Slow Burn

Noah's fever spiked last night -- not high enough to necessitate a trip to the ER or anything, just one of those HOT. DAMN. moments when you stare at the thermometer and struggle to hold on to everything you know about small children's resilient little bodies and their tendency to run 102+ degree fevers for no damn good reason.

We dosed him up with Tylenol and I hovered around his red-hot presence anxiously, obsessively rubbing his back and his hair, convinced that we were, in fact, going to end up at the ER later and that it was pneumonia or something equally horrible, and wondering who the HELL left me in charge of this small, helpless human being? And the one in the next room? And the one that's not even born yet?

Dear God, why didn't we just stop with the damn CAT while we were ahead? 

***

So I mentioned that kindergarten transition meeting thing yesterday. Kindergarten transitioning is a Big Honking Deal for the kids in the district's special education preschool program, obviously. It involves weeks of observations by a whole team of people, preliminary plans and pre-plans and planning to plan, then an initial "invitation" to the parents to go and observe a couple of the district's continuation-of-services options -- basically, whatever options the team is considering as appropriate for your specific child. 

We were invited to visit two different options: Our school's "regular" kindergarten classroom and...well, the other one. The speshul one. It's called LAD -- Learning & Academic Disabilities, though it's a far cry from the type of remedial special education classroom that you might be tempted to picture, a la Bart Simpson's "Leg Up Program" with the kids who start fires and fell off the jungle gym or just moved here from Can-ah-da, eh? 

Kids in LAD -- at our particular school, I've since found out that the program is different at pretty much every location across the county, like THAT'S not a crapshoot or anything -- spend 50% of their day with their LAD peers, usually the more academic parts of the day. Small class size, extra paraeducator support, any sensory accommodations they may need, transition help, and of course, time for any individual speech/language or occupational therapy services their IEP may include.

The other portion of the day is spent being co-taught with the "typical" kindergartners for stuff like PE and art and music and storytime, the "easier" blocks of the day, so they can get the critical social pieces of kindergarten without being impeded academically because they've just been tossed into a class of 25+ kids with one teacher and spend the entire day in an overwhelmed sensory fit, wandering around the room and singing the Star Wars theme over and over and over again while insisting that their handwriting practice sheet is "the yellow letters" and making it "crawl" in front of their face and wait...was I talking about the kids in general, or just mine?

(I should note, for the sake of UNFLAILINGLY BORING COMPLETENESS, that even if Noah was put in the typical classroom, he'd certainly still receive "resource services," like OT for handwriting help, but it sounds like there wouldn't really be any in-class support for him when it comes to his many, many other stubborn little quirks.)

(Oh! And if Noah WAS put in the LAD classroom, because it's at our home school [something that's actually on the usual side, since not every school has it and thus other kids must attend school further away], Noah could ride the "neighborhood" bus instead of the "special ed" bus. AND if, say, it was decided that by second grade or so, that he no longer needed to be in LAD, he'd still get to stay at the same school, with kids he knows and has spent time with. Other kids typically get booted back to their home school at that point to essentially start over. All in all, it looks like we really didn't do too shabbily when it came to buying this particular house in this particular neighborhood, even if the decision felt like we just panicked because our condo buyers wanted us OUT and we had no where to go so QUICK, THIS HOUSE IS FINE, WHATEVER, WE'LL TAKE IT, GAAAAAH.) 

So next week, we go and observe these two classrooms. And then we wait until APRIL for our IEP meeting, where the team will presumably make their recommendation, albeit with input from us (supposedly) and from Noah's private occupational therapist, who will also be attending the meeting on his behalf. 

A lot of the other parents are using all this hurry-up-and-wait time to tour and apply to private schools, just in case they are unhappy with the IEP team's recommendation. Hearing them discuss all the expensive private options in the area (and the multi-stage interview-and-IQ-test heavy application process) always makes me feel a bit panicky, because...well, we AREN'T considering any private schools. Are we...wrong? 

