Every day for a week

 I've been neglecting this blog lately.  Most of that is the whole pandemic related every day feeling the same bit.  It feels like nothing changes, like we are all just in a big holding pattern.  But thinking about it yesterday, I realized actually lots has been happening.  Being with Janey 24/7, we are every day learning more things about her and figuring out more ways to engage her, and understanding more how her mind works.  I've had a lot of thoughts I'd like to share, but I kept feeling like I had to wait to write until I tied them all together and had some perfectly worded way to sum them up.  When thinking about this last night, I realized I just need to write, to get back in the habit.  So bear with me as I start my week of blogs---a little each day!

I'll start with---how are we doing?  Okay.  We're doing, well, okay.  Like everyone else, we are tired of this whole bit, but hopeful that maybe a light at the end of the tunnel is starting to be visible. Janey hasn't been in school in person since March, not a day.  At one point she was offered a hybrid model, which would have resulted in the end in her having about 4 days total in school before it shut down again.  I sensed that the renewed shutdown was coming, and I just didn't think it was worth the risk to send her.  I'm glad I didn't.  Now only a very, very few kids in Boston are going to school, and Janey is not one of them.

Remote learning---well, that' s not easy with Janey.   Her teachers and therapists have been trying hard.  Janey now pretty much tolerates the morning meeting, which lasts about 10 minutes, starting at 8 o'clock.  She will sometimes watch recorded lessons, with varying amounts of interest.  I can get her now and then to do a little bit of work on paper, circling things or listening to short stories.  But it all adds up to vastly, vastly less school than actual school, probably about 1/100th as much.  And no real social contact, no special things like swimming or dance, no time away from her family.  When I think about her being 16, and how limited her life is----well, it's not great.

And from the perspective of Tony and me---that's tough too.  We have absolutely no time at all without fully caring for Janey.  School always gave us a bit of time to breath, to nap if necessary, to regroup.  Caring for Janey is a lot like caring for a toddler in an adult's body, day and night and day and night.  We are tired.  Janey's sleep hasn't been great, to say the least.  About once a week, she doesn't sleep at all, and maybe two more nights of the week, she sleeps very little.  We can kind of catnap while she's awake, but not fully sleep (and I must give a shoutout to Tony, who does the vast majority of the night caring) and Janey wakes us up often to get help with videos, ask for food, ask for car rides, all that.  We are hugely worn out.

But it all could be a lot worse.  None of us have gotten sick, thank goodness.  Janey will wear a mask to go to the grocery store, the one place we go, and Tony takes her there almost every day.  Except for when we were trying hard to recreate school at home, which caused a huge pushback from Janey and some very tough behaviors, she has been mostly cheerful, and often a very lot of fun to be with.  We are getting by.

I'll write a lot more in the week, about Janey's speech, about remote learning, about things I've discovered about how she learns, about music and car rides and siblings and so.  For now, I'm just sending out love to all of you, and hoping you are coping.  Let me know, so we can all support each other!

"Frustrated, Angry, Bored"

Janey has had a tough week.  After almost two months handling the quarentine like a champ, I think she's had enough.  She's been screaming and acting out much of the day, every day, staying up most of the night and sleeping during the days, tossing things around---just not happy.  Last night she had been yelling for hours. Out of desperation, I turned to her iPad's talking programs.  Using the one program she seems to like, Proloquo2Go, I went to the feelings page and asked her to please tell me what she was feeling.  Without hesitation, she picked "hate".  And pushed it over and over and over.  Fair enough.  Then I went to the body parts page to ask her if anything hurt.  She picked "feet", which is something she often picks.  I asked her if she needed a foot rub and she said yes, so we did that, and then she went to the program and picked "legs" and "arms", so I gave her a leg and arm rub too.  Then she exited the program and told me to go away.  The rest of the night was far better---she slept well and didn't scream at all.

So...why don't we use the "talker", as we call it, more?  Because Janey won't.  We've tried and tried.  I've read whatever I could on using it.  I've tried modeling, tried having it open near her as much as we can, tried programming words she might want into it, tried all I can think of.  Most of the time, she strongly rejects it.  She's several times used her limited speech to say "I CAN TALK" when I try to get her to use it, when I've said how it can help her talk.  I don't know why she doesn't like it more.  But I have respected her wishes, partly because trying to force her to do anything is a losing game.  So for quite a while, we haven't even tried it much.

