The baby is now one year old! My how time flies, and how seldom I blog…

The 5yo is now almost a 6yo.

He is enjoying his free school, where he hangs out with other six year old boys shooting guns, building with Legos, and playing video games. He seems to be doing okay socially, but it’s hard to tell. I’m planning a Lego Bionicle extravaganza for his birthday, so we’ll see which school kids show up and then we’ll know for sure.

I recently read Scattered by Gabor Maté, and I think I’m convinced that all the 5yo’s difficulties are rooted in ADHD. The more I look at his behavior through that lens, the more

I understand why he is the way he is.

Maté‘s descriptions of ADHD children and the kinds of difficulties they face were right on, to the point that I felt like he was describing my 5yo specifically.

That book has changed my world.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it, if anything.  I think *I* need counseling for dealing with him. I think it affects me far more than it affects him, since he doesn’t have to sit still and do things he has no interest in at his school. The four days per week he’s home are filled with non-stop “don’t do this” and “stop doing that” coming from me.

I just don’t have the skills to deal with his non-stop noise and motion, which often endangers himself or his baby brother, or interrupts the things I’m trying to do. And it’s really hard to involve him in what I’m doing because he doesn’t listen, can’t follow instructions, etc., etc.

So that’s what’s up. I’m happy now that I finally feel like I know what’s going on with him. If I find a good therapist I might even consider trying out medication for him, something I never thought I’d do. But if he’s really dealing with decreased pre-frontal cortex function like Maté suggests, I feel like it might help stabilize things enough for us to make a plan.

We met with the

therapist, finally. I was not impressed. I had high hopes, but she was just blah. We will go back again a couple of times before I make a final decision.

In other news, the 5yo is testing out a “free school.” A school where learning is child-led, that is.

He seems to really like it, so far.

I hope it works out because I really need the time to get some things done.

And I need to write a post about how incredibly different the baby

is from the 5yo when he was a baby.

Now I know that the 5yo was not neuro-typical even then.

Little things like watching for a reaction from the parent, the 5y0 didn’t do much, but the baby does a lot. It was often like I wasn’t even there when the 5yo was a baby. But the current baby is like a little pal.

I go back and forth wondering if maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ m the proble m in the relationship with my son.

I know that if one of his bad days is the same day as

one of my good days, we still get along pretty well. When I can be patient and creative, I can usually cope and help him cope, too.

Today I was feeling stretched thin and when it took half an hour to leave the park after a five minute warning, I lost it in the car on the way home.

We needed to get home so the baby could nap and we could prepare for the rock climbing class, and now we were running late. I hate running late!

So I laid a little blame and yelled a little. Nothing too horrible, but I vow every day to remember that he is just being who he is, I value compassion, we’re getting through this together, I’m doing my best, etc. I just wish I could be patient and understanding every day, and when I’m not I feel worthless.

I’ve implemented a sort of 1-2-3-magic approach for the times when there really is no possibility for negotiation, and it’s working really well (I never would have imagined using a behaviorist approach like that a few years ago, being an Unconditional Parenting advocate and enthusiast, but things have changed now that I’m responsible for two children’s lives and really, really need cooperation sometimes). But when I get overwhelmed I tend to forget about it.

I need to get my own emotions in check and not let the chaos he creates take over all the time.

I’ve decided to search for a therapist for the 5yo. I thought maybe it was just his personality – he’s always been less cheerful than other kids his age, but after some reading I’ve decided that his tendency to be depressed and dissatisfied with life is not something I should ignore.

I watched This Emotional Life the o

ther day and one of the segments was on attachment disorder. The kid in the segment seemed so much like the 5yo that I began wondering what I could h ave

done wrong to cause an attachment disorder in my child. I specifically sought out ways to be an attachment parent. He did have a very difficult birth, trauma in the NICU, and a hospitalization at three months old. I also went back to work when he was seven months old. He was cranky for the first year of his life, and nothing I did seemed to soothe him.

But he breastfed for 16 months and c0-slept for four years.

How could he have an attachment disorder?

I found this questionaire online, and it turns out he mostly does not seem to have attachment issues, except in a couple of areas. One is in the Checks back with caregiver in unfamiliar setting area. From the moment he beg an to cr

awl, he would crawl away in a park and never look back. We’ ve had issues with that e

ver since. I always thought it was odd, but figured it meant he felt really secure in the world.

