"I hate you, Mama!"

Yesterday after school, Janey got off the bus cheerfully, and I was determined to keep her that way.  We snuggled, I gave her each snack she asked for, a shower when she requested one, and then I put on the shows she wanted.  And changed the shows when she changed her mind after a second or two.  And again.  And again. And again.  Then the phone rang, a doctor's office wanting to set up an appointment, so I couldn't instantly change the show.  I managed to get the call done over Janey's increasingly loud requests.  Then I said "What show do you now?"  I do freely admit my voice had a hint of annoyance in it.  I wasn't yelling, I wasn't openly angry sounding, I don't think, but I didn't sound patient.

That was enough for Janey to get furious.  She screamed, bit her arm and spilled a bottle of soda on the floor.  I made her help me clean it, and then put on the show she wanted, which she instantly turned off, glaring at me.

Then she said her favorite new phrase.  For background, I'll say that one day when she was very angry and lashing out, I told her she needed to tell me how she was feeling in words, and I gave her a lot of example phrases---"I'm angry at you, Mama!  You made me very mad!  I don't like what you did!  You aren't listening to me!"  And then, because she learns through hearing phrases and I don't want to censor her, I added "I hate you, Mama!"

Well, she ignored all my other suggestions and went right for that last one.  Since then, she's been using it often.  Sunday night, she screamed it in fury so Tony could hear it a house away.  And yes, that is what she said yesterday.  "I HATE you, Mama!  I HATE YOU SO MUCH"

I was proud she added in that last part of the phrase herself, despite the sentiment.  I said "It's okay if you feel like you hate me right now.  I love you anyway.  Sometimes people do feel like they hate their mothers, and other times, they feel like they love them".  Just so she was clear where she stood at the moment, she said "feel like you HATE your mother!"

I have to admit---I kind of liked the idea that having an autistic, low verbal teenager might mean that I would escape some of the teenage drama.  It seemed like I had, at first.  But lately, I am reminded that in so many ways, Janey is like any other teenager.  She has times when I annoy her and anger her to the point she can barely take it.  I get that.  And I know how that might be even harder to deal with when you aren't able to fully communicate what you want all the time, and when you spend a lot more time with your mother than most girls your age.

We're seeing more signs of Janey growing up lately, and we are realizing more than ever how much she understands without being able to fully show her understanding.  In the last month, Tony and I have both noticed how much she monitors everything we say, especially actually when the conversation is not directed at her.  She is quite an eavesdropper.  We can be chatting away, and somehow say something about going someplace, and she is instantly next to us, saying "Shoes on!  Go for a car ride!"  Or we are talking about food, and she runs over and adds her two cents worth---"Go to the store.  I want salami"  or "Pizza!  I want pizza!"

It's hard, because much more than actual words, Janey picks up on tone and mood. Contrary to many beliefs about autism, Janey is better at sensing moods and tone of voice than anyone I know.  The slightest hint of argument or sadness or even when we take a serious tone in a conversation gets her very upset.  And the opposite works---if she's upset, we can sometimes make her happy by talking to each other in an upbeat way and laughing (but it has to be sincere laughter---she knows the difference)

It can be easy, even for parents like us with quite a few years now of autism parenting experience, to fall back on some of the silver lining thinking about autism, thinking things like "At least she's always be our little girl!  At least she's spared from adult worries!  At least she doesn't want to purposely make us upset!"  But thoughts like that aren't fair to Janey.  They make her less than---less than a full, complex person.  We need to always keep in mind Janey's age.  She is growing up.  She's going to be angry at us, sometimes.  She is growing in understanding, even if we don't always see the growth day by day.  We need to adjust our thinking, to treat her with respect, and yes, to teach her to treat others with respect.  It's not always going to be easy, but not much about this whole gig is. Nothing worth doing usually is.

When asking politely doesn't work...

Janey woke up in the middle of the night a few nights ago.  It's been happening a little bit more lately, although still not at all as often as it used to.  This awakening, she was quite cheerful, but not at all tired.  Tony and I took turns staying up with her, as we usually do.  When my turn came, I tried to get her back to sleep by putting a whole bunch of blankets over her, which sometimes works.  This time, though, it just made her laugh and laugh.  And then she said "Pillow?"  I was a little surprised, as she isn't big on pillows, but I gathered up some and gave them to her.  She just kept repeating "pillow?" until finally, either she or I or both fell asleep.

