Today we celebrate Blue and the beginning of his 12th year of life. There is much to celebrate as he has come such a long way over the past year. You may be wondering why I refer to the boys as Red and Blue. Well..when I started seriously blogging I thought the colors suited their personalities. Red is the explosive like dynamite. (Today is not his day so I'm not going to go in to detail about him.) Last year in 5th grade, Blue was very sad, anxious and kind of...Blue.
He started to feel different than his peers and he wasn't quite sure why. He loathed the fact that his anxiety was so high -that he was deathly afraid of thunderstorms. He felt defeated every time he had the compulsion to hide in the bathroom with fan, earplugs and IPod for hours on end. He had frequent misunderstandings with classmates and sometimes with teachers. P.E. was a nightmare with so many kids and so much noise.
It made him sad when he would get angry and say mean things, and subsequently feel really bad about it afterward. He couldn't control his anger. He knew that some of his classmates thought he was a little "weird". He tried desperately to please them and fit in. He wanted to be funny like the popular boys so he tried to imitate them, but the kids didn't laugh.
1 year and a small dosage of medication later, he has come into his own. As he celebrates his 12th birthday, he has a 4.0 grade point average and has been invited to participate in some wonderful challenging classes and activities. He now works well with his peers and has developed excellent leadership qualities. He is still not in love with thunderstorms, but they no longer bring life to a grinding halt. He's getting there on that one.
His fuse is a little longer than it used to be. For instance today at school some kid called him chubby and he didn't go ballistic. He didn't go running to a teacher either. In fact, he didn't say anything. It hurt his feelings enough to tell me about it, but he readily excepted my explanation:
"Sometimes middle-school boys are just rude and silly. There will be a fare share of name-calling mostly because they are insecure and want to make themselves feel better. You just have to try to ignore it, unless it makes you really uncomfortable, then you let them know."
"That's why I am so glad I have you, because you love me more than anyone," he responded. My heart absolutely melts.
I told him I still remember the teasing I got in middle school when my nose was much bigger than the rest of my face. They called me "Sir Nose". Lovely! My nose is still on the grander side of life, but I have learned to live with it. I even have my days when I think I'm pretty darn cute! Make-up helps a lot!
This weekend he will have an all boys birthday party here at the house. They will play games, eat pizza and just hang out. The party will include a friend he has known since 1st grade who has since moved on to another school. He will also have the twins that he has known since pre-school and a new friend he made this year. For someone with Aspergers he's doing pretty darn well in the friendship department. Of course, some of his friends also have special needs but they all get along great.
I am so proud of my birthday boy! He makes me glad I decided to try one more time for a girl. Instead, I got the most special boy a mom could ask for.
He started to feel different than his peers and he wasn't quite sure why. He loathed the fact that his anxiety was so high -that he was deathly afraid of thunderstorms. He felt defeated every time he had the compulsion to hide in the bathroom with fan, earplugs and IPod for hours on end. He had frequent misunderstandings with classmates and sometimes with teachers. P.E. was a nightmare with so many kids and so much noise.
It made him sad when he would get angry and say mean things, and subsequently feel really bad about it afterward. He couldn't control his anger. He knew that some of his classmates thought he was a little "weird". He tried desperately to please them and fit in. He wanted to be funny like the popular boys so he tried to imitate them, but the kids didn't laugh.
1 year and a small dosage of medication later, he has come into his own. As he celebrates his 12th birthday, he has a 4.0 grade point average and has been invited to participate in some wonderful challenging classes and activities. He now works well with his peers and has developed excellent leadership qualities. He is still not in love with thunderstorms, but they no longer bring life to a grinding halt. He's getting there on that one.
His fuse is a little longer than it used to be. For instance today at school some kid called him chubby and he didn't go ballistic. He didn't go running to a teacher either. In fact, he didn't say anything. It hurt his feelings enough to tell me about it, but he readily excepted my explanation:
"Sometimes middle-school boys are just rude and silly. There will be a fare share of name-calling mostly because they are insecure and want to make themselves feel better. You just have to try to ignore it, unless it makes you really uncomfortable, then you let them know."
