The French onion soup incident

I should have seen it coming. It’s been in the making for weeks now. We’ve hit that funky winter twilight period here in Fargo–where winter just wants to hang on and not let go and you’re tired of the snow and rain and you just want some frigging sunshine already. Because you’re sick of it being dark by five (although with daylight savings and the tilt of the planet have made for more sunlight this past month) and you don’t want to run one more day out in the cold, snow, sleet or rain (which finally let up this week). You’re sick of kid’s homework (waiting for your daughter to finally go to bed at 10:30 at night and having to wake her up early in the morning to finish it off and spending those daily hours with J). You’re done and you’re just ready for summer.

Except you’re not done because March is just hanging on. And it’s Thursday and you’ve spent two hours working with your autistic son in the morning for that “home school” time. Your husband has been sick at home all day. He’s struggling to make work calls, and he’s got a dozen other stresses going on–namely one big deadline to make. You decide you’re going to be that thoughtful spouse and you go to Hornbachers after you drop off J at school to buy instant chicken soup (the more expensive kind, because it will taste better) and a box of saltines.

And for the most part, the rest of the day seems like it will end up okay. Except for when you pick up J from school you find out he’s been talking back to his teachers, refused to do his work, and was an all-out pain in the rear. But you try to stay positive. Maybe running a few miles in track today will help J reset. And you run 3 miles with J.

Then you come home and you have to take away privileges from J because of his behaviour at school. To which he responds, “You’re an idiot, you’re stupid, I hate you.” Awesome, right? Because for some reason it’s you’re fault he’s in trouble?

As we’re in the throws of the Twilight Zone hours (parents, you know what I’m talking about–that time between 4-7 o’clock where everyone’s tired and hangry, and you have hit your limit with the kids) J asks me if he can have the last piece of bread on the counter.

“No,” I say. “You guys are going to have chicken soup with saltines tonight with dad. That bread’s for my dinner. I’m having leftover French onion soup.”

While J’s in the shower (or so I think), I’m downstairs on the computer trying to find that speech therapy chart about the hierarchy of problems. J needs to remember that all the little things that are going wrong for him, people telling him no, people asking him to do his homework, aren’t catastrophic events that warrant the “You’re an idiot, you’re stupid, I hate you,” response, I think. Of course this is the answer right? It’s harder to find than I thought it would be. I’m a little more optimistic that we can still pull the day around. Work on those social skills again. Finally, I find it, and it costs $2.60 on the Teachers Pay Teachers website, so I go back up stairs to get my wallet. That’s when I find out that J is not in the shower. And that’s when I find the hollowed out heel of bread on the counter. The one I was going to use for my dinner.

Here’s the link to the Problem chart if you’re interested. Totally not sponsored. But if you struggle with this, I’d thought I’d share:

“J!!!!” I yell up the stairs. “I told you not to eat my bread!!!”

J comes down the stairs, “You’re an idiot! You’re stupid! I hate you.” The same scripted autism responses J always throws out when he’s mad and in trouble.

Steve’s now stumbled into the kitchen to see what all the fuss is about and I just start bawling. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’ve spent 6 hours “home schooling” J this week, ran literally a dozen miles with him this week. I’m done. And this bread. This bread is a BIG deal. Because I’m a vegetarian and now I don’t have anything to eat. I had planned this whole dinner thing so it would work for everyone. Because my son can be the most selfish (fill-in-the-blank) sometimes–and there’s no excuse this time. Anxiety had no part in this. This is just pure selfishness. The inability to think about others and their feelings. This is the part of autism that really gets to me the most. I give up so much for him–I’m always thinking about him even when he’s not around me. And all he thinks about is himself.

“Now what!” I start blubbering. “I don’t have anything to eat for dinner.” I look J directly in the eye as I say it. Because I want to make him feel bad for what he’s done. And he does feel bad. Not because I don’t have something to eat, but because he’s in trouble.

“You’re–” he starts.

“No. Don’t even. Stop!” I say. “I don’t have anything to eat J. How do you think that makes me feel?”

There is literally no more bread in our house. Not even cheap sandwich bread. Grocery day is Saturday so we really don’t have much of anything. At this point I can’t even make myself a PB&J.

And then Steve, bless his heart, tries to think up of a Plan B. Irrational plans, really. Both parents are irrational at this point–Steve being sick, trying to fix the situation and me? Well I feel like being a pain in the rear myself right now.

“I could drive downtown to Sweeto Burrito and pick up that vegetarian special you like.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “You’re sick. You feel terrible.” And I feel even more overwhelmed and discouraged. Because one of the adults in the house has to be functioning  and neither of us are functioning very well.

“I know, but then you’d have something to eat.”

“I could have cereal,” I say. Then stop. “No, I’m not eating cereal. I don’t want to eat cereal. I’m not eating cereal.”

We just need bread. But Steve is sick. And I’m too angry to go. And I feel helpless. It’s the Twilight Hour. I can’t call anyone to help, “Could you bring the Becks a loaf of bread, stat!?” Everyone else I know is in the middle of dinner or rushing kids to after school activities. And J needs to pay some sort of consequence for his action.

(Of course, in retrospect, I could have just asked a neighbour for a slice of bread. I could have probably cut the remains into bits and tried put cheese on those parts and toast them. But as I said, I was totally irrational at this point and that didn’t even pop into my mind. Sometimes as a parent you can feel so stuck and paralyzed. And autism just adds so much more intensity to every parenting feeling you have.)

“J, what do you think we should do?” Steve asks.

“Go buy more bread,” J says.

Well, I think, almost sarcastically. That’s a start.

“Okay, get your money, I’m going to take you to the store and you’re going to buy more bread for mom,” Steve says. So Steve, feeling like death, takes J to Hornbachers to get more bread.

Ten minutes later, Steve comes home with the bread. He and the kids eat chicken noodle soup while I eat the vegetarian version of French onion soup. But I can’t do the rest of the night. I try to think about what we’re going to do about homework, and I just start crying again. Sure, we could not do it. But then, what does that reinforce to J? Be a pain in the arse and you get whatever you want? I can’t ask a friend to do it with him. Everyone’s got their own kid’s homework to deal with. And who wants to sit down with a kid who’s going to sit on his duff for 20 minutes fighting you, calling you names?

Finally, reluctantly, I tell Steve. “You’re going to have to do math with J tonight.”

I can tell he feels absolutely awful and it’s not something he really wants to do, but at this point I just can’t.

I needed to get out. So I snagged W and got a mini chocolate xtreme blizzard at Dairy Queen at 9 pm (Ridiculous, right? if I can leave the house for DQ, then obviously I could have gone to Hornbachers for the bread. But like I said, once the bread incident hit, I lost all rationality). Even though there were perfectly good no bake cookies at home. I may or may not have made it very public information to J that we were going to DQ and he wasn’t.

Parenting is hard. Autism? So hard. It’s not like this every day, but we get our days like this. I look back at this whole French onion soup incident, to see what I could have done differently, and I can’t think of anything. Sometimes life is just hard, and you’re not on your A game. Sometimes, I guess we just have to accept some moments as they are, not trying to change it.

So here is me accepting Thursday night for what it was.