Autism Acceptance Month

April 8, 2019 ~ autventures ~ 2 Comments

55557116_10161495267320514_4236784774200426496_o — Reza (age 6) loves being pushed on the swing

I originally posted this on Facebook and have been meaning to add it here on my blog. Happy April!

It’s Autism Acceptance month and I want to tell you about autism at our house. I’ve had the hardest time writing this because I don’t want to sugarcoat it and ignore the struggles, but I also want you to understand how amazing it is at the same time.

51781087_10161333830075514_8181754837357035520_n — *headphones!*

Autism at our house is getting to witness pure joy, the kind of untainted undiluted joy the rest of us can never quite reach. But my son experiences it daily. Autism is dimples and squeals and chanted echolalic songs. Autism is music and vibration all over our house and everywhere we go. Tapping it, tasting it. It’s his language, the one that comes naturally to him unlike ours. Autism is movement. It’s running free, climbing high, it’s bare feet and unashamed nudity as the world rushes by and he cants his head to capture the dizzying beauty in his peripheral vision. Autism is being hand-led to whatever he needs all over the house. Autism is him taking my hand to run it over his skin, his way of asking me to lightly scratch his back and arms. Autism is the way he sometimes looks into my eyes, and it’s so rare that it feels like a jolt to my heart, like I can’t even breathe because it’s so intense. Autism is feeling over the moon with pride and joy every time he conquers something new, no matter how small or odd it may seem to an outsider.

36049451_10160450312455514_4362359163985068032_o — *Rain dance*

But autism is also anxiety and sensory overload. It’s him not understanding or feeling in control of what’s happening to him. It’s melting down with no control over the spiral, lashing out with teeth and flailing limbs, it’s banging his head. It’s being awake for days. It’s an inability to trust unfamiliar foods or tolerate triggering textures. It’s working ten times as hard as other children but still falling years behind them in developmental and academic skills.

36618933_10160488109295514_871537379339403264_o — *singing to the mountains*

Autism isn’t easy. But it is worth it. My son is the brightest light in any room. His eyes are full of stars and I just wish I could see what he sees. He is a six year old who has never performed a deliberately malicious act in his entire life. Neurotypical kids do mean things deliberately just to be mean from the moment they figure it out as little toddlers. It’s heady, a rush. But Reza never has. It doesn’t even occur to him. He’s the purest most beautiful soul I’ve ever met. Even when he’s lashing out in a meltdown, kicking and biting, it’s never malicious. He’s never trying to hurt anyone. He’s panicking and terrified and trying to rescue himself.

He’s so strong and so much fun to be around, even when he’s driving us nuts he still makes me smile.

00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190124172115129_COVER — *Reza on his 6th birthday*

A world without autism would be such a loss. Like sucking the light and color out of our human diversity.

Autism is hard. I wish my son didn’t have to go through its hardships. But autism is who he is, he is Autistic. It’s what makes him shine so bright, no matter the difficulties along the way.

At our house, autism is celebrated, and autism is home.

Sleeping Beside my Angel

November 17, 2018 ~ autventures ~ 2 Comments

0211180718 — Reza in bed with a sleeping Daddy. Unfortunately, since I’m always the one with the camera, there are no pictures of me and him snuggling in bed!

Reza has slept every single night of his nearly 6 years beside at least one, but most usually both, of his parents. He doesn’t always do much sleeping–I’ve written plenty about that–but when he does sleep, it’s cuddled in our bed. (In my head I’m hearing Goldsmith crooning I don’t always sleep, but when I do, I prefer to cosleep…)

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While I think this has had an incredibly positive affect on Reza, it also has been a profound source of comfort and connection for me too over the years. He always sleeps between my husband and me. Occasionally he would roll to my husband’s side, so when my husband came to bed he’d sleep next to me with Reza on the far side. In my sleep I’d reach for my son and he wasn’t there and I would panic! So now my husband always moves him into the middle if he’s rolled too far. It’s hard to explain, but I spent more than three years breastfeeding him through the night beside me, and now it’s been almost another three years just cuddling him. At this point the association of sleeping next to him and a sense of peace and wellbeing is so strong. I know he will need his own bed eventually, but I want to savor this special time while it lasts.