I realized last night that part of why I don't try it more is that I was a little obsessed with using it "right".  I wanted to have her learn to use it for sentences, to move between screens, to try new words with it.  But the times it worked best was when I first went to a screen with a theme, like I did last night, feelings or body parts, or foods or colors or things like that.  She readily chooses when I do that.  I think she can read the words some, and uses them more than the pictures, but I have no way to prove that.  But I am going to try to more often just open a screen for her and let her pick.

This morning, I pulled up the feelings screen again.  Instantly, Janey picked "Frustrated, Angry, Bored" in rapid succession.  Well, that about says it all about life being stuck at home.  I told her I felt the same way, and I wish there was more we could do to help.  The biggest problem right now is masks.  Janey will not wear a mask, and it's the law here in Massachusetts that masks must be worn in public.  There is an exception for people with special needs, and I know we could use that, but the other part of it is that we believe in the masks, and are very scared of getting sick.  Aside from the disaster that Janey getting COVID-19 would be, if she gave it to Tony or me, we could get very, very sick.  So, while the virus is still badly raging in this area, we are stuck.  We can go for car rides to nowhere or play in the driveway, but that's about it.  And who wouldn't be frustrated, angry and bored----especially if you were 15?

This whole virus life is hard on everyone, but especially hard on kids like Janey.  She doesn't have friends to text or FaceTime with.  She doesn't read books.  She can't take walks even right now...if she would wear a mask, there's still the problem of her touching everything in sight.  She is stuck in an endless dull day.  And we are trying, but it's hard to break up the boredom.  I'm surprised it took her as long as it did to get angry.

Autism Mother Myths and Truths

If I picture, without taking time to think much, a typical autism mother...well, do it yourself.  Just form a quick picture in your head of what you'd think of when you think "autism mother".

It's a strange exercise, because despite being an autism mother myself for a long time now, what I picture doesn't look much like me.  I picture a warrior.  I picture a mother who would do anything, anything at all, to help her child---a mother who fights for her child on every level every day.  This mother works day and night to get her child everything that might possible help them.  She also is completely devoted at home to her child.  She cooks special diets, she fills each day with enriching activities, she is completely accepting of her child while somehow also completely determined to give her child what is needed to live a life as close to "normal" as possible.

That's not me.  It's not anyone, really, or it's very few people.  I've been trying to figure out where the image comes from, and I think it's mostly from books.  Autism mothering books don't seem to be quite the vogue they were for a while, but when they were (I think the heyday was the 1990's), they seemed to follow a formula.  Child is diagnosed.  Mother briefly is overwhelmed and horrified, although of course she knew from the start something was wrong and had to fight to get doctors to see it.  Mother decides on a course of action to "cure" child, and follows that course without rest.  There are some tough days, but then there's a miracle breakthrough.  And at book's end, the child is either completely non-autistic, or they are still a little autistic but only because that autism helps them to have some amazing talent.  Not every book is like that, but a very lot were, and I'm a devoted reader.  Before ever having Janey, I knew just what an autism mother was like, and strangely, all those years later, I still kind of have that stereotyped picture.

What are autism mothers really like?  They are, at least to start, the same as any other mothers.  They aren't specially chosen. 

I can speak best for myself.  I'm no warrior.  I back away from any fight I can, or even any disagreement.  I'm not good at doing anything without rest.  If I knew a way to "cure" Janey, I'd probably be a slacker and not really do it very well.  OF course, there isn't a way to cure her, and that would not be my goal at this point even if there was.  I didn't fight for Janey to be diagnosed.  I didn't want her to be.  I am sure I was in quite a bit of denial, back then, but by the time she was diagnosed, it didn't take a lot of fighting to diagnose her---it was pretty obvious to almost anyone what was up.

However, I would have to say there ARE some traits of autism mothers.  They are traits that we develop, from living the autism mother life.  We don't have them to start, but we have them after some years of raising out kids.

What are they?  Well, protectiveness is one.  We might not be warriors, but we are ever vigilant.  We know how vulnerable our kids are, and we are constantly, every minute of our life, prepared to do what it takes to keep them safe.

Ability to live in the moment is another trait.  We can have a day which most parents not living our lives would consider about the toughest day of their life, and wake up the next morning, and if things are better, we can enjoy the new day.  We've learned things can change on a dime.  I'm willing to bet as a whole we are dealing with less anxiety than most with the whole COVID-19 bit.  We know how to live with uncertainly and stress, for sure.

I'd say most of us have a pretty good sense of humor.  We can laugh at ourselves, and laugh with our kids.  We see life's absurdities, see how what so many people take so earnestly isn't really as important as they think. 