I now know that’s not the case. So what causes it?

He’s also always had problems with Self-endangering. He is constantly doing dangerous things, injuring himself, and not learning at all from those mistakes.

He does not listen when we remind him about safety issues either.

He also seems to have some attachment issues in is Exhibits reticence with unfamiliar adults. He has been known to try to sit in the lap of a complete stranger.

This one is tricky, though, because sometimes he does exhibit reticence, or what seems to be reticence. He can completely ignore strangers who talk to him.

Anyway, I think I’m sufficiently convinced he doesn’t have severe attachment problems, at least.

I’ll be contacting a therapist specializing in Autism today, and depending on the cost, will probably

be getting an evaluation. I have resisted getting a diagnosis for a long time, but I feel like it could help to frame his challenges and give a starting point for trying to address his emotional issues.

The 5yo started a rock climbing class especially for kids on the spectrum at a rock gym today.

Since we don’t have a diagnosis for him I always feel like a phony when hanging out with kids who are officially autistic.

Like someone is going to accuse him of being too normal.

Isn’t that strange?

I feel like he’s not autistic enough to be considered disabled, and the forms for the class had “disabled” all over them.

I hope he’s not the most normal kid there, I thought as

I filled them out.

He did not disappoint.

There were a couple of clearly disabled kids there with the more classic autistic outward appearances, but most of the kids were higher functioning.

I felt relieved. The 5yo can present as a totally neuro-typical child sometimes, and on those days I question whether I might be just making it all up.

Today at the rock climbing class, though, he acted mildly autistic, which was a relief. He ran in circles, didn’t respond when spoken to, obsessively tried to do things that were not allowed, had a bit of a meltdown when he was reminded of the rules, and obsessed about

the colors of the harness and shoes. And t here were several ot

her kids who had a much easier time than he did.

I was in the “parents of autistic kids” club again, right where I belonged.

Who commits date rape

? Maybe it’s grown up Aspie boys that never learned to appropriately respond to STOP!

I realize that’s a dangerous association to make and lots of Aspie’s might be really offended, but seriously, sometimes I feel like I’m being violated like that by the 5yo.

No sense of personal space or physical boundaries, and the absolute inability to acknowledge or respond to STOP. That is the source of my conflict with the 5yo this morning.

We’ve talked about why he doesn’t respond to STOP. He says it’s because what he wants to do is fun for him.

We’ve talked about what the other person might feel if he doesn’t stop what he’s doing. He seems to understand that people get upset if others don’t respect their space/ body and stop when asked. Yet he simply does not seem to possess the ability to stop what he’s doing, no matter how upset the other person is getting. No matter how much the other person yells STOP.

All the while, he continues the physical provocation, smiling and giggling because whatever he’s doing or trying to do is somehow fun for him.

T his presents a major problem when the target of his fun is his baby brother. He loves his baby brother, loves interacting with him, but no matter how much explanation or warning I give about needing to transition away from their interaction (this morning it was because the baby needed a nap) he cannot stop.

Ultimately when this happens I pick up the baby to force the interaction to stop, and the 5yo jumps up, grabs at my body, grabs and pulls at the baby’s body, and I end up getting really angry.

Please tell me there’s a way to teach a boy like this to STOP. I really don’t want to be the mother of a rapist.

I’m learning so much from spending time with a mom and her five year old Aspie, Buck, that we met at a social skills group.

My 5yo and Buck get along super-great, by the way.

Anyway, the mom, Bella, has all sorts of neat ways to describe Buck’s issues. When Buck gets stuck on a thought, she calls it “rock brain.”

5yo and I both suffer from rock brain as well. I guess it is rooted in the need to feel some control about things.

From my perspective, the world is overwhelming. My need for order (explored in the comments of my last post) is my way of coping with feeling overwhelmed.

I tell myself that if I can just get X,Y, and Z in place, I will feel like the world makes sense, I know it.

So why can I not sympathize when that’s what 5yo is doing?

One example. Getting ready to go somewhere always causes a humongous conflict between us. 5yo delays and

delays. I just need to finish this robot I’m building. Now I need to build one more vehicle.

