My Son Has Asperger’s

After meetings with school specialists, many observations, and a lot of imput, Reagan has received the diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. I always knew he was different. So was I at his age (or now even). He is sweet, quirky, a little clumsy with social graces, but genuinely affectionate and genial. I was a bit dumbfounded by the final diagnosis and yet, I know that it’s correct.

At the same time, I have noticed that Ciaran is not developing the way I would expect him to. He often doesn’t respond to his name, or any sitmuli at all if he is engaged in something. His verbal communication is virtually non-existent and his non verbal communication is minimal. He’s active, and social within his family to some degree, but something is wrong and Dominic and I both know it. He has an evaluation on the 19th for his speech development, and I expect that we will be offered services through the school district. If I’m honest with myself I expect that I will receive a diagnosis that also puts him on the autism spectrum, like his older brother.

My emotions are mixed. No diagnosis changes who my child is. And I’m so lucky. My children are here, alive, and healthy. These diagnoses aren’t terminal. There is so much that can be done to make their lives easier and that’s what the official diagnosis offers us: tools. At the same time, I think about how challenging life will be for them and am slightly overwhelmed by the duty placed on Dominic and me to meet their needs. Even more, they need parents who measure up and get it right. I don’t want to fail them.

I picked up two books this evening. One about early signs and treatment for autism and one about helping your child with Asperger’s. I have them in front of me and I want to read them but a part of me also want to return them. While reading and learning about something has always been helpful for me there is still that part of me who wants to stick her fingers in her ears, close her eyes tightly, and wish it all away. I won’t do that, mind you, as the autodidact side is much stronger, but it is there.

I suppose in the end this is just another set of scenery for our life path and it really is a relief to understand why Reagan does some of the things he does. But I won’t pretend that I’m not having some difficulty with it. Even if it is irrational.

Bed

Sometimes I get up in the morning and wish I could just crawl back into bed.  Today was gloomy.  After two days of beautiful weather that brought us all outdoors and got me working in the garden again, today was just gray and rainy.  Don’t get me wrong, I happen to enjoy gray and rainy.  But the best thing about this kind of weather is a hot cup of tea, a good book, and a nice soft bed.

So, all day all I’ve wanted to do is crawl in bed and read.

The kids were sweet most of the day, at least, and tried to be sweet and helpful.  Our new issue is getting them not to move the furniture looking for Charlie.  He’s still a kitten, and he’ll come out when he’s ready!

I Had To Laugh

Bridget has been seriously testing my Mommy skills for the last few days.  She’s been bratty and argumentative.  There have been a number of time outs as she’s tested her boundaries and been reminded that they’re firm.

Tonight she wanted to stay up.  It’s been a long day, most of which was spent outside since the weather’s been so nice the last couple of days.  So, we’d picked up the toys and were getting jammies on, and the conversation went like this:

Bridget: Mommy, I don’t wanna go to bed.  I wanna clean up.

Me: Bridget, honey, it’s bedtime.  We already cleaned up.

Bridget: No we didn’t!

At this point I look around the playroom with all it’s toys neatly put away and a laugh starts to well up from inside.  Usually laughing at serious children isn’t a good idea since they have a tendency to take it personally.  This time it was perfect, however.  She forgot that she was trying to talk me into a later bedtime and instead started to laugh with me.

Charlie

I grew up with a cat named Freckles who was mine from age 3 to age 20.  I was very attached to her and have always wished that I could give a wonderful pet like her to my kids.  As a little girl we always had at least one cat in our house, and I thought there was nothing better than curling up at night with a warm, furry friend.  As much as I’ve wanted a cat for the kids, we’ve been renters for years, and while you can have a pet, it just always seemed like a lot of trouble.

Well, now that we own our own home, it was time to add a pet to our family.  I’ve been checking websites, pet stores, and the human society pages for a cat that would be a good fit for our family.  I didn’t want a dog.  I like a lot of dogs, but having a dog is often like having another child and I didn’t want that kind of work.  I wanted a cat that was young, or even a kitten, so that it could grow up with the kids and be playful and fun.

Today I found a couple of cuties on the local humane society website and so Reagan, Piper, and I went down to meet them.  The first cat didn’t like to be handled.  That wasn’t going to work for us.  The second one wasn’t sure about any of us.  That wasn’t going to work for us either.  Then we were introduced to a 4 month old, short haired black male kitten.  He jumped immediately into my arms and began purring loudly.  I knew we’d found our match.