That goes along with the next trait---an appreciation of what's really important in life.  We have come to know that it's not education.  It's not money.  It's not a perfect house, a fancy vacation, an active social life or a high IQ. Our kids teach us that.  The important things in life are the very little things and the very big things.  It's coffee in the morning and a song everyone sings along with.  It's a meal that we all enjoy, it's a movie we've seen a hundred times but still like.  It's running around in the driveway and getting a good night's sleep.  And it's love---loving our kids, loving them exactly as they are, loving them after a day full of screaming or a day full of manic laughter, love filled with pride, love sometimes mixed with tears, but love over all else.

I have to say---the mothers I have met that are living this autism mother life with me (and the fathers too, but in honor of Mother's Day, today is for the mothers) are amazing people.  We have a bond forged by shared experiences, and I would venture to say every one of us is a better person because of our loved ones with autism.  Happy Mother's Day, with much love, to the autism mothers out there.

Middle of the Night Thoughts

No, Janey's not awake.  It's just me awake.  I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping the past few nights.  Thoughts and worries swirl around in my mind and keep me up.

Every day around 4, the new numbers come out for Massachusetts---how many new cases of COVID 19, and how many deaths in the past day.  Today, the death number was 252----the highest yet.  Somehow, that really hit me.  I kept thinking---what if a tornado, or hurricane, or blizzard, or flood hit our state and killed 252 people in a day?  It would be something we'd never forget, a horror, something we'd still talk about many years later, like the Worcester Tornado or the Blizzard of '78, weather legends in Massachusetts.  It feels in this case like a terror happening off camera.  We hear some stories, but mostly, it's unseen---deaths that are all someone's loved one, someone's parent or child or sister or brother, but that we only know as a number.  It's terrifying.

And of course, I fear most of all that it will hit us.  How could either Tony or I do the job of being Janey's parent without the other?  Or what if Janey got sick? Or the boys?

We don't go anyplace.  Not at all.  Tony takes Janey for a car ride to no-where a few times a day.  We play with her in the driveway.  She hasn't set foot outside our house, driveway or car for over a month.  She would not wear a mask.  She wouldn't wear a mask when quite literally her life depended on it, in the hospital after her appendix burst.  She touches everything---when I take her for a walk, she runs her hands along walls and fences.  It is not safe for her to go out.  Even outdoor places in this crowded state are filled with people, many not wearing masks.  So we stay home.

Janey is still doing remarkably well being at home.  She seems to be thriving.  She watches videos, watches Tony cook, eats all day (luckily, she loves healthy food), listens to music, runs around in the driveway.  Every day is quite similar, but she doesn't seem to mind.  It's a low stress life for her.  She doesn't really understand at all why we are home, and that is probably good.

A few times a week, Janey has a short, maybe 20 minute, Zoom meeting with her teacher or with her speech or ABA therapists.  Janey tolerates this, and even seems to enjoy it for a few minutes at a time.  However, starting next week it's going to be every day, for 2 hours.  I have very mixed feelings about this.  I know it's being done because special education students are not able to access the learning that other students are currently doing---online resources, worksheets, homework.  They need direct teaching.  But I can't picture Janey or most of her classmates doing very well with that much Zoom teaching time.  It's not that she can't watch a video for that long---goodness knows she can---or that her teachers aren't doing a fabulous job working on ways to engage her---they are amazing.  But it has to do with Janey just not quite getting it.  She gets school.  She's been going to school for a long time.  She knows how that works.  But someone on a screen talking to her and listening to her and expecting her to respond?  I think in her eyes it's some kind of enhanced video, one with a cast of people she happens to know.  It's fun for a few minutes, but not for extended periods.

However, it's not like there are really any other options.  School can't be held in person right now, and everyone is doing the best they can with that.  It's not easy for anyone.  In some ways, it's probably easier for Janey than for a lot of kids. Her lack of understanding of the crisis is a protection from worry.  Of course she has peers she likes at school, but it's not like I would have been at 15---absolutely crazed being away from my friends for this long.

What really keeps me up at night is how this is all going to play out long time.  People seem more divided than ever.  Instead of this pulling us all together, it seems to be pulling people apart.  That's crazy to me.  It's not a matter of politics here.  A virus has no politics.  But fear can cause divisions, anger, irrationality.  I can handle that.  But how I fear for Janey, and for all those out there who will always depend on others.  She needs a world that is secure enough to leave people feeling they can help others.  She needs a world that cares about people, not about the latest political feud or scoring points or getting elected or re-elected.  I don't think the extremes on either side of any political rift really understand that.  She literally needs someone to watch over her, and she always will.  And I can't sleep, because I don't think the world sees her, or all those like her, when they bicker and argue while in one day, in one state, over 250 people died.  God help us all.