABC order, but that won't matter cause it wouldn't last long.

I think I need my kids home, NOW!!!! I never thought I would beg for that but I am pleading. Come home soon I miss you. I know for sure that within two hours of having them back I will probably be ready for them to go away again and I will need to read this post to refresh my memory of my "alone time". I have gotten used to the chaos and it is an active member of my household. So, I welcome the chaos back and beg my children to come back home.

I have needed to vent about this for a few days, but every time I sit down at my computer to write I find myself having second thoughts about sharing. I think my fear is that if I come across as a normal mother who loses their patience sometimes, my super hero label will disappear. I guess I just always feel the need to seem in control even when I am not, but  I really feel guilty about my parenting style I used this week and I feel all my readers deserve to know what happened. Maybe, if I am lucky,  someone, somewhere will tell me it is normal. But it isn't for me.

I seem to have an endless amount of patience with my ASD child. I mean, he can be screaming for over an hour and I can handle that. This week was the week from hell. Whatever could go wrong went wrong and to be perfectly honest I was beyond overwhelmed. Charlie seemed to scream for two days straight which put everyone else in the household on edge as well. I guess you can relate it to walking through a mine field knowingly. You know that at any moment your whole environment could just blow up and be in crisis. To make all of this worse, I got my period and my hormones were off the rictor scale. With all the issues revolving around his school, his severe behavioral problems and my PMS... well, I think you can relate, at least I hope.

The day was just craziness filled with tantrums and screaming over what seemed to me as stupid, ridiculous issues. "Jacob moved my cars, Jocelyn looked at me and Krystal touched my pillowcase." I wish he had spoken and told me what was going on but that did not happen. Instead I got erected from my chair or the stove, where ever I may have been at the moment by a shrieking shrill coming from the living room. It sounded as if someone was killing him. I rushed to see what was going on as even though this shrill is normal for him, I can't seem to adjust. I get there to my little man flapping his arms shrieking. Then jolting to hit or push whom ever was causing his disruption. I can't even describe the amount of stress that was wondering in my home for two days.

At one point he had gotten really upset and ran into our roommates room, which he uses as a calm down sensory room sort of. He isn't allowed in there unless the roommate is there and allows him but that rule got broken quickly. I swept in and tried to scoop him up and remove him when he slapped me in my face. It was at that point that my patience and everything else that I seem to be able to maintain flew out the window. I am not proud to reveal what I said to my son and I cringe while typing this. I looked at my son and told him,"Stop acting like a jerk. You are normal at least that is what everyone else thinks. You are just being a defiant brat!!" I proceeded to pick up my screaming, kicking child and carried him out of the room handing him to my boyfriend saying,"Do something with him please. I can't handle him, someone needs to take him."

After an hour of crying and searching through every phone number I had ever acquired with no luck of reaching anyone. I proceeded to call my ex-service coordinator and rant with her about how horrible of a parent I am and maybe I am just unable to deal with normal toddler behavior because now I was convinced that I was just a bad mom. That was the reason he was acting like this and all this time I have been acting like something was wrong with him. Amidst me crying and yes, whining on the phone (talk about self pity) for about 30 minutes, she interrupted me saying,"Take a breathe, cause you aren't crazy!!" I thought,"Are you freaking nuts? I just made my son feel like a stupid child and was totally wrong."

She proceeded,"I remember feeling like this myself. I know what you are going through but I "can say that you are not wrong about him. I saw it, Your son was showing signs of this for a long time, the providers saw it, but by law we cannot diagnose, we can only encourage you to see a specialist." All the time they were in my home working with my son they did acknowledge and have thoughts on what was going on. She reminded me of a specific incident that involved a therapist who had cancelled due to an illness and she came to my house. She said that day she was certain and Autism was very evident. I think that sometimes we get so caught up in trying to advocate and defend our children and it gets frustrating. You begin to doubt and think about whether you are right and how you are parenting. All parents, special needs or not go through the thoughts about how you parent.

This week was an eye opener and made me step back and really slow down. I needed to look at some of the things that have improved with my son because I have been so focused on the fact that he is just maintaining most skills not learning new ones. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what he has accomplished in the last year. His speech is so much better now. I can understand what my son wants most of the time and his teachers actually have a clue what he is saying. He seems to be able to express when he is sad and has started to gain some pretend play. I think for myself I need to reflect more often and maybe I will be able to take some of the stress off of myself. My son may have Autism but I refuse to let Autism have my son.

Image via WikipediaToday started as as any other, hustling to get the kids ready to catch their bus, preventing melt downs with Charlie, helping him get dressed and ensuring that my twelve year old is wearing clean clothes and brushed her hair. I don't know if this is just a typical phase but I thought girls were very aware of hygiene.  I guess I thought wrong. LOL.... My afternoon was calm being there was no one here, but all the craziness returned as my son and daughter came home. I decided since I was in a lazy mood that I was going to wait for them to come home and then go shopping. What was I thinking? We went to the first store and Charlie had to pick up some items for his pen pal in Australia. I know that might seem odd being he can't write but his mom and I have been doing online diary's of autistic children and the children seem to really enjoy the interaction. My son has even made up songs about his friend Jake. He picked out some really nice things and it was really uneventful until.... I heard my son shrieking at the top of his lungs. Can you imagine? This was a small store and as I approached my son from behind there were other people gawking at Charlie and I. What was the issue? He didn't see me and freaked out. I calmed him actually pretty quick and we were looking for a present for Krystal's birthday when he saw something he wanted. You would assume it would be a toy of some form and I guess it was, for a dog!!! He found a "Comfy" unstuffed fox with squeakies that he doesn't like in it's head and tail. The thing cost ten dollars and I have no idea why I bought it. But he loves it. Then came the real feat of my evening, we had to pick up Jocelyn and Jacob, then food shopping. This was seriously a backwards day. Everything I procrastinated to do all day now had to be done with four children and an overwhelmed mother.
Off to the grocery store which I must say was the worst decision all evening. I now had four overexcited children with one of them having severe sensory overload. Throughout the shopping trip though I must say that I only acquired and 500 weird looks because my youngest decided it was necessary to lick the doors of the Pepsi dispenser while my six year old was climbing on the hood of the nice car themed grocery carts. We did survive the shopping trip although I probably resembled someone whom had just stuck their finger into an outlet cause my children really ran me crazy. The cashier just looked at me and said,"Do you need someone to help you to your car?" I replied, "I need a lot of help but I don't think it is in your job description." She said this all normal and it will get better. If she only knew the whole story. As we were loading the cart my son decided he was needing to crawl underneath the benches, I thought at least I know where he is. Suddenly he bolted for the door, I bolted too and picked him up kicking me the whole time and grabbed the cart and my children and left the store. I guess it could have been worse. I mean I have had worse shopping trips and those only included the twelve and four year old. We made it home and had pizza for dinner, mind you I don't do red sauce, and in all the chaos I accidently put my pizza back. So I made dinner for them popped a movie on and let them all slumber on the floor. Boy, you ever notice how innocent and angelic they look when they are sleeping?  After such a hectic day Mommy was ready for sleep to, but first I had to take some pictures.