I LIKE our public school, and I LIKE the way they've provided for Noah so far. And more importantly, I BELIEVE they have the right kindergarten environment for him, and I BELIEVE that they will do the right thing for him and put him in it. And if not at first, then they will after I get done with my own personal 20-minute slide presentation on WHY YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY GODDAMN WORD I SAY, RAWR. 

But still, of course, I worry. I worry that our classroom observations will reveal some horrible unforeseen something-or-other that I never considered, or that our IEP meeting will go horribly awry, that I'm once again completely over- or underestimating the whole system and process and oh God, maybe even poor Noah himself, because he can't tell us what he'll really need for kindergarten next year. (Other than a Star Wars lunchbox, I'm guessing.)

Who the HELL left us in charge of this stuff, honestly? 

***

Last night, about an hour after the Tylenol, Noah's temperature was down to a cool and refreshing 98.3. And it stayed down. 

He's fine. We all are. 

Star Wars to the Rescue, Again

It was cold outside, so I put on my new earmuffs. 

Noah stopped dead in his tracks.

"What are those?" he asked, staring at me with rapidly darkening eyes.

"Earmuffs," I explained. "They're kind of like a hat. They keep my ears warm."

I watched his body tense up, his rigid little internal alarm sounding the different! new! unfamiliar! alert as he tried to make sense of the funny-looking circles on my head. Was it a costume? Was I playing dress-up? Did it bother him? How much did it bother him? 

"May you take them off please?" he asked, in his usual pained attempt to politely frame a demand as a request. 

"I think I'm going to leave them on, buddy. It's cold outside." As I said this, it was my turn to rapidly attempt to gauge the danger level of the situation, to try to figure out our odds of making it to the car without a meltdown, whether this was a don't budge power through teaching moment or one of those times to just give in for the sake of everybody involved.

"It's okay, really. Just think of them like a funny-looking hat, but just for my ears."

It was interesting, in a way, to watch this, and him. Usually his reactions are zero-to-sixty, his impulse control so poor that he's generally already too far gone into a tantrum by the time he realizes there's nothing to tantrum about, really, so to see him hover on the verge like this and actually process the existence of a weird thing on Mommy's head...well, it was different. And like him, I wasn't exactly sure if it was good different or bad different.

He chewed on his lip for about a minute more. He raised his hands up to chest level. That's usually followed by some nervous flapping, then some anxious foot-stomping, and then...

He broke out into a wide, amused smile.

"You look like Princess Leia," he said. 

I laughed. "I guess I do, don't I?" 

"Can I wear them?" he asked.

It was my turn to stop dead in my tracks. I silently took the earmuffs off and placed them on his head. Over his EARS. Next to his FACE.

"You are just full of surprises sometimes, you know that, Noah?" 

"Not Noah," he corrected me. "I'm Princess Leia. See?"

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CHRISTMAS

'Cause we're ready for some Christmas.

Noah helped decorate the tree -- one of about a bajillion different firsts for him this year. We finally figured out that he's okay with having a tree in the house, he just doesn't want to see or even hear about it riding home on top of our car. Because...trees don't belong on cars? Because it might fall off? Because it's a flagrant violation of proper seat-belt usage laws? I DON'T KNOW WHY. I DON'T MAKE HIS RULES. All I know is that this year we skipped the whole picking-out-a-tree-as-a-family bit and didn't tell Noah anything about it until the tree was off the car roof and in our living room. This, he was fine with. 

More than fine, actually. Excited, even, to get going with hanging up the orbbamints.

So our tree has a LOT of orbbamints on that one side, towards the bottom. I am more than fine with this too.

Ezra supervised the garland placement.

I waited until he was in bed to begin the untangling and cursing of said garland, and only barely managed to finish sometime before breakfast. The magic of Christmas!

I used to pretend our  holiday garland was a Golden Lasso, too. Though if Ezra ever asks Santa for a Wonder Woman costume, he'll damn well GET a Wonder Woman costume. 

No, I'm still not over it, Santa.

As for this year, though, early signs are looking very promising for the current plan of giving Ezra nothing but a bunch of Random Plastic Packaging Shit on Saturday. OMG IKEA ORBBAMINT BOX IS GREATEST THING EVER.