Gradually though, ALS has been elbowing itself in between us. It started with little things. It’s hard for me to grip the blanket and pull it over Reza and myself. So he began rolling closer to his Dad, since he knew Dad could pull the blanket over him the way he likes. My sweet husband solved that by tucking us both in under the blanket together. Then I started using a splint to keep my fingers from curling at night. This lost me the ability to use my left hand to rub his back or hold him.

More recently, I began needing to use a non-invasive ventilator (called a BiPAP) during the night to help me breathe while I’m lying down. You wear a mask with it, and mine is a full face mask. I’m mostly stuck on my back. With the mask on it’s very hard to side-lay while wearing it. This makes it hard to snuggle my little guy. I also used to love laying my nose gently against his head, inhaling his sweet scent as I slept. But now I have this big piece of silicon covering my nose and mouth. I miss side lying with my arm across him, my nose buried in his hair. But I still get to feel his warmth beside me, and now he reaches for me, holds my wrist gently in his little grip.

We did have one cute, funny thing with the ventilator. One night, I was laying in bed and having trouble falling asleep. As my husband and son drifted to sleep beside me, I noticed that both of them had synced their breaths with the ventilator breaths! It creates a very soothing ambient noise, and it seems no one can help but sync their own breathing to it along with me!

Lately we’ve been discussing bed solutions. Our mattress is on the floor with no frame. Originally this was necessary because Reza would fall off a regular bed in his sleep and hurt himself. But now it’s hard for me to get in and out of because it’s so low. However I am not able to climb up into and down from regular bed frame heights. I’m tiny myself, and with my weakness I can’t do it. So one option is to eventually consider a hospital bed that would be able to go up and down as needed, and we could adjust elevation of my upper body or feet etc as needed for best positioning. But if I go that route I will have to give up sleeping with my sweet angel, and my amazing husband. And I don’t think I’m ready for that.

I Love You

October 14, 2018January 17, 2019 ~ autventures ~ Leave a comment

rezanewest If you know Reza in person or have followed my blog at all, you’ll know he loves to climb and can scale just about anything. He enjoys climbing in our garage and we usually let him roam in there with the interconnecting door open so we can check on him every few minutes.

Yesterday while he was playing in there we suddenly heard panicked cries. My husband ran in to see what was wrong, but, at first, couldn’t see Reza anywhere. He followed the sound of the cries to the window, where Reza was hanging by his fingertips from the lower ledge on the outside of the garage! Apparently the window had been open, and he pushed the screen out and tried to climb down but got scared and stuck. When we got close enough to help, we realized Reza was crying “I love you, I love you, I love you!”

We reflected afterwards that Reza probably associates those words with being hugged, being held, and feeling safe. We say it to him over and over in that context of physically enveloping him in our arms and our safety and security. So when he was hanging there, terrified and needing to be hugged, held, and safe, he cried out “I love you!” as his plea.

I cried a little. I wonder if he’s internalized the meaning of “I love you” both in that especially literal Autistic way, but also in its abstract sense.

Love this little guy so much.

Colliding Worlds

April 29, 2018 ~ autventures ~ 5 Comments

Sometimes my son’s disability and mine meet in a strange and gravely beautiful way. I hear him vocalize and I think my sweet boy is gaining his voice while I am losing mine. There is something poetic about it. I know rationally that the two events have nothing to do with one another. But I would gladly give him my voice, go silent forever so that he could speak. Sometimes it feels like that’s what’s happening. A precious exchange. Perhaps that is just a notion my psyche has conjured to protect itself from the horrors that await me with this disease. If I can fantasize some purpose to my loss, some meaning to it, it won’t frighten me so terribly.

