So my darling 11 year old is moody and crabby and isolates herself in her room a lot. Never sure where the pre-teen boundary meets the autism boundary. She can be a real challenge sometimes, and she drives us all nuts a lot.
Just this morning, I had suggested she wash her hair. It's, like... WAY too long between showers for her. I said she looked like Professor Snape. I meant it as a funny tease; I thought she'd appreciate the Harry Potter reference. She took it as a straight-up insult (and I can see why she would -- I admit I was wrong, and I did apologize). So then it escalated, she yelled (we were trying to stay cool), Ánt got irritated and jumped in to back me up on the showers-are-good point, and by the time we were halfway to our destination, she was calling us all kinds of names. During her tirade, she said it didn't matter that she was insulting us because it didn't hurt our feelings. We were like robots. I lost my cool and said that it DID in fact hurt my feelings, and it made me feel terrible that my kid thinks I'm an idiot and calls me names all the time. "So you do make me feel terrible: is that what you wanted? Does it make you feel better?" "No. Now I feel bad, too." "Well," I said, "that's not what I wanted either."
Yesterday I took her to the trampoline place and arranged for her best friend to meet us. We had lunch, Icees, 2 hours of jumping, I doled out quarters for video games and dispenser machines... I thought it was a lot of fun. But she started complaining as we left: I got her a small Icee instead of a large. I didn't get salt on her pretzel. We should have arranged to have dinner with her friend's family that evening, too.
I tried to get her to see the bright side (after all, I'd just spent like $75 trying to give her a special afternoon), and I tallied up some of the good things. She yelled and stormed off.
I try really hard to be patient and understanding, but I fail a LOT, and I was definitely thinking in my head, "Well see if I take you to do anything fun again, then, you ungrateful brat." But almost before I could finish my sentence, Lochlan said -- 80s sitcom catchphrase-style -- "That's our Az!"
It really sort of upended my thinking about it. That is our Az. She always complains at the end of having a good time. And she seemed like she had a good time in the moment. Maybe that's enough. Maybe I just need to roll with her difficult transitions.
This week, I took her to the teen center she just aged into. When I came back, she was playing D&D with what I'd guess (and know -- I know one of the moms) were a bunch of other autistic kids. She wasn't ready to go, so I let her stay longer. I'm glad she had a good time.
It's been hard to get her to go to dance and karate. I know she's over scheduled and keep trying to talk her out of some of her commitments, but she really wanted to do both. Finally I decided we'd quit dance -- karate is 2 days a week and dance is one, and she was choosing not to go to dance pretty often. But then she started balking harder at karate. I finally asked what was going on, and she admitted she felt like she'd been left behind when she took the long break, and that the kids she'd started with were ahead of her. So I scheduled a private lesson with the sensei and told him what she really needed was both a refresher and a confidence-builder. I noticed in class that day, he was addressing her a lot, encouraging her to participate in things she was shying away from.
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I've mentioned this before, I think, but raising a (mostly*) neurotypical kid is kind of weird after raising an autistic kid for so long. Like, Lochlan does things that, as soon as he does them, you think, "Oh! That feature should come standard, I guess." Like today -- Ant banged her knee and said "ow." Lochlan asked what happened, then said, sympathetically, "I bet that really hurt." Yo, in 11 years, I'm not sure Azadeh has expressed empathy in that way, let alone usually even asking us what's wrong or even noticing that we're hurt!
We were reading about dinosaurs at bedtime, and I asked if he ever looks at the picture I had commissioned for him of a mama dinosaur bathing her baby dino. He said he does -- he likes to stand up and look at it. I said, "I love that picture." He replied, "I know it means a lot to you." And I was just BLOWN AWAY. Again, the combination of realizing I am a human person with feelings and then actually knowing what those feelings are and being able to express them in words -- like, wow!
*I say mostly neurotypical because Lochlan definitely has some quirks. Like, he hates loud noises, prefers soft pants and lightweight pajamas, has poor fine and gross motor skills, is obsessive about dinosaurs and animals, talks in a high-pitched voice about 80% of the time, and picks up idioms and catchphrases from TV shows so adeptly that it almost reminds me of echolalia. But other than that...