Except for maybe snowman cookies.

Well. They were at least kind of excited about it, I swear.

I think the enthusiasm was dampened by my overselling of the accompanying hot chocolate as being something so delicious it was going to blow their little minds out their ears, but they both took sips of the tepid, barely-lukewarm liquid and shrieked and wailed from the HORRIBLE SCALDING HEAT WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO US, MOTHER, WE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.

 

Moving on. 

Another Big First: Noah licked the bowl after we made cookies. 

Translation: Noah actively participated in the cookie-making process, complete with the BREAKING OF EGGS and the NOISE OF THE KITCHENAID, and then willingly TOUCHED THE STICKY, SLIMY BATTER with his OWN FINGERS and then ACTUALLY TASTED IT.

And declared it DELICIOUS. 

So delicious, in fact, that I was forced (FORCED, I TELL YOU) to make a whole separate batch of cookies just so Ezra could get his first taste of cookie dough.

 

Now all that's left to do before Christmas is make one last batch of cookies after the kids go to bed so I can get some cookie dough. This spirit of "giving" and "sharing" garbage is for suckers. 

Bounceback

Those of you who have been reading for some time now -- particularly the stuff I've written about Noah over the past three years or so -- may remember The Thing About Birthday Parties.

(For those of you who haven't been reading that long: The Thing About Birthday Parties is that Birthday Parties Suck Elephant Ass, Most Of The Time.)

But we went to a birthday party on Friday night -- the birthday party of the very same little boy whose at-home, laid-back party was so perfect for Noah when I wrote this post, almost exactly a year ago. The party that came just hours after one of my lowest moment as Noah's mom, a moment that left me frustrated and angry and embarrassed and...scared. So very, very scared.

This year's party was not at his house, though. It was at one of those dreaded kiddie gym places, with the parachute and the games and the singing and a good dozen activities with a dozen transitions in between. Basically, EXACTLY the sort of party we have avoided for years now. A ton of kids, a ton of colors and music pumped in over loudspeakers, with lining up and taking turns and Staying With The Group and Other Kids Bumping Into You and Things That Require Motor-Planning Skills and a million other everyday things that most kids are okay with, because it's a party! It's fun! No reason to melt down and scream sensory bloody murder here, right?

But we went anyway. 

 

He's the one in the blue Yankees shirt. You know, if you couldn't pick him out from the crowd, having the time of his life, just like every other kid there. 

Less is Perfect

Noah plays soccer now. 

Long-time readers may remember that a couple years ago, Noah was "not ready" for his preschool's extracurricular soccer program. He was "disruptive" and "challenging." The other children were genuinely trying to learn "the basics of the game" but Noah was a "distraction." We were asked to "no longer send him." Our money would "credited" toward our next tuition payment, of course.

Basically, he was kicked out. He was three.

Every year since then, in the early fall and spring, Jason has optimistically mentioned soccer. Maybe we should try again? Maybe he's ready now? But then we'd look at the local schedules and team sizes and refund policies and inevitably get skittish and back off the idea. 

But Noah plays soccer now.

He plays with his classmates from the public special ed preschool program. He plays wherever we, the parents, can snag a gym slot or open field at a local playground. Jason is the coach, along with another dad. Parents and older siblings usually help out, keeping the kids focused, and nobody cares if somebody is having a bad day and doesn't want to play or is bothered by the grass or their soccer shorts or needs a regular gentle push back in the direction of the action.

The kids do jumping jacks and stretches and dribble and kick the ball into mini-pop-up goals or between cones. If everybody can at least kick the ball around a couple times and get a big round of applause for the attempt before everything descends into chaos, t's a good practice, and all any of us parents are really looking for. 

It's not slick or fancy or likely to get anyone scouted for the major leagues. It's better than that. It's perfect.

 

***

Oh, hey. So would anybody like one of those brand-new super-fancy Windows Phone 7? For free? Because guess what you will never guess what.