"That's why I am so glad I have you, because you love me more than anyone," he responded. My heart absolutely melts.
I told him I still remember the teasing I got in middle school when my nose was much bigger than the rest of my face. They called me "Sir Nose". Lovely! My nose is still on the grander side of life, but I have learned to live with it. I even have my days when I think I'm pretty darn cute! Make-up helps a lot!
This weekend he will have an all boys birthday party here at the house. They will play games, eat pizza and just hang out. The party will include a friend he has known since 1st grade who has since moved on to another school. He will also have the twins that he has known since pre-school and a new friend he made this year. For someone with Aspergers he's doing pretty darn well in the friendship department. Of course, some of his friends also have special needs but they all get along great.
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| Birthday Pancakes 7 a.m. Thanks Mom! |
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| Home-made fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, salad and finally Birthday Cake! |
Logging you in...
Adelaide Dupont · 285 weeks ago
And for those of us who knew and appreciated these points in high school to a greater or lesser extent - always good to have a refresher and feel them through the current and future generations who we survived to be able to see.
I especially appreciated points 5, 7 and 10.
And young women not settling or settling down yet is a good thing.
"It's never too late to live our dreams" - but it may be too early for some of them!
And 8 of course.
nicole · 243 weeks ago
Risa · 230 weeks ago
LAH · 221 weeks ago
Maira L. Coral · 216 weeks ago
I was looking for information for my Multi-Genre Disability Research Project from my Early Childhood Special Education class on the web, when suddenly I came across your blog. I started reading this out of curiosity and I want to tell you that as you said yourself, you will not be Amanda Gorman, but you managed to make me shed some tears, perhaps because I felt totally identified with your words, especially in the part that you speak of your son. My son also has Asperger's syndrome, he is 19 years old and he is in the second semester of College. Also like yours, he takes classes from home, likewise my eldest daughter is also taking college classes from her room. At the same time, that I work as a preschool teacher from my kitchen through a computer, my husband sleeps in the room during the day because he works at night. Also in the afternoons I myself take virtual school classes. I am a 51-year-old Latin woman who began to learn the English language as adult, so maybe you find some deficiencies in my writing, however, I was very moved by how proud you express yourself about your son. Referent your mother, I liked the humorous tone that you give when your talk about her, so I did not want to miss this opportunity and stopped my assignments for a moment to let you know that your words do make a difference, since they reach the heart of at least those who have opportunity to read you. I want confess you that is the most long I have written to someone I don't know, because your words inspired me, thank you...
Gavin Bollard · 209 weeks ago
Thanks for this post. I've been very distracted of late and so this was how I found out about our friend Kate. Kate's struggles were very real but they were so constant and so wide-ranging that it was difficult for people around her to address them. I think it's going to take a while longer for me to process all this.
I learned so much from Kate because she was always quick to point out the many injustices in the world. In her glory days, she was very much a crusader and she cared for everyone. Over the years, as her situation took its toll, I came to realise that it was the fact that she couldn't be put in a single specific category, that made the system fail her. She needed help that they weren't set up to provide.
She needed more care and she needed to be less alone. I'm so sorry that this has happened.
For a long while we were corresponding almost every day but a couple of months ago, I realised that she had become so stressed that nearly every interaction I had with her was starting to trigger her. I backed away to give her a bit more space. She only had a little time that she could stand to be online and there were too many things that she wanted to do in that time. I thought that by taking a step back, she could reach out to more people who might be geographically closer and able to assist.
Kate was a beautiful soul and she will be sorely missed by all of us.
diyalabs6192603 11p · 192 weeks ago
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Spoil your cat · 122 weeks ago
Many of these living arrangement aren't good, and many of the people who run those places really don't have the residents' best interest at heart. Those places are like old age homes and foster homes, where you sometimes hear horror stories. They're hard to trust. But then there are good ones, of course.
The best thing for an autistic adult is either to go on living at home or working and renting an apartment and living independently, but that isn't always an option.
Duncan · 112 weeks ago