Hanging on for Dear Life!

I’m convinced that somewhere up there, someone keeps a cosmic balance sheet and when I start feeling too secure or too comfortable in life, they say, “Wait a minute, this one’s feeling pretty self-satisfied. . .time to shake things up!“ 

When I picked up my boys from school yesterday, John was in the nurse’s room, tears streaming down his face, begging to go home and “never come back!” Robert came bounding out of his classroom and barreled into me with his customary hug and shouts of “Hi, Mom!” He was followed out by the aide who works with him part-time and the look on her face said it all. Apparently he’d been quite defiant, hyper and generally uncooperative throughout the day. He’d crawled under the bed in the nurse’s room for 20 minutes and refused to get out. (Yes, the same nurse’s bed where John was crying later.) He’d loudly refused to do his work. He’d run through the halls flapping his hands and fairly skipping while humming loudly to himself. In other words, his autism was showing.

At one point, while trying to get Robert to actually sit in a chair for more than 5 seconds so I could talk, I found myself surrounded by 5 people: both boys’ teachers and aides as well as the principal, filling me in on all the gory details. They were all so kind and concerned. But I didn’t know how to respond so I just looked at them and said, “We’re falling apart.” I know it sounds melodramatic but that’s how I felt and it was all I could say.

I’ve noticed some changes in John (who is less impacted by his autism) and Robert over the past couple of weeks and it’s obviously happening at school, too. John has been “perseverating hard” as I call it – full of anxiety and clinging to routines and things he did as a younger child to try and comfort himself. One such perseveration is to take pieces of paper, write the names of his fellow students (he memorizes these the first day) and then arrange the paper, or ‘desks’ to mimic the way they are in the classroom. I think it feels good to his brain to create this visual and orderly view of the classroom which can be a distracting and chaotic environment for him. Robert has been over-active, pacing, skipping, flapping his hands together so hard the fingers pop and verbally stimming to the point where he doesn’t stop talking for 2-3 hours straight.

Clearly, something is up here.

Trying to figure out what may be driving these regressions is an exercise in frustration. I can think of 100 things it might be – puberty (God help me), the seasonal change, the high expectations, my own anxiety, the location of Jupiter on the planetary map, you name it. I suspect it’s a combination of factors. John is working with new aides this year and is becoming more independent. He’s growing up and for someone who so profoundly dislikes change, he is doing a beautiful job of it. But sometimes it all gets to be a bit too much and he needs time to ‘reset’. For Robert, I suspect his growing body may be demanding even more sensory input than it did previously and that the high expectations from us (his family) as well as his teacher and aide, are causing some kind of inner chaos for him right now.

Oddly enough, Robert’s language has blossomed in unbelievable ways throughout this particular period. He says these sentences to us and we just look at him in amazement because he sounds like a ‘typical kid’. A speech therapist once told me it isn’t uncommon to witness behavioral regression along with language progression. It’s almost as if all the available resources are being sent to the brain and the self-restraint, body and impulse controls take a leave.

As we walked home yesterday, I hugged John and tried to comfort him. I told him things will be okay and that we would enjoy a nice, long weekend. I assured him that his teacher really DOES like him and believe in him. And as we talked I did a pretty fair job of convincing *myself* that things will be okay. He went off to school this morning without complaint and I’m holding my breath until it’s time for me to pick up the boys, hoping that today was a better day.

Peace.