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#mood
Give me a bag of donuts like the one little W is holding and I might make it a few more weeks in this weather. I’ve been trying really hard–really really hard–not to complain about these last few weeks of winter. One of my pet peeves is when people complain about cold weather. Maybe it’s the Canadian in me but I find it slightly offensive when people say, “I hate winter. I could never live in a cold place.” One of my biggest pet peeves is when we’re visiting friends or family outside of North Dakota and people find out we’re from Fargo and the first thing they say is,…
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Golden Students
Two weeks ago, W and I were sitting at the kitchen table, talking through her AP Human Geography Packet answers. She’s been struggling to keep her grades up in that class, so Steve and I have been doing a little more intervention. We’ve been monitoring her homework in that class. We never, ever monitor her homework. But this is a “college” class, and will count for “college credit” if she passes the AP exam. It will also permanently affect her transcript when she applies for college, so we decided we better see what’s going on. Our first strategy? having her read her homework responses to us and talking through them…
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Let’s talk “neurotypical” stress
This time of year is a stressful time of year. And right now I’m not talking about autism stress. Steve and I have been talking about the next few weeks and the things that are stressing us out. It’s funny. As “neurotypicals” I find that we talk about stress in a very different way than when we talk about J’s stress. We talk about it in the abstract. It’s something to dance around or endure. We use vague words like “busy” or “responsibilities” or “I’m just stressed out.” And as a writer, I feel like I should know better. I should be using my words better, because when I describe…
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Navel Strings
I am not a helicopter mother by choice. I really, really believe that it’s healthy for kids (and parents) to have their space. Kids need to step out in the world on their own, get their hands dirty, make mistakes, learn by trial and error. It’s essential in developing self esteem, innovation, confidence, social skills, negotiation skills and more. Of course parents should be there in guiding kids away from harmful dangers, enhancing moments of learning and growth, but I really feel that kids learn best when they feel trusted–trusted to succeed and trusted to make mistakes. I just can’t do that with J. There are so many strings attached with…
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Sabre-toothed Tigers
I’ve debated over and over again how to talk to my kids about school shootings. I’ve had short, infrequent, conversations with my daughter, who at this point, is totally unfazed by them. She tells me that she knows what to do–hide in place, fight back, almost with a defiant composure. She’s pretty confident in her self-preservation skills. I let her keep that confidence, even though, as demonstrated by February 14th’s events, when a school follows these procedures to a T, 17 people still die. Dozens are injured. I don’t tell her the emperor has no clothes. False confidence is better than no faith. And how do we talk to my…
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Looking backward, looking forward
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, New Year, and holiday! It’s crazy how fast it’s flown by for our family. Years ago, I would be shouting off the rooftops how much I wanted the kids to be back at school, but over the last couple of years, I really need our time together as a family. We need to play together, because my kids are at the age that they don’t have time to play anymore. And we need the time to catch up on that academic stuff (we are ALWAYS learning in this house), especially since this is the first year of high school and there are FINALS…
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Going beyond self regulation
Now that J’s conquered a lot of these “keeping it together” challenges, I’m starting to see the other challenges that have been eclipsed by the mental and behavioural ones. J doesn’t know how to do things on his own, even when he’s “checked in” and running a good effort. All of his life, he’s had someone beside him telling him what to do or how to push through something and through this season of XC, I’ve seen these problems come to the forefront because he’s managing himself so well on his own.
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Glitches vs Emergencies
When the week started, I knew what this post was going to be about. It was going to be about the unexpected things–things for which J has a hard time deciphering the best appropriate reaction. Because of J’s severe anxiety, his brain registers all “unexpected and disruptive things” as something worthy of an emergency type response (aka meltdown). Last week I wrote about how that gets better over time–and it definitely has. But this week had some unexpected and disruptive elements to it that J didn’t appreciate, (and didn’t always respond to in the best way). Still, he’s had worse responses, and we did finish the week with some…
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Autism is my rabbit hole
My cousin’s wedding couldn’t have come at a better time. There are these moments, as an autism mom, where I need to just leave. I need to leave Steve, W, and J. I need to leave the high levels of stress (akin to cortisol levels of combat soldiers) that raising an autistic teen triggers and go far away because I need to remember who I am again. Autism is my Wonderland rabbit hole. I’ve talked to my sister-in-law about this before (she also has a kid with autism) and she has the same sentiments. Unlike other forms of disability, there’s no known “threshold” for kids with autism. No one knows what…
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Your best is the best
When we came back from our family trip back in July, J was struggling to get back into his running grove. It wasn’t that J didn’t want to run. The runs were just hard. Some of those summer running practices near the end of July were rough. J’s body was physically fine. His legs were strong, his lungs were strong, and he wasn’t battling any injuries. But running is one of those things that if you miss too many workouts it takes a few workouts until you feel like you’re back to where you were, and being inconsistent (and even missing) morning runs on our two week holiday set J…
