To me, our glaring, huge challenges that each one of us faces in our lives are all about lessons - hard lessons that we think we learn but find we must re-learn repeatedly, sometimes seemingly ad nauseum.
Raising this challenged teenager of mine never loosens me from the grip of renewed awareness and gratitude. Then a day comes along like today to throw in a hot steaming dish of humility with a side of guilt sunny side up.
I have been on a mission to help my oldest son progress in some normal fashion and to find a place in this world and figure out who he is and adjust and all those things we parents do for our kids and have to work harder for in our challenged kids. It's very easy to look at the things he needs to work on and to get caught up in the day-to-day and minute-to-minute behavioral issues and quirks and forget to notice the important positive things about him, the way my youngest relates to him, etcetera. And I, along with other mothers like me, find myself praying more than just occasionally for a single normal day.
Today I had to bring my oldest son's homework and communication journal to his high school - I had neglected to return them to him last night. Upon entering the "secret classroom" way on the end of the school grounds where nobody goes, I find thirty-some teenagers of the full range of ability levels. There are Downs kids seated at the big table staring at me with their mouths open and small eyes blinking, then they smile and wave - they have no clue who I am. Two are arguing, and boy is it heated!! Another boy needs to go to the toilet and is signing "toilet" but refuses to get up until an aide comes over to escort him. Another teen in the class tries to encourage him to go on his own and the two almost get into a fist fight over it. Another student with PDD is also deaf and he is shouting the incoherent honking noise he makes when he wants to get the attention of a hearing person. Then there are the high-functioning (socially speaking) kids who have reading or learning problems - they need to hear the lesson rather than read it, though reading and writing are crammed down their throats.
And in the corner with the other misfits who don't quite fit into any particular group, sits my messy-haired, sensorily overwhelmed, towering teenager, quietly daydreaming.
To have someone outside their realm of reality stroll into their classroom after the bell rings is astonishing to these kids and all eyes (including the teachers') were on me.
I walk a fine line between celebrating my autistic son's talents, differences, endearing idiosyncracies and rounding off his corners so that he may fit in. Part of my job is to help him become aware of the things he can change to fit in and win friends and employment and the things he doesn't need to change to do so. So I have always strived to expose him to children his age level who were behaving in an appropriate manner for their age and development. So walking into what I saw today was like having somone slap a day-old flounder across my face. And I ask no one in particular, wonderingly, how am I supposed to help this boy figure out how to be part of normal life if he is not surrounded by it regularly? And the silent, tiny-voiced answer in my head is, 'but he's not normal' followed by a much more disturbing 'and you know this.'
My youngest son was with me also and he waved to everybody without a second thought, sought out his brother, came up to him and hugged him tightly - this is never done at home without goading from me. On our way out to the car I asked him what he thought about all those kids and how they behave differently than everyone else. He said simply, "everybody's a little different."
This brief experience is really just a couple of tiny moments that command me to re-assess all I strive for. It makes me question my yearning for my son to be able to function in the normal world and ask why I am pounding a square peg.
But then I think, you know, normal isn't really all that bad. And then I look around at all the others in my life I claim grief with and think maybe they're not so bad after all. I used to make the word "normal" my enemy because it flies in behest of everything I believe in - the angelic beauty of the individual soul which contains the Holy Spirit, the god/goddess, the very universe itself inside each one of us. Normalcy infers bland, routine, cookie-cutter robotics. But today, I saw the rainbow in the word NORMAL.
Normal = challenge. Some of us have more challenges than others, but we're all normal in that we all have challenges and that mine might be glaringly simple to someone else and good for them.
So I mentally sat down to my meal of humility and guilt and ate up. Here's a toast to being normal.
Raising this challenged teenager of mine never loosens me from the grip of renewed awareness and gratitude. Then a day comes along like today to throw in a hot steaming dish of humility with a side of guilt sunny side up.
I have been on a mission to help my oldest son progress in some normal fashion and to find a place in this world and figure out who he is and adjust and all those things we parents do for our kids and have to work harder for in our challenged kids. It's very easy to look at the things he needs to work on and to get caught up in the day-to-day and minute-to-minute behavioral issues and quirks and forget to notice the important positive things about him, the way my youngest relates to him, etcetera. And I, along with other mothers like me, find myself praying more than just occasionally for a single normal day.
Today I had to bring my oldest son's homework and communication journal to his high school - I had neglected to return them to him last night. Upon entering the "secret classroom" way on the end of the school grounds where nobody goes, I find thirty-some teenagers of the full range of ability levels. There are Downs kids seated at the big table staring at me with their mouths open and small eyes blinking, then they smile and wave - they have no clue who I am. Two are arguing, and boy is it heated!! Another boy needs to go to the toilet and is signing "toilet" but refuses to get up until an aide comes over to escort him. Another teen in the class tries to encourage him to go on his own and the two almost get into a fist fight over it. Another student with PDD is also deaf and he is shouting the incoherent honking noise he makes when he wants to get the attention of a hearing person. Then there are the high-functioning (socially speaking) kids who have reading or learning problems - they need to hear the lesson rather than read it, though reading and writing are crammed down their throats.
And in the corner with the other misfits who don't quite fit into any particular group, sits my messy-haired, sensorily overwhelmed, towering teenager, quietly daydreaming.
To have someone outside their realm of reality stroll into their classroom after the bell rings is astonishing to these kids and all eyes (including the teachers') were on me.
I walk a fine line between celebrating my autistic son's talents, differences, endearing idiosyncracies and rounding off his corners so that he may fit in. Part of my job is to help him become aware of the things he can change to fit in and win friends and employment and the things he doesn't need to change to do so. So I have always strived to expose him to children his age level who were behaving in an appropriate manner for their age and development. So walking into what I saw today was like having somone slap a day-old flounder across my face. And I ask no one in particular, wonderingly, how am I supposed to help this boy figure out how to be part of normal life if he is not surrounded by it regularly? And the silent, tiny-voiced answer in my head is, 'but he's not normal' followed by a much more disturbing 'and you know this.'
My youngest son was with me also and he waved to everybody without a second thought, sought out his brother, came up to him and hugged him tightly - this is never done at home without goading from me. On our way out to the car I asked him what he thought about all those kids and how they behave differently than everyone else. He said simply, "everybody's a little different."
This brief experience is really just a couple of tiny moments that command me to re-assess all I strive for. It makes me question my yearning for my son to be able to function in the normal world and ask why I am pounding a square peg.
But then I think, you know, normal isn't really all that bad. And then I look around at all the others in my life I claim grief with and think maybe they're not so bad after all. I used to make the word "normal" my enemy because it flies in behest of everything I believe in - the angelic beauty of the individual soul which contains the Holy Spirit, the god/goddess, the very universe itself inside each one of us. Normalcy infers bland, routine, cookie-cutter robotics. But today, I saw the rainbow in the word NORMAL.
Normal = challenge. Some of us have more challenges than others, but we're all normal in that we all have challenges and that mine might be glaringly simple to someone else and good for them.
So I mentally sat down to my meal of humility and guilt and ate up. Here's a toast to being normal.
).