So, we adopted Charlie.  We went straight to Petco and picked up a few kitty essentials, and brought Charlie home to meet the rest of the family.  Everyone loves Charlie.  And he’s having a great time exploring his new home.  He’s got a bell on his collar and I can hear him jingling about the house, sniffing this, and sniffing that.  It was hard to get the kids to go to sleep as they all hoped Charlie would sleep with them.  Even Dominic (who’s been very wonderful about us getting a kitty) has started to warm up to him.

I think Charlie’s going to fit in beautifully here.  And it makes our house feel that much more like it’s ours.

Stop The Crying!

I remember years ago a woman who came up with a diet plan called “Stop the Madness!”.  I need to come up with a parenting plan called “Stop the Crying!” as that’s been the last several days around here.

Anything and everything seems to reduce my children to tears.  From legitimate reasons like “I tripped on that toy” to totally ridiculous things like “she looked at me”.  It’s not so bad when it’s just one, but when it’s 3 or more I start wanting to pull my hair out.

Even Quinn is doing his part.  Though, in fairness, I think he’s having a growth spurt.  He’s eating like crazy and can’t stand to be put down.  I’ve worn him for hours and hours on my back in slings for the last couple of days.  Honestly, if I didn’t wear my babies I might have gone a little loopy.  Well, a little more loopy than usual at least.

So, tonight I think I’ll go downstairs and help tidy the playroom, get everyone in clean jammies and put them all down with pillows and blankets and read some to them.  We’re reading The Magician’s Nephew at the moment, but I think I might read some to them from The House At Pooh Corner.

And maybe, just maybe, there won’t be any tears.

Life As We Know It

This has been a really busy time for us.  I’ve started a new position at work which I love.  I’m busy homeschooling Piper and keeping the other kids active and occupied.  And of course, our biggest news: we finally purchased our house!

We’ve been living here for 18 months in a rent-to-own property.  The house belonged to a family that was part of our homeschooling group.  They were forced to move due to employment and after trying unsuccessfully  to sell the house,they decided to give us the wonderful opportunity to rent it for awhile until we could work out financing and officially purchase it.  We signed the papers on Friday and officially became homeowners.  It actually still seems a bit surreal.

On Saturday night we had an unexpected visitor.  Reagan ran into the office to tell me that something had fallen in our egress window and that it was “way bigger than a squirrel!”  Now, I was thinking maybe a raccoon, but instead found a scared Opossum looking in at our family.  I called animal control but it was late and they wouldn’t make it until the next morning.

The girls were thrilled when the woke the next morning to find that there was an animal in the window for them to look at.  They thought it was better than the zoo.  Now, our zoo does have Opossums on the Minnesota trail.  But apparently it’s way cooler to have one in your very own window.

Bridget couldn’t seem to get that it was a possum and kept calling it a “possible”.  “Mommy, someone took the possible away, and now we’ll NEVER find it!” was what I heard for hours after animal control came and freed him.

Now the only thing that’s making life difficult is the weather.  Minnesota can’t seem to decide if it’s Spring or it it’s still Winter.  I think our family would much prefer it to be Spring, but sadly, the weather doesn’t seem to care what we want.

I’m also trying to get back into blogging.  I really cherish my blog posts, as I go through them from time to time and they record so many life details that I forget as I go through the day-to-day that is raising my family.  I don’t want to lose things because I’ve forgotten to write them down somewhere.  So, I’ll be making an effort to post more here.

Finding The Time

So much is happening in our daily life, and I’ve neglected this blog terribly.  Which is unfortunate, since this blog helps me remember events I’d otherwise forget.  But we’re working on buying our house and I’ve gone back to work, so time has suddenly become a very precious commodity.

Thankfully, I’ve been offered a better position at work.  It’s fewer hours, but it’s 12 noon to 8:30 pm.  I’ll be home to put my kids to bed every night that I work.  And I’ll only be working four days a pay period instead of seven.  That’s going to be much less stress for me.

Things have been going well at home.  Quinn is starting to smile and coo and is preciousness personified.  Ciaran remains our easy-to-make-laugh boy and I’m still making an effort to spend one on one time with him each day.  He’s a bit speech delayed, so I try to play games that involve him making new sounds.  And I’ve started him on an omega supplement which can be beneficial to speech development.

Bridget is showing reading readiness signs, and I’m wondering if we shouldn’t try reading lessons and see how she does.

Piper improves her reading daily by leaps and bounds.  She’s such a determined learner.  I never thought we’d be much of an unschooling family because I like structure.  But she really seems to be motivated to learn and I find that I can often leave her to her own devices and she surprises me.

Reagan is doing well academically and socially, though we’re still looking at some services for him at school to learn some skills to help him cope with daily stresses.

As for me, I try to keep chaos to a minimum and enjoy my family as much as possible.