anxiety
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Firsts are hard: Part 2
I really thought J was going to rock that first XC meet. J’s been preparing for this day for an entire year. Last September J started shadowing the XC team, trying to build up his endurance enough so he could at least keep an eye on the next to last runner two blocks ahead of him. J ran almost every day through the entire winter. An entire FARGO winter–winter gear, running cleats, double layers, and even a face mask on some days. J ran through the spring, every day after school with the middle school track team. He built his endurance to four, five, and even reached a six mile run and managed to keep…
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Firsts are hard: Part 1
The last few nights have been rough. My brain has been playing midnight showings of terrible dream sequences like old men with AK-47s shooting at me while I run for my life, me and J running up an AstroTurf cliff for cross country practice only to end up hanging from the top of that AstroTurf cliff for an “ab workout,” or suddenly finding out that I had mixed up my birth control medication with J’s anti-anxiety medication and consequently freaking out because 1) I just gave a bunch of female hormones to a boy going through puberty for two weeks and 2) I might be pregnant. I don’t think I’ve had a full night’s…
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Making life hell on purpose
It takes 11 hours or so to drive from Wichita, Kansas to Fargo, North Dakota. I feel pretty lucky. My kids are great travelers—long car trips are never a problem for us. In fact, J really loves them. He memorizes every exit sign for the entire stretch of 1-29 until we hit Iowa/Nebraska. Then he knows every exit number from Topeka to Wichita. It’s really incredible—I don’t know how he does it. I guess it’s sort of his autism party trick. We had just passed Council Bluffs, Iowa and still had six hours to go so I decided it was time to take the plunge. J and I had a…
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The injury
We’ve been home a week now and we’re still dealing with the aftermath of our vacation, trying to get back into routine, unpack suitcases, keep ahead of the laundry race, and getting the kids back into summer running and routine again. Our first day back I wasn’t sure how that was going to go with J. Because Friday, the morning of our last day in Florida, and six hours or so before our flight to Wichita (to finish up the trip with a quick two day visit with my sister whom I miss dearly since she now lives in Saudi Arabia) J stumbles out of the bathroom and says. “I…
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The power of mindfulness
Two years ago, I was in Canada visiting family. I was staying at my Aunt and Uncle’s cottage, and during the downtime I thumbed through a stack of Macleans magazines and came across this article about mindfulness practice in the public school classroom. It wasn’t the first time I had come across mindfulness practice and children. A few months earlier I had seen a call for autistic teens to participate in a mindfulness study at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. I decided I needed to know more about this mindfulness business since I continued to see more articles on mindfulness associated with the spectrum, so that fall I decided to take a class…
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J verses the tornado
I was anticipating things to get rough with J; the end of the school year is always a cataclysmic event. J’s anxiety breaks the charts because change equates the unknown and the modern day saber-tooth tiger response “is strong in this one.” J had already had a rough bout the week before, having a severe panic attack over the time “2:47 pm”. “2:47 pm” has haunted him all year, but with the end of track, the end of school, and everything else going on he just couldn’t deal with “2:47 pm”, resulting in an epic meltdown—the kind where I get a call from the school and I have to bring him…
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Big Problems/Little Problems
To say that J has a volatile relationship with numbers would be an understatement. J and numbers have a long and complicated history. Numbers were among the first words J picked up in the early years while we were still struggling with speech. J could pick out numbers patterns and knew most of his single digit subtraction and addition facts pre-K. J had an obsession with numbers. He loved numbers. But at around grade 1 / grade 2, he started to develop strange fears about numbers. He’s been living with number phobias ever since. The ones J deems “tainted” or “threatening” change every few months. Right now, one of those numbers…
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Navigating the Dissonance
Sometimes I feel like I’m doing a dance, always trying to find connections with J’s world and our world. So he can participate in our world. So I can make sense of his world and make it a little better. One thing I’m constantly trying to expose him to is pop culture—so he knows what kids are talking about at school. It’s like being required to learn all that Greek Mythology in school before you can talk about literature in the upper English classes. If you don’t know the reference of “the Midas touch,” you have no idea what anyone’s talking about. If you don’t know who Darth Vader,…
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Evolution of the Choir Concert
I’m holding my breath–ready to pass out–because we’re so close to the finish line but I can’t quite declare that we’re in the clear yet. At noon today, I announced to Steve that we had just passed the twilight zone hour (if J’s going to have a catastrophic meltdown at school it’s almost guaranteed to happen during the 11:00am-12:00 pm) and that we have one more day to go. We just need J to hold it together for one more day and then we can officially declare victory for the semester. I don’t know why, but Christmas time has always been hard for J. Someone at church told me once that she…
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What we remember (and how we teach our children about the world)
Bringing J to an awareness of the world–especially grown up things always makes me a little nervous. J’s brain is a steel trap for memories–especially memories that carry any pain or anxiety. J remembers things like back when he was in grade two, where the lunch ladies burnt the school pizza and set off the fire alarm while he was at gym, causing a (minor) evacuation. That was the 89th day of school and he won’t let that go. And every year since we hold our breath, cross our fingers, and go through all sorts of rituals to make it through the day when the 89th day of school rolls through. There’s a myriad…