Just leave a comment on this post about -- oh, I don't know -- a time when less turned out to be perfect for you too, and you could win.

You can comment once per day, from now until November 29th at 11:59 pm EST. I'll pick one random winner. Obviously, you'll need to comment using a valid email address (which only I can see) so I can contact you and stuff and get all the info needed to get you your new phone. 

(Oh, and we've got this same giveaway going over at Mamapop too, for double your winning pleasure.)

This giveaway is brought to you by the new Windows Phone 7. Learn more about Windows Phone online and see it in person at local T-Mobile stores today. Important: click here for the official rules.

Nerds on Parade

Halloween, take three:

Noah's struggles with Halloween and dressing up ebbed and flowed this year, with one costumed activity being a roaring success and the next causing a meltdown of epic proportions. It was like spinning the wheel in Sensory Roulette. So I had no idea how his classroom costume parade party would go on Friday. 

When I arrived with Ezra in tow (and in costume), Noah had steadfastly refused to put his costume on while his friends got dressed. But then another mother showed up with a tray of chocolate cupcakes.

"See those?" I fibbed. "Those are for kids who wear their costumes."

BAM. Obi-Wan Kenobi IN THE HOUSE. And on parade.

With his faithful sidekick Yoda, seen here shortly before losing a shoe in the parking lot at some point.

Other than some mid-parade WHERE ARE THE CUPCAKES ALREADY fatigue, he did great. 

Ezra did too, though he did tend to gravitate to some very non-canon props. 

And then: FEASTING.

Halloween, take four: 

Trick-or-treating. The main event. Noah not only agreed to wear his costume with absolutely zero protest, he even allowed me to put on the cheap-ass synthetic-fabric tunic and rubber belt portion of his Jedi outfit (over his regular clothes, obviously, because ITCHY). 

Get ready for his hit single I Will Do Anything For Candy (But I Draw The Line At The Polyester Pants).

Jason dressed as a prawn-armed Wikus Van De Merwe from District 9. He had a great official-looking MNU Alien Affairs badge too. It was awesome.

At first Ezra thought trick-or-treating consisted of grabbing candy from our bowl, piece by piece, and dropping it into his bucket...

...so there was some momentary distress when he realized there was actually quite a bit more to it than that. And also some tears when he learned he was not allowed to go INSIDE the houses after ringing the bell. Like OH MY GOD, these people keep BOWLS OF CHOCOLATE right next to the FRONT DOOR. Can you EVEN IMAGINE what they might have HIDDEN IN THE KITCHEN? WHAT THE HELL, YOU GUYS.

Checking out the loot between houses.

(LIghtsabers are actually safety LED glowsticks from Life+Gear, who sent me a truckload of them back when Noah's Star Wars fanaticism first dawned. Awesome for visibility at night AND because they were technically too short to cause damage to TV screens, precious Ming vases or each other's skulls. Shout-out! Woot!)

(And yes, fellow nerdlings, I know Obi-Wan Kenobi should have the blue one and Yoda should have green, and I swear that was the way they were dispensed back at the house but you KNOW whatever your younger brother has in his hand is immediately 500 times more awesome than what you have in YOUR hand, so there you go.) 

(This from the kid who, when I referred to him as simply "Obi-Wan" to another mother at school, testily corrected me because "I'm Obi-Wan KENOBI, Mooooommmmm.")

I was Jessica from True Blood. I'm crying blood because Jessica is always freaking crying. 

I ordered the Merlotte's shirt and apron before I found out I was pregnant, and I briefly thought I'd have to switch to Arlene, the OTHER True Blood redhead (who is currently pregnant with what may or may not be the demon fetus reincarnation of a serial killer), but it turns out I don't have the belly for it yet. So I got to traumatize small neighborhood children with bloody eyes and fangs instead.

Also, yes, I was really, really freaking cold. But I was even more committed.

We stayed out until the buckets got too heavy to carry and little legs got too tired to walk. Also we had to get everybody to bed so we could stay up late and watch that zombie show on AMC with the lights turned off and the sound turned up because I totally enjoy NOT EVER SLEEPING AGAIN.