I cannot pick my boy up anymore. It’s been months now that I cannot lift him. R does not use any functional speech but communicates in a secret body language with us. He grabs our arms and places them around his hips, pulls and lifts on his toes in a silent but clear request to be picked up. When he asks me to hold him I call my husband, and my husband lifts his weight while I hold him in my arms in a pantomime of how I would hold him before I got sick. I have often wondered if he realizes I can’t lift him, or if he thinks we are just behaving strangely.

A few days ago I sat on the grass watching him play with his dad. He suddenly ran to me, pulled me to my feet, and positioned me as if to say “don’t move.” He then ran to his dad, hand led him to me, and then requested I lift him while placing his dad’s hand on himself from behind. It was clear he did indeed understand that we needed dad’s help for me to hold him. He effortlessly puppeteered us into position for me to pick him up with my husband lifting his weight. We did, and he lay his head on my shoulder and melted into me. The intensity of my emotions hit me like a ton of bricks. I had forgotten how it felt to truly feel the weight of his form against me, his body soft and warm, the smell of his hair and skin. We’ve done this before but never so absolutely. This time he gave himself completely to our strange hug and it felt like before, like when I could truly stand and hold him in my arms. He lifted his head from my shoulder and stared deeply into my eyes while clutching my shirt in his little fist. This kind of eye contact is so rare and when I get it from him it feels like the most precious priceless gift. Like the clouds have parted and we are bathed in warm angelic light for a few unearthly moments.

Sometimes I worry that R might lose interest in me as my disease progresses. That if I can’t speak to him at all, if I can’t use my hands and arms to soothe and tickle and hug and hold him, that he will find he no longer needs me. But moments like R’s request to be held soothe my fears. I will always be his mother, and our bond can survive this, it can.

Addendum

March 5, 2018March 5, 2018 ~ autventures ~ Leave a comment

I’m adding this addendum to my last post because this happened, and then this excellent, perfectly stated response happened. And I realized that in my last post when I said if your child doesn’t like going somewhere don’t go, it may have sounded like I was suggesting “just be house-bound” or “don’t try outings that may be difficult.” It may have come off as cavalier and that was not my intention.

My intention was to say: (1) go places your child likes, as opposed to places you think he/she should like, and (2) if its a place you think they would enjoy if only it could be accessible for them, work on making it accessible rather than forcing them into it in spite of it being set up in an inaccessible way for your particular child (eg sensory overload). And finally, remember, as Tonia points out, sometimes you have to be patient and wait until your child is ready to enjoy certain outings/activities, because our kids have their own timeline, and it diverges from the neurotypical timeline for a lot of things. And that’s okay.

Let me give some examples from my own experience.

0303181319e — Driving for a day trip to NYC this last Saturday. For the last few years we wouldn’t have been able to do this. In the picture R. is smiling so hard because sister’s feet are in his lap.

Up until a few weeks ago, we had not gone out to eat as a family in about four years. R. simply could not tolerate that environment, and the few times we tried it involved one parent going outside with him while the other ate with my older two kids, then a switch so parent #2 could eat while #1 went outside with R. We found this arrangement rushed and unenjoyable, so we stopped trying to do it. This was not an autism tragedy. We simply adapted. We enjoyed plenty of take-out instead, and from time to time my husband or I would take the older kids out to eat while the other parent stayed home with R. This gave us a chance to have one-on-one (or one-on-two) time with them. My husband and I would also occasionally go out for lunch just the two of us while the kids were all at school. It worked, and it was no big deal. But a few weeks ago, at age 5, we were able to go out to eat, all of us together as a family, for the first time in years. It was exciting and we had fun. And yes, it only worked because we set up strategic accommodations for R, and because we were patient enough to wait until he was ready and able to handle it. In terms of accommodations, we went during non-peak hours because R cannot tolerate large groups of people. We grabbed a large L-shaped booth in the back where we stationed ourselves on either end of the L-shape so that R could not bolt away, but had plenty of room to pace and jump back and forth along the L-shape. We chose a restaurant with very loud music so that R could vocally stim loudly without disturbing others. We brought his iPad so he could watch his videos, and we brought his own food (the restaurant was gracious enough to allow it) because his diet is very limited and we knew he would not eat anything we ordered. I also want to reiterate that even with all these strategies in place, for the last few years it still wouldn’t have worked because he wasn’t ready yet. And I think I should point out that R is hyposensitive to most sensory input, which is why this worked for us. A child who is hypersensitive would need a quieter restaurant, and perhaps headphones to cancel out the background noise.

