Five years ago, but it could be today

Just now, I read the blog post I'd written about Janey five years ago, The Patience of Job.  It wasn't an especially mind-blowing post, or one about anything major.  It was about how much patience it took to get through one morning with Janey, one where she woke up at 1 am and I had to get through until school started, which at the school she went to then was about nine

Janey five years ago

.  I was curious how other years had been around this week of the year, as this was the week that two years ago Janey wound up at the psychiatric hospital.

What struck me most about what I read was how very similar to today it seems.  Janey's speech, her interest, her behaviors...so little has changed.  She still asks for the same things, with minor variation.  She asked for baths then, now it's showers, she was more into Kipper and Barney then, which she still does watch, but more often Scooby Doo or Courage the Cowardly Dog.  She still constantly asks to snuggle on the bed.  She no longer asks for bottles (babas), which even then really meant just milk in a glass, but she still asks for cheese and cabbage a lot.  Her sleep is better than then, but there are still sleepless nights now and again.

Janey's lack of progress in many areas is one of the things that has been getting to me lately.  Speech is the biggest area in which she, if anything, has regressed a little.  She talks pretty much exactly like she did five years ago.  What has been hitting me all the time lately is that she speaks far, far less than she did ten years ago, when she was two.

Over the years, I haven't thought about Janey's big regression that much.  Mostly, that is because I can't bear to.  I have consciously put it out of my mind.  I don't know why it's sneaking back into my mind lately.  But until about Janey's third birthday, she talked a lot.  Her speech had some oddities, but it was good, even very good, for a two year old.  She was followed closely by Early Intervention, and she never had speech therapy---I even remember them joking about how little needed it would be.  It bothers me some how little I can even remember of that fluent speech.  It would jar my memory to watch the few videos we made of her, but I can't do that.  I have tried, maybe twice, and simply fallen apart and turned them off.  But I know she spoke well, well enough to tattle on Freddy for showing her a scary Sesame Street parody "on the internet", well enough to talk non-stop one day about how much she wanted to go to the playground, as I remember timing it sitting here by the computer and noting she had talked for five minutes non-stop.  Enough to tell a friend's daughter that they would be "best friends forever"  And I have to stop remembering now, because I'm crying.

Most of the time, I don't get caught up in "why".  It's useless.  But something has hit me lately that I am thinking "why" a lot.  Why hasn't Janey progressed, when so many kids with autism do?  Why did she regress in the first place?  What happened?  WHY?

I'm not going to talk politics here, although of course tomorrow is Election Day.  It's been a depressing election season, and that hasn't helped my gloomy feelings.  But whoever wins, at whatever political level, I wish they could meet Janey.   It is ironic that people like her are the least able to speak out about what they need and want from government, but are perhaps the most affected by the whims of government.  I am terrified of my own aging, because I am terrified of a world where Janey doesn't have parents to protect her.  I'll close with a picture I took of Mayor Thomas Menino's gravestone.  He was a politician of the best kind, and the quote on the stone is something I wish all politicians took to heart.

What I wish I could have told the mayor

There was a meeting today at Janey's school to let parents meet the mayor, and talk to him about how the budget cuts would affect our kids.  I appreciated the mayor coming to the meeting (along with a lot of his staff) and I think he's a decent guy.  But a lot of the meeting felt like politics as usual, like broad statements about the future and a vision and tough decisions and a lot of other key words that don't add up to a lot.  We each had a chance to say briefly who we were and what our thoughts were about the cuts (which in Janey's school will result basically in one extra child in each class, bringing the cap in the autism only classes from 9 to 10), but other than that, there wasn't a lot of time for discussion, and what there was, as is often the case, was dominated by a few parents.  I sat there thinking of all I wished I could say to the mayor, if I had his ear.

I'd want to tell him, to start with, that adding just one kid to a class like Janey's is a very penny wise pound foolish move.  I'd want him to understand that Janey hangs on to being able to function in a her classroom as it is now by a thread, often.  She has great teachers and great therapists and a great support staff, a caring principal---we are lucky.  It's not that they aren't doing all they can with what they have, it's more that any kind of classroom is tough for Janey, and for the other kids in the class to get the attention they need, Janey needs someone right with her most of the time.  I've never pushed for a one on one aide.  There are only 7 kids in the about 160 autistic kids at her school that have one (a statistic I learned today).  Janey should probably be among those, and I would guess one or two of those (not kids I know in any way, just a guess) are the result of better parent advocating than I do and not a greater need than Janey has.  If the class has another child, especially a child with a lot of need for supervision, that might be the tipping point where Janey is not able to learn, or not able to be controlled.  It could be a safety issue, or at the very least, a happiness for all involved issue.  I've never pushed for an outside placement, really.  I don't want one.  I want Janey to go to school where she is.  But if it ever became obvious that just wasn't working, I would do what I had to do, and that might cost the schools a lot more than what she is costing right now.

I would want the mayor to understand autism in all its forms.  He used a lot of acronyms, and he has worked with autism groups, but unless he's spent a lot of time with a variety of kids with autism, he mostly likely, in fact almost certainly, doesn't really get them.  He doesn't get the wide reaches of the spectrum, he doesn't get how inclusion doesn't work for every child, he doesn't get how even a small amount less time at school might make a huge difference at home, he doesn't get how a tiny change in routine can be a disaster.

I want the mayor to know he should listen to more than the squeaky wheel.  I think politicians sometimes operate on the assumption that people are going to complain if something is wrong.  Well, if you can't speak, you can't complain.  If you are a parent of a child with autism, and you are just barely hanging on, and you haven't slept for nights, and you have no child care whatsoever, you aren't going to go to budget meetings or rallies.  You need help, but you don't know who to ask or what to ask for.  I want him to want the best for kids like Janey, even if their parents aren't expert advocates.

More than anything, I would want the mayor to know what a great kid Janey is.  I wouldn't want him to look at statistics about a child like her and assume she isn't important.  She can't talk much, she will not go to college, she won't raise your test scores, she won't hold a job.  She is going to need help all her life.  But she is worth it.  She is beautiful, she is funny, she is interesting, she is deserving of love and services and caring and tax dollars.  She is a citizen of the fair city of Boston, as much as anyone else.  I hope the mayor, and everyone else in a position of leadership, understands that every single person, regardless of diagnosis or income or position or ability to demand, is worth caring for.