We can’t go yet,

I haven’t drawn the picture I was thinking about. He comes up with thing after thing that he must do before we can leave.

Then I tell him I’m ready to go and I’m going to the car… and he has a meltdown because he doesn’t have his shoes on yet.

I’ve tried visual schedules and lists. I’ve tried a visual timer. I’ve tried reward tokens. I’ve tried giving him lots and lots of warning with lots and lots of details. And I can’t figure out how to make that transition easy for him. Easy for us.

Some days I’m able to remain patient with him, some days I’m not. Because, dude, can’t we just get our shoes on and fricken go

?

The rock brain says no.

A big reason I haven’t been writing is that I’m a perfectionist. I felt like I needed to reorganize this blog, sort through old posts, and have a clear purpose for writing.

I was also struggling with merging my identities… what to do with this anonymous blog when I wanted to just be me? (My “real” blog has been idle, too, since it was created a couple of years ago, by the way.)

Also, life happened. Pregnancy, birth, move across the country.

All perfect excuses for not blogging.

However. Ugh. I’m realizing I need to write to sort through some things, and I can only do this anonymously.

The five year old (I want to give him a new name but haven’t thought of one yet – “Taz” just seems silly now). Anyway, the 5yo and I have some issues. He has issues, I have issues, we both have issues together.

I won’t be putting him in school in the f all for

a couple of reasons. First, I have philosophical differences with public school in general.

Maybe I can get into those a little later. But also, the 5yo would fail miserably there. Socially, mainly. He’s way ahead academically, but is still doing the things he was doing when he was two that I really hoped he’d grow out of (things that look like ODD, ADHD, etc). Also, he has no clue how to successfully interact with people. I always knew this was an issue, but it looks really different at five than it did at two. Back then he was just quirky.

Now he’s really annoying.

And I really wish I didn’t have to keep him home with me for school (private school is out of the question right now because I haven’t found a good fit for him, and because we’re poor after moving).

Okay, so that’s why I can only write about this anonymously. Is it okay for me to say my child is annoying? I say that, of course, with empathy and understanding… He is just being him, and it just happens that h

is way of being puts other people off. But what should I do about that?

Another thread in this story: I made the mistake the other day of reading a year of Katie Granju’s blog archives. Her 18 year old son died a few months ago of a drug overdose and  drug related beating.

She talks a lot about denial in her posts… how she just wanted to believe that he was just going through a phase, etc. Then he died and she had to admit how serious his issues were.

I got really depressed and thought about all of my issues with the 5yo. I thought about all his issues, and the difficulty he has navigating the world. I feel like I need to address this stuff now, and stop living in denial.

The pregnancy, birth, move, etc., have been great excuses to ignore these problems, too. But something needs to be done.

We are liv ing in our new, rented house in the mountains.

The baby is almost six months old, and interacts completely differently from the way his older brother did as a baby.

He does share his brother’s inability to settle down and fall asleep, though.

Husband is working full time.

I am with the kids full time.

No plans to enroll the five year old in kindergarten this fall. He’s been attending a “social skills group” for kids on the autism spectrum. The other kids in his group are similar to him, with diagnoses of Asperger’s and PDD-NOS.  He has still never been evaluated or diagnosed, but it’s clear that he fits right in with t

he other boys.

I’ve been struggling to find a community here, in our new city. The home schoolers appear to be mostly religious, which I’m not. They haven’t said anything directly, though, so we still show up at park days sometimes. We did make friends with a mom/boy from the social skills class, so I’m hopeful. It helps that our boys get along, and that we both have experience with similar parenting challenges.

I’m struggling to keep up with domestic responsibilities. I spend much of my time trying to soothe the baby to sleep by wearing him on my body, and sitting with him

on my body as he naps. The five year old demands the rest of my time, it seems. I squeeze in cooking and cleaning here and t

here – just enough to keep things livable.

I don’t know when I’ll ever have time to write.

Maybe I can do it while the baby is napping on me.

We are moving to a new state in one week.

I have an eight week old baby.

My five year old seems more like an Aspie than ever, though he’s excited about the move.

All the furniture is being loaded tomorrow.

We will be living in an empty house until we fly away.