xmas2018grandmomshouse — R. with his uncle. This is the first time in several years that we could take R. to my parents’ for Christmas. He was ready, and he did great.

In the beginning of this post I linked the Washington Post article about a mom who traumatically forced her five-year-old Autistic child into indoor spaces that caused panic attacks for him in an effort to make him overcome his anxiety. Anyone who has followed my blog knows that for a very long time R had that same anxiety and panic in unfamiliar indoor spaces. I have written about it in several posts like this one and this one. Our approach for places he *had* to go to (not like Ellenby, who forced her son into a Sesame Street concert) was to work on it for months in the tiniest possible increments. And when it came to non-essential places, like recreational spaces, we waited, and in the meantime, spent lots of time outdoors since he was fine in outdoor spaces. This was limiting at times. We could not visit family, they had to visit us. If we wanted to take our older two somewhere, one parent (usually me) had to stay back with R. But it wasn’t the end of the world and it wasn’t all about our sacrifices as parents. We tended to think of it terms of poor R, who had to struggle with this huge anxiety despite being such a tiny little boy. I have anxiety myself and have experienced panic attacks. They are so terrifying. And knowing that my toddler was having panic attacks broke my heart into a million pieces. So no, staying away from places that caused a panic attack was not some huge sacrifice for us, it was really the least we could fucking do for our sweet little boy. So we waited, and as he grew and acclimated to more indoor spaces (school, doctor’s office, etc) we slowly introduced new spaces with careful accommodations in place. For example the Boston Children’s Museum does accessible mornings and evenings where they will open the museum during off-hours. It is open only to children with disabilities and their families, they limit it to a small count of people (R cannot handle crowds so this is crucial for him), and they make sensory accommodations like low lighting and sound. The first time we tried it he could only handle it for about 15 minutes, then he needed to leave so we left. The next time he was able to stay for a whole hour. We followed his lead and took it slow. Now, at 5, he is in a place where he can go most places as long as it is not crowded and for discrete amounts of time (he makes it very clear when he is done and needs to go). He also generally needs to be able to stim freely to help himself cope, so that also factors in when we choose where we are going.

The bottom line is be flexible and be patient. And if, as time goes by, you see that the severe anxiety is not abating despite all efforts and despite the child’s growth and development, eventually the option of medication should be considered. I know several parents of Autistic children for whom pharmacological treatment of severe anxiety was life-changing. I’m sure you can imagine what it’s like to finally see your happy, smiling child again. We need to end the stigma surrounding medications for mental health. It shouldn’t be the very first thing we jump to, but when other approaches fail, an individual should not be left suffering when there are pharmacological options that could greatly improve their quality of life.

Alrighty, I’m off my soap box. Thanks for listening. 🙂

Dear autism parent…

March 4, 2018March 4, 2018 ~ autventures ~ 3 Comments

Okay. I’m going to vent here a little. And I’m sorry/not sorry if I am, in this post, seated on my proverbial high horse. A Facebook discussion really got this topic back on my mind. It drives me nuts when people share videos/blogs about how hard it is to be the parent of an Autistic child.