And that was our Halloween. How was yours? 

LET'S GO MURDER A TRUCKER. AND THEN CRY ABOUT IT.

The First Steps Into a Larger World

Hey look! I'm LIKEABLE, dammit! Likeable! I'm having a hard time refraining from typing a riff on Sally Fields' Oscar speech that includes the word "cocksuckers." But you're all probably imagining it now anyway. So there. I'm done here, let's move on!

So. Noah. Costumes. Playing dress-up. Not at all a thing he enjoys. We successfully got him into a costume last Halloween at the 11th hour when he suddenly realized that Mommy and Daddy weren't playing: There was free candy to be had if you wore one. Okay Earthlings, I will indulge you this time in your strange fun-sized candy-procuring middle-man ritual. THIS TIME.

Afterwards, though, whenever I mentioned next Halloween, he would do some kind of dramatic fainting-couch thing and announce that he was NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN. NO. NOT EVEN. 

Time went by, and he seemed a bit more open to the idea -- probably because in the wake of us cracking down with a righteous vengeance on food dyes in his diet, he's figured out that Halloween is his once-a-year window to fuck up his nervous system with all the Red 40 and Yellow 5 he wants because CHILDHOOD IS AWESOMMMMMME -- but he said he would only wear the same blue monster costume from last year. Which was actually purchased (and rejected) the year BEFORE, and was already a size too small when he wore it. 

If I told him that I was sorry, that costume doesn't fit, we'll need to find another one or something different...back to the fainting couch he went. 

Over the summer, there were a number of little girls at his camp who loved to play dress-up, and the classroom had a wide variety of fairy wings and tutus and tiaras that they favored, but seeing them dressed up would send Noah into total meltdown mode, with screaming and sobbing and...well. He really, really didn't like it, to put it mildly.

So you can imagine my shock when one day this past weekend, out of the blue, Noah donned Ezra's bathrobe, declared it a "cate" (cape) and started calling himself Obi-Wan Kenobi:

 

 

He wears it everywhere and all the time -- except right after bathtime, when Ezra starts shrieking MINE MINE MINE because it is, in fact, a size 24-months and HIS HIS HIS -- I've even caught him wearing it to bed a couple nights, sweating profusely but sleeping peacefully, with a lightsaber fashioned out a Tinker Toy tucked in his hands, under his chin.

 

I've always listened to other parents' stories about the wacky things their children insisted on wearing day after day or the crazy outfits they proudly assembled for themselves and felt a little twinge because Noah has never been that kid. His clothing preferences begin and end with what I pull out of the closet every morning, provided I conceal the fact that anything might be "new" by ripping off tags and hiding shopping bags. We buy him Star Wars shirts because we think he'll like them, but I'm not sure he really notices them all that much. Part personality, part other issues, who knows, but oh, I love the sight of other kids who think rainboots and pirate hats and bumblebee wings are perfectly sensible day-to-day ensemble.

I let him wear his cate to OT yesterday, because why the hell not, and his therapist's confusion quickly melted into laughter when she realized just what he was wearing, and then to a triumphant fistbump with me when it dawned on her that he wasn't just wearing a bathrobe, he was wearing a costume. That he'd come up with all by himself. We got a couple WTF looks from other parents in the waiting room, but I honestly could not have been more proud, as I watched my kid run around with his Baby Gap microfleece freak flag high.

"I love Thursdays," she laughed.

 

Me too. 

Magic

Last night we took the kids out for dinner. We'd heard about a nice-sounding restaurant with a "kids eat free" night on Sundays, and we're always, ALWAYS trying to find places that fall within that elusive category of Noah Can Order A Damned Grilled Cheese Sandwich But Mommy And Daddy Can Order Something Besides A Damned Cheeseburger. This place looked like it might fit the bill. 

I missed the thing on their website about the magician, though.