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The other day Az and I spent a lot of time alone together, and as we were eating lunch, she told me that she sometimes had body image issues and thinks she's fat. If you saw my last post, you can easily tell that she's not. In fact, she's a little underweight. I didn't just go, "ohmygosh you totally AREN'T," though. Instead, I (told her she wasn't and then) asked her to talk to her counselor about it the next day. I also explained body dysmorphia -- our inability to see our bodies as they are, but to focus on perceived flaws (usually this is called Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which is when you're also obsessed with it, but I just mean sort of less-serious than that).
And I know because I definitely have a touch of that. A couple years ago, I wrote a post about a gal who was sort of body-shaming women who were fat, because she herself had kids and a job and was super-fit. And I gave a lot of reasons why one might have chosen other things to celebrate. I still believe that, really: like, would I rather have a conversation with the cut-abs mom or with Roxane Gay (a super-smart author who is also overweight)? Like, duh.
I am also in the process of losing weight. I've been heavier and thinner in my adult life, but mostly heavier. And there are many reasons for that, but the most basic one is that I don't love to exercise and I do love eating food.
You may know of the movement called Health at Any Size. It's a lovely idea, and I support them 100%. They believe that just because you are overweight does not mean you are unhealthy. There's been a fat acceptance movement where heavier people are reclaiming, loving, dressing and showing off their bodies in ways that disregard society's expectations. I am HERE FOR THAT.
But I also think there's an important word in health at any size -- health. And at my weight last year, I wasn't that healthy. I earned myself a CPAP machine. I had plantar fasciitis. I noticed a very early sign of diabetes. I wasn't comfortable.
And to forgive myself for my bad habits, a little, it WAS honestly hard to get to the gym when Azadeh wasn't sleeping -- no way was I going to get up at 5 if I'd already been up all night and she finally shut up and went to sleep at 3:30. And it's hard to get to the gym in the evening when your little one is clingy and needy, and your partner loses patience quickly.
But... Azadeh is sleeping better. And Lochlan is a little less clingy. And Ánt loves herself so much better now and has a lot more patience with the kids. I got a little of my time back, and I started going to the gym. Every weekday.
Just before the new year I re-joined Weight Watchers. It has always worked for me if I really kept track and followed the plan. The problem was when I'd quit.
It's actually really easy to explain: on the plan, I would eat zero-points foods and get an extra workout in to "earn" the french fries with dinner. Off the plan, I would eat and exercise more moderately, then think, "Hey, if I can eat french fries while on the plan, they can't be that bad!" And then have a margarita and a cookie, too.
Anyway, back on topic: it has been working really well. I've dropped a little over 30 pounds, and even though I'm sort of at a plateau right now, I am still making good choices and I know I'll get through it. I'd really like to lose about 60 more, to be honest, but it gets harder as you go along. They give you fewer points every time you hit certain marks, which means they kind of ease you into it. Anyway, we'll see where it goes. I honestly think that if I'm going to stay healthy and be there for the kids for a long time, I'm going to need to do this tracking/calculating thing forever.
But back to the body image thing! I've always had a hard time seeing myself. When I was a teenager, I was sure I was fat. Hefty. Ridiculous. My stomach was big. I look back at old photos now and go, "WHAT THE FUCK, younger me? You were a knockout!"
Anyway, between being fine and thinking I was fat and being fat and thinking I was fine, I sort of messed up my self-image at some point, and I have NO IDEA how I look anymore.
Like, sometimes I catch a glimpse in the mirror and think, "Ooh, get it, girl!" and then later the same day think, "GODZILLA ATTACKS!" I can look at a woman I know is morbidly obese, Oprah Winfrey in the 80s, say, and think, "Yep, I look exactly like that." And then look at Oprah in the 90s and think, "Well, with a shaper?" So I mean this very honestly: if you put together a line-up of slightly chubby women to made-for-TV-special "I have to wear a King size bedsheet" women and asked me to place myself in line by weight, I would have literally no idea where I go. I still can't really see myself as I am.
But I'm glad that I'm sticking to it, I'm proud of the work I've put in, and whatever my body looks like, my pants fit better, I'm moving more freely, and my feet don't hurt (as much). I even had to buy a couple pairs of what I'm calling "interim pants": cheapies from Old Navy because a lot of my old pants are way too big now. And I look pretty cute in my interim pants. I think.
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Anyway, that was a long one, probably because I check in so rarely and have so much to say! Or perhaps I'm avoiding the other work I should be doing. It's probably that.
Take care. Thanks for reading.