So much ‘autism parent grief’ is preventable if said parents could just let go of what they thought parenting would be like, and create something new that fits their child and their family. This phenomenon is not restricted to parents of Autistic kids. I’m sure every parent recalls those moments with their NT child where they envisioned this wonderful parent-child experience, but instead the child hated it and it was a disaster. I think the meme below, created by and for parents of NTs, illustrates it beautifully.

parenting meme
The difference is, it happens a lot more often and more dramatically to parents of Autistic kids. And while I understand parents’ disappointment of lost expectations, there is a point at which you’ve gotta put on your big girl panties, accept your child, and stop setting yourself up for more disappointment. …and setting your child up for more misery (!!!).

I can’t count how many times I’ve read an autism parent blog lamenting the tragedy of another birthday during which their child covered his/her ears and screamed at the Happy Birthday song, then proceeded to have a meltdown at the sensory overload and social overwhelm of the whole event. In these parents’ narrative it is not the child who is the victim of the story, it’s mom and dad. Poor mom and dad, who can’t even experience a proper birthday with their child. These parents will go on to repeat the whole fiasco next year. And they will grieve it. Again. And their child will suffer. Again. Folks, this is completely preventable. It’s not your day, it’s your child’s day! Stop singing Happy Birthday if your child hates it. Stop inviting all these people over. Figure out what works for your child to make it a special day and do that.

targetgifts — My son does not recognize gifts. But he LOVES Target, so for one of his birthdays, we pasted Target logos all over his gifts to make them attractive to him. This is one tiny way we were able to adjust to make his day special.

I see it with other stuff too. Trips to places the child is “supposed to” enjoy but doesn’t. Child doesn’t want to sit on Santa’s lap. He or she is screaming, self-injuring, melting down. Mom is moaning to the internet about how hard it is, how terribly sad, how all the nice little neurotypicals waited happily in line, smiled big for Santa. But your child didn’t. Guess what mom? Stop taking your child places he/she cannot tolerate and this won’t happen. It’s that simple. There was a family in an autism documentary I watched where the little boy’s favorite thing was to ride the city buses. Every day after work his Dad took him to ride his favorite bus lines for a few hours. That is what he loved, and so that is what they did together to connect and bond. In the end, shouldn’t it be about our kids? Stop making it all about you. Yes, it’s hard sometimes. You know what, parenting is hard. Take care of yourself, seek out supports, but when it’s you and your child, structure your family in a way that accounts for your child’s individual needs, challenges, interests, and joys.

When I talk to parents of a newly diagnosed child, one of the first things I always try to impress upon them is this: adjust your expectations. When you do, it has the power to change your entire outlook from a grief-centered perspective to a contented “this is our awesome family” perspective. I suppose that is the basic message of the famous “Welcome to Holland” poem which is oft shared with parents of newly diagnosed kiddos. And it really makes all the difference. Don’t set yourself up for more grief, more disappointment. Don’t make your child suffer for your own rigidity (hah- do you see the irony?). Find a way to be flexible, to grow your parenting into something that fits with your kiddo. Welcome to Holland. It’s not Italy, but it can absolutely be great, if you would only give it a chance.

A Realm of Music

October 20, 2017 ~ autventures ~ 4 Comments

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My boy exists at once in overlapping realms. He is here, but also in another place, a place where I cannot follow. His realm is a realm of music. As it overlays my own, I can sometimes glimpse its edges, sometimes make out a silhouette. I catch something in the corner of my eye; I reach out and feel it like a mist against my hand before it slips away.

This is not about hearing and listening, this is not about sound or song. This musical realm is so much greater than that. It is, at its core, a place of vibration. The vibrations are a music that my boy can feel, taste, touch, hear, and see. It is a multisensory language in which he is perfectly fluent. He can create it with his hands, his mouth, his feet. He can chew it; he can pound it into vibrant existence; he can shout it, howl it, screech it; he can blow it, click it, whisper it. He can measure it, map it, and sometimes he can use these calculations to approximate the verbal speech of my world. Sometimes. When the music moves him to do so. Sometimes.

You hear him making strange and senseless noises, but I know different. I hear him singing joyously the song of the microwave’s hum, of the vacuum’s roar, of the truck’s engine, of the chirp of someone’s cellphone, the shriek of the kitchen timer.