We didn't know about the magician until our waiter stopped by to check in on us -- yes, yes, everything is fine! The food is delicious! Love the kids' bento-box style meals! Ezra ate every bite, including the entire section of ketchup, and Noah still cannot BELIEVE he just got a side of Goldfish crackers AT DINNER, like ARE YOU KIDDING ME, OUT-OF-CONTEXT SNACKTIME, THIS PLACE IS AWESOME -- and he told us that a magician would stop by in a few minutes to show the kids some tricks.

Uh-oh.

Right on cue, Noah started to protest and amp up into a fight-or-flight level of worry. "No magic! No magician! I don't want a magician! I don't want that!" 

Jason and I hugged and reassured, we explained and cajoled, we communicated telepathically across the table like: Get the check now. We know how this is going to end.

And then...poof! Like magic, he appeared! At our table! A magician! OMFG A MAGICIAN. 

I wish...I wish you could have seen it, you guys. I wish I'd videotaped THAT, the whole thing, so I could watch it over and over again. 

Noah wielded a blue crayon like a magic wand and shrieked with delight when it made a foam ball disappear. The magician handed him another ball that turned into two -- then three! -- when Noah squeezed it tight. Then he handed Noah a marker (uh-oh) and asked him to write his name (UH-OH) on a playing card (MAYDAY MAYDAY)...and Noah did it, along with a request to turn the O into a smiley face. He laughed some more and clapped and was thrilled and amazed with each simple slight-of-hand card trick. He asked for an encore with the magic balls and it was graciously provided. 

Ten, maybe fifteen minutes, tops. Didn't matter. That tiny deviation from the expected. A kind stranger connecting with my child, making him laugh, helping him overcome the invisible whatever without even knowing it. It felt like it turned everything around, a big fat UNDO button for all of this summer's low points. 

After dinner, Jason nudged me in the direction of the magician: "Birthday. Party. I'm not kidding. Go ask." He'd just finished performing for a mother and her son so I cut in briefly and asked for his card. That's all I meant to say, but then I realized I should probably explain why I was suddenly crying.

"Thank you," I kind of choked out, "My son doesn't usually...things that are supposed to be FUN sometimes...he gets...well, you really made our night."

He handed me his card and assured me that Noah did great. I stammered out something about birthday parties and said I would be in touch and felt kind of dumb. 

The mother at the table smiled and nodded at me. "I know," she mouthed. 

Noah got to keep the card with his name on it. "This is my magic card," he says. "The Magic Man gave it to me."

What It Looks Like

A lot of families, as part of the path to diagnosis and treatment, videotape their children's behavioral...quirks, I guess. Tics. Possible symptoms. Just so the doctors or therapists or evaluators can "see" what you see at home. 

We've never done that, at least on purpose. Noah's school does a lot of videotaping for therapeutic/assessment purposes, but I've always just INTENDED to capture the normal happy fun stuff. I say "intended" because if I go through old videos of Noah I'm often kind of retroactively shocked by something we inadvertently captured that's like, "THAT. RIGHT THERE. THAT TURNED OUT TO BE THING." Noah tip-toeing across the living room; screaming in terror the first time we put him on a teensy pedal-less baby tricycle; telling some great-sounding story that we would only later realize was little more than an echolalic script. 

We're still in insurance limbo. We haven't heard the results of our last and latest appeal, which will dictate whether we get to 1) file a grievance with the state, or 2) finally get a couple months' of bills paid right before filing for YET ANOTHER request for an extension of benefits, bwaaaaaaaaahhhhzzzzzzzbbbtttt etc. I also need to go back to the school district with proof that Noah does indeed regress without extended school year options, and that his fine motor skills are not the only area of OT concern. I also just need certain people to see it, to believe it.

So I've been videotaping him. 

This is Noah trying to sit still and watch a movie. This is Noah starting out like any typical, high energy kid, before his movements become less and less controlled and more and more compulsive. This is Noah after I try to curb a single stimming behavior involving his fingers in his mouth, after he's past any point of self-regulation or ability to chill the hell out. This is not Noah performing, or having fun, or being like this on purpose. This is two minutes and 17 seconds of what he's like almost all the time now.

This is Noah without occupational therapy. That's it. This is nothing. This is fixable. 

