You know... fine.
Lochlan is 3, and the "fuck you threes" has never been a more apt description. So much of the time, he's just a sweet, darling, smiling, belly-laughing cuddler. But other times he just does his own thing, regardless of what you want, and if you stop him from doing the thing (running down the street naked, bashing a stained-glass lamp into the wall), he'll fight and yell and hit. There are lots of times when I just leave him in the car rather than trying to get him out for a short trip, because he doesn't like to get buckled in, so it becomes a huge, exhausting wrestling match. I won't be able to do it this summer, because even now it's 80 degrees out and I only do it if I find shade, roll the windows down, and I know it'll be less than 5 minutes. But it's just hella hard to find the energy to have that fight multiple times per day.
I'm all for respectful, child-centered parenting that allows kids to have authority over their own bodies and what happens to them, but if I let the boy CHOOSE whether to get buckled into the car, we would have to leave his sister at school, never get groceries again, and keep spare car batteries in the garage for every time he just wanders around the car interior turning on lights. Sometimes I can bribe him or tickle him into submission, but other times I just have to get him in there by force.
Anyway. He knows pretty much all his colors, shapes, and numbers. He still doesn't like to participate in preschool (or go, sometimes), but he knows more about dinosaurs than you, unless you are a legit paleontologist. He's a hummer and a singer and a maker-of-funny-noises and a nonsense babbler, and it's kind of loud around here sometimes.
As for me, I'm... also fine. I really am getting past my Grandma grief, although if you follow me on the Facebook, I'm still wearing her jewelry every day. I'm pretty busy at work, between papers to grade (so many papers), an event coming up, and the many things I'd like to do that are half-formed ideas I haven't followed up on. Almost every day I think about how I'd like to sit down and write something, and almost every day I'm so worn out after the kids' bedtime all I do is sit and read social media or watch Netflix. Ah well. Summer is almost here, and I'll get to relax some then.
My lovely Azadeh has her ups and downs. When I think of some of the downs we had in the past -- her threatening to run away, Sweetie and I breaking her door in the middle of the night during some intense sleep-and-behavior issues, the nights I spent Googling boarding schools because I wasn't sure I could continue to live with her -- I know that things are on a more even keel. That doesn't make them easy. We still live with someone who more or less constantly talks to us as though we are the serfs who have disappointed her. She shouts and snaps and insults and degrades and is kind of mean about most things most of the time. She doesn't (can't?) accept responsibility for anything she's done, ever. She could pick up a bat, swing it into a window, and then if you said, "what the heck!? You just broke a window!" she would answer, "Well, if YOU didn't want it broken, why do you even HAVE a bat in here? This stupid house has old, fragile windows because YOU didn't buy a nice house!" (This is not a conversation we've had, but it has the tenor of hundreds we have had.)
She is filthy to the point that it makes me uncomfortable, but she will not change her ways if bribed, reminded, helped, reasoned with... She wipes marinara sauce on her pants even if there is a napkin next to her. She leaves dirty clothes all over her bedroom floor, eats in bed, leaves wrappers wherever she unwraps things. I know at some point this is a parenting issue, too. I could and should just put my foot down and say, "No, this is fucking disgusting. You shall not do that." But any attempts to get her to, say, JUST pick up the dirty laundry can turn into a multi-hour, yelling, lying, argument, and I don't have the energy for it all the time.
On the bright side, she actually has a handful of friends she's been eating lunch with, she's talked on the phone twice to a friend, she has emailed another, and she even Face-timed a friend a couple times. She's been going to social skills clinic for a little over a year, so I think it's really making a difference. She even told me tonight that one of her friends is going to invite her to a birthday party, which will be her first birthday party invitation in about four years. That is, IF it comes through. I'm always nervous about some of these friendships. Like, she was SO excited to meet a friend at an accessory shop in the mall, so I said we could go at the designated time, but the friend never showed up.
School is sort of better overall. We haven't had to pick her up early much (sometimes, though). I haven't had a lot of talkings-to, although I was informed fairly somberly of the day she threatened to kill a staff member. Other, less-serious offenses are chatted up more breezily: "She had a good day and got all her points. We did have to ask her not to climb on the desks." "She had a good day and earned all her points. At lunch there was a little kerfuffle where she did kick one of her classmates, but she calmed down and got back on track." (No mention of the kick-ee's recovery.) "She missed her points by two after she threw a Kleenex box at the speech teacher, but other than that..."
One of the things I struggle with -- because I am a parent, not just because I am an autism parent -- is whether I'm doing the right thing for my kid. There's a debate in the autism world, and this doesn't do it justice, but to give you the Cliff's Notes version: some people want to make their autistic kids seem as "normal" (or neurotypical) as possible so they can sort of "pass" in the real world someday. Other people think asking them to hide who they are and not be what nature made them is profoundly cruel, and that what we ought to be advocating for is a world that accepts them as-is.
I've always been a practical person. In terms of effort and my ability to effect change, I think my effort is better spent trying to help my kid adjust to the world as-is than in trying to get the entire world to adjust to accept her. But I see the other view, too. I never wanted her to stop making her noises. I welcome her obsessions (her dad and I have been the ones to buy her the most books on poisonous plants, and I've been scouring the web for plant-identification walks). But especially in her case, so many of the ways her autism presents itself could be easily mistaken for... just being a dick. How am I going to educate all her future bosses that sometimes, apparent dickishness is actually autism, and should be accommodated? I really think I need to help her not be a dick instead.
So we continue the in-home therapy, and we continue social skills clinic, and we try to be patient and loving and give her space to be herself, and sometimes we drink on weeknights.
Re-reading this makes it seem kind of rough, but it's really not. A day might look like us showering and having some breakfast, and sometimes we have a rough morning, but 80% of the time, we get both kids dressed and fed and out the door on time (perhaps with the shoes thrown in after, or a bagel still in hand). Then in the afternoon, we have therapy or clinic or a late day at Grandma's, and there might be some chasing and fussing about the car seat, and somebody might shout (the shouting is pretty likely), but not ALL the time. There will also be some TV watching and maybe paper-plane folding or play-dough and maybe one of the kids will spend 20 minutes peeling a carrot for dinner, and over dinner we talk about our days. And Lochlan will run outside naked and have to be retrieved. And then maybe at bedtime L won't want to brush his teeth and A will take her toothbrush and wander around with it for ten minutes, delaying bedtime, but there are also stories and songs and Az and my relaxing "countdown." And since the sleep issues are (knock wood) mostly sorted, I have some quiet time here to write this all down. Or watch Netflix.
It is tiring. It is imperfect. It is also fun and sweet. When a close friend asks if I got to see the latest movie, I often say, "Well, I have an autistic tween and a toddler, so... I don't have a lot of free time." It's true, but it's obviously not the whole picture.