I see him chewing gravel and feeling, listening to the crackle and grind in his inner ear. I see him dumping coffee beans on the floor to orchestrate a wildly raucous staccato, like heavy rain on a tin roof. I see him slapping tiles and bricks and walls and windows, licking them too, in a symphony of feeling, hearing, tasting, seeing.

My boy is master of his realm. He is its conductor, its composer, its musician, and often, its instrument. He firmly rejects what does not belong in his song. “Come sit,” we say, but his song is a song of movement. “Eat this,” we say, but it doesn’t taste of his song, it does not crunch in his mouth like the percussion of his orchestra. “Do this,” we say, but it is often irrelevant to his music at best, a painfully discordant note at worst.

Sometimes our world combines magically with his, playing a delightful harmony to his melody. He joins joyously, laughingly, exuberantly with us. He learns what we offer him, and uses it in his song. His song grows with him and he is growing, growing. He is blossoming. We see him and he is rhapsodic, glorious, ebullient.

Never change, I think, never change, I pray. You are perfect. You are indomitable. You are my own sweet swan song.

Functional Speech

May 15, 2017October 20, 2017 ~ autventures ~ Leave a comment

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You might think hearing your nonverbal four year old use a word to request something he wants or needs would be wonderful, exciting, fantastic, or any other number of positive adjectives. But for me it is almost always heartbreaking and agonizing. This is because R generally only manages to push the word out for what he needs when he has reached a level of utter agony and desperation. You can see on his face in those moments that he has employed every possible tortured, screaming brain cell in the task of forcing out a single word in a last-ditch effort to make us understand. Most of the time this happens with the word “cookie,” which may not seem like a desperate situation, but it is.

Reza has a very important night waking ritual, and that is that when he wakes in the middle of the night he eats chocolate chip cookies and drinks some water, and then he goes back to sleep. He repeats this in the morning when he wakes for the day. He does this every day, and in the absence of this ritual he essentially has what amounts to a panic attack. It is extremely mentally painful for him. We always know what he needs (his cookies), but occasionally we have run out without realizing and it’s 3am and there are no cookies anywhere and he is screaming in pain and terror because the cookies need to be there and they’re not. He tries every way he knows to tell us what he needs. He leads me by the hand to the cabinet over and over. He leads his Dad to the cabinet. He screams and sobs and violently throws anything we try to offer in place of the missing cookies. And sometimes, sometimes, in that moment of extreme distress he manages to push the word “cookie” desperately out of his mouth, spending the last of his strength to do so, hoping this might finally cause us to understand his need and to provide it for him. It tears my heart to pieces because there is nothing I can do and I know his having produced that word at all is a measure of his agony.

Once, something like this happened during the afternoon while his after school therapist and a new BCBA were present. Later that week we had his annual IEP meeting and the new home BCBA came with. While we were discussing R’s communication needs she piped up and recounted how she heard him say “cookie” when he was extremely distressed and desperate. She suggested to the team that we withhold highly preferred items until he gets desperate enough to say the word to request. My mouth was open to object but R’s special education teacher beat me to it. “No,” she said, “we’ve learned from working with R that while he can sometimes say a word, he often later loses the word(s) and genuinely cannot produce the word anymore.” She went on to reiterate the focus on PECS and other nonverbal communication strategies for R. Have I mentioned how much I love this teacher? No kid should be tortured into producing speech, let alone when they often legitimately cannot produce that speech no matter how desperate they are.

But of course there ARE times when R occasionally says a word and it fills me with awe, excitement, and pride. These are times when he echoes a word out of the blue with no apparent intent- usually a word from hid iPad program such as “giraffe” or “strawberry.” He will say the word to himself over and over in a happy, sing-song cadence with a sweet little grin on his face and it fills up my heart. When I sing his word back to him his whole face lights up with pleasure and I feel there is nothing more right than this moment.

The take home message from this post? So-called “functional” speech is clearly not all it’s cracked up to be. 😉

I Don’t Know.