I'm not imagining that two minutes and 17 seconds of our life will magically convince anyone who actually matters to help us fix this, but don't worry. I've got more. Ho ho ho, motherfuckers.* I've got more.** 

*Not you guys, of course.

**Not all for you guys, of course. Just this one and then I'll mostly drop it. I'm really just threatening invisible insurance and IEP people with the equivalent of sitting through a 587-slide presentation on a road trip to Mount Rushmore. I AM SUCH A BADASS. MIGHTY TARZAN CHEST-THUMP!***

***Ow, that hurt.

Not Exactly Fearless Blogging

About 10 minutes or so into the Blogging Autism panel at BlogHer, the table surface started to get all fuzzy and my eyeballs felt hot. "Shit, I'm not gonna make it," I mumbled to Christina, as we'd already briefly debated the odds of getting through the session without crying.

Nothing had even been SAID yet, beyond introductions to the panelists and the theme for the discussion, and yet there I was, hiding my reddening face behind my conference schedule as the weight of the previous days with Noah decided to drop from the ceiling and land squarely on my chest.

"It's just been a really bad week," I whispered as my neighbors patted my back and scrambled for tissues, probably wondering what the HELL had managed to happen in that 10-minute timespan, because I'd all but floated in like, WHAT UP BITCHES, LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU WITH ANECDOTES AND EXAGGERATED HAND GESTURES. ALSO, MY SHOES ARE CUTE, NO?

Just a few days before, Noah had a panic attack. A really, really bad one. And while we've certainly dealt with anxiety and freak-outs in the past, this was...different. Worse. Especially because goddammit, wasn't he doing so much BETTER, a few weeks ago? We're supposed to be moving forward, onward, upward. So why are we rewinding? 

And so I sat there, trying to squeeze the image of Noah's furious balled-up little fist swinging at (and making contact with) Jason's face out of my brain, along with the bewildered, terrified face he had immediately after, his wide eyes desperate with guilt and fear over that involuntary fight-or-flight gesture. A few minutes later, he'd kick me in the chest while screaming NO HANDS, NO HANDS! at the top of his lungs. 

A half hour later, his hands would still be shaking, his breathing ragged.

(I wrote a little bit about this night over at The Stir, but for the sake of completeness here: This was all over a Star Wars DVD. One of his little friends had told him The Phantom Menace was kind of scary. We assured him it really wasn't. By the time Jason pulled the DVD out of the Netflix sleeve, Noah's anxiety amped up to the point of no return, as if the mere presence of the movie in our house would bring about a Ring-like curse of death in seven days, or cause Jar-Jar Binks to climb out of the TV and annoy the living shit out of us for all of eternity.)

(Fucking Jar-Jar, man.)

I sat there, as the full realization and possible implications of what another violent panic attack could mean for Noah hit me for the first time, now that we've decided to fully cast our lot in with the public school, where a child who hits or breaks things can be quickly yanked from the inclusion track and tossed in the self-contained "intensive needs" unit. Would this happen again? Will this be a "thing?" A new thing or just a new symptom of his other things? Will he need medication? I don't want to put him on medication. I don't want that attack to ever happen again. I don't want him to be scared. I want him to feel safe. He was doing so well. I know these things are never linear but I WANT LINEAR. BECAUSE HE WAS DOING SO WELL. 

If I hadn't been so utterly mortified to be crying in the first place, I probably would have punctuated my internal monologue with an "it's not FAIR" fist bump to the the table. 

The discussion, by this point, had turned to the myths of autism -- namely, the uber-negative portrayal we all know from the media, that a Spectrum or sensory diagnosis dooms your child and family to a life sentence of misery, because it's just so "awful" and "sad" to be forever tied to a child who cannot love or laugh or live any meaningful life -- you know, because they're too busy hand-flapping in the corner and calculating out Pi to the 3.000th decimal, while you change their adult diapers and spoon-feed them pudding. 

Everyone in the room laughed at the suggestion of the "misery." 

And so did I. 

 

Loud, and long, and clear.