January 20, 2017January 20, 2017 ~ autventures ~ 5 Comments

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R throws his head back miserably and half-shouts, half-cries “Eeeeeeee!” He throws his whole body backwards, landing hard, kicks his legs violently, angry-cries “eeeeeee,” “mmmmm”. He flails his body over and over. I try to hold him and he desperately presses his chin into my shoulder as hard as he can, jaw clenched, while he fusses miserably. After a moment he kicks and screams and flails until I have to set him down again. This goes on for nearly two hours, then off and on the rest of the day, interspersed with periods of crying. Lately, about half of the days each week are bad days like this.

I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know if his pain is physical or mental. I don’t know if this will be temporary or indefinite. I don’t know if tomorrow will be better. I don’t know if I should bring him to more doctors to get more opinions. I don’t know if I should give him space or try to hold him despite his protestations. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.

It has been about 2 months that R has been having these episodes. At first we attributed it to an ear infection, but when that was treated the bad days continued. Then we thought it was due to constipation. But we addressed that and still the meltdowns and bad days continue. We have analyzed his sleep, his medications, his diet, his stools, checked his ears and throat countless times. He has dental work coming up. Maybe it’s dental pain. Maybe he will feel better after. But maybe not. I don’t know.

I don’t know and I hate it.

Today

December 15, 2016December 15, 2016 ~ autventures ~ Leave a comment

This morning my 6 year old daughter had her winter holiday concert at school. My daughter, A, attends the same lower elementary school that R goes to. The school goes from preschool through first grade, and A is in first grade, while R is a preschooler. As I watched my daughter sing along with all the first graders before the rows of proud parents, a wave of sadness swept over me. I don’t often feel sad about R. But sometimes a sadness hits me, taking me unprepared, like this time. The mother beside me had brought her toddler, perhaps 18 months old. He was dancing to the music, pointing at the children, and trying to sing along. It was unexpectedly painful seeing the one year old like that, doing things R can’t yet do, seeing my daughter having fun on stage and wondering if R will be able to do that in two years, when he’s her age. I don’t normally allow myself to get caught up in the comparison trap. In the beginning it hurt all the time seeing other children R’s age or younger doing so many things that were worlds away for him. But over time I learned to focus on R exactly where he’s at, versus where other children are at, and to anchor myself in the present. Yet sometimes it sneaks up on me. Rationally I don’t think I need to be sad. R is generally a very happy little boy. If he doesn’t feel he’s missing out on things why should I? But there is something inside that is sometimes quietly sad, just for a moment. Always though, the sheer joy of R pulls me free of that sadness in a mighty, inescapable way. This time was no different. Just as that sadness had settled over me uninvited, as I felt the hot pressure of unwelcome tears held back, I heard his little voice. In a crowded auditorium with over a hundred singing first graders and accompanying music on the loudspeaker I heard R’s voice raised in joyful stimmy chants. A voice I would recognize anywhere. At first I thought I must have imagined it, but then it came again and I turned my head to the sound, scanning rapidly for him. I spotted him then, at the railing on the ledge overlooking the auditorium, held snugly in the arms of his morning aide. His aide caught my eye and smiled and made her way with R closer to me. I went to stand with them, said hello to R and gave him a kiss. He was grinning and happily making his sweet noises. His aide told me she wanted to show him his sister singing at the concert. They stayed a few minutes, then, as R was growing restless, she took him back to his classroom. Seeing that bright, happy little face, hearing R’s voice, it made my day and vanished the sadness utterly.

I found myself suddenly profoundly grateful. R’s school feels like a family. The fact that his aide thought to take him to watch his sister sing for a few minutes speaks to that. They also take R on little trips to the main office and the nurse’s office just to visit with the staff there. Another time they pulled A out of class to come outside and push R on the swing for a few minutes. It’s so many little things, but what it adds up to is feeling like family. And today that family gave me the reminder I needed. There is nothing sad about today. Today is a good day.