The next morning, the first thing she said again was "Pillow?"  And because it was morning, I was awake enough to realize what she meant.  She was looking not for any generic pillow, but for Special Pillow.  

Special Pillow

Special Pillow is actually a pillowcase, put on any pillow.  It's the pillowcase she was given in the hospital when she had the burst appendix.  She became hugely attached to it there.  It didn't leave her side for weeks.  When we came home, she remained attached.  She never sleeps without it.  I wash it when I can, but if I want to make sure she sleeps, it better be around at bedtime.  It's the first and only object she's ever really been attached to.

It's a sign of how sleepy I was in the night that I didn't figure out what the problem was.  Special Pillowcase had fallen off the pillow it was on, and was lost among the blankets.  In the morning, when I finally wised up, I found it quickly, and Janey grabbed it for a big hug.

I've been thinking a lot about this whole incident the last few days.  The unusual part of it was how Janey didn't get a bit upset.  She just asked, repeatedly but without urgency, for the pillow.  It was her mild tone and lack of insistence, I think, that caused her not to break through my tired haze and figure out what she wanted.  

We often tell Janey just to ask for what she wants, not to scream or cry or throw a fit.  We tell her that she doesn't need to yell to get what she wants.  However, maybe she does.  When you don't have a lot of words to use, maybe tone of voice and volume and body language are necessary to get your point across.  Because she asked exactly how we ask her to, in a calm way, I didn't figure out what she meant.

I'm not sure what to make of this revelation. I think the big message for me needs to be to listen very well to her quiet and calm words (although I can't make any middle of the night promises).  Another thought, though, is that I want to try to be more understanding when she does scream.  Most children would have been able to say "I can't find my special pillow, and I can't sleep without it.  Will you help me find it?"  With Janey's mostly single word way of talking, I need to work hard to figure out what she means.  And I need to mentally translate screams into "This is urgent!  Pay attention to me right now!"

I'm not sure why Janey didn't scream about the pillow, but my guess is her desire for it was a lot like a lot of her OCD type arranging.  Often, before watching a video or eating or doing other enjoyable things, Janey arranges her surroundings.  She will turn off my computer monitor, move any laundry baskets to a different location, turn lights on or off, put the remotes on the table at straight angles, empty any half-full mugs of coffee into the sink (and then put the mugs back where they were, not in the sink!) and, depending on the day and her mood, a variety of other rituals.  She never gets upset doing these things.  She treats them like a job that has to be done---she does them in a businesslike and efficient way.  I think the pillow being with her feels like the monitor needing to be off---something to be checked off on a list.  Unlike with my OCD and I think most people's OCD, she doesn't seem to feel upset about needing to perform the rituals. So the pillow not being in place was more just something she needed to note and fix, not something terribly upsetting.

It's amazing to me sometimes how complex Janey can be.  I re-learn every day how much is going on in her mind, how much she can tell me if I learn how to listen.  I'll keep trying, Janey!  Thanks for being patient with me, sometimes!

Outbursts

In many ways, the summer is starting out well with Janey.  She has been happy overall.  We've spent a lot of time in the back yard, as always, and a lot of time watching PBS Kids.  Both of those are low key activities that let us both relax, and I think Janey needed a little down time.

What's new and a little tough to deal with are Janey's sudden outbursts.  These are quite different than the times when she would get upset and cry all day.  The crying usually came on at least fairly gradually, over the course of a few days, but the outbursts are out of the blue.  Janey can be perfectly happy and content, and suddenly, she starts screaming hysterically, flailing around, crying a river, overcome with fury or misery or who knows what.

We usually have no idea what has set her off.  I try what I think of as scaffold sentences, where I start with something like "I am very sad because I don't like...." or "I am very angry because I want...." and she often fills in something, but it's hard to say if it's what she is really thinking or just a random fill-in.  I don't think she usually knows herself sets her off.  It could be a sound, or pain someplace, or just the random pre-teen emotion that she has no idea how to handle.

The good thing about the outbursts vs. the days of crying is that they are easier to calm (and shorter).  Often, just holding her for a little while and talking in a soothing voice can calm her, or giving her something to eat, or just sometimes waiting it out.

In thinking of triggers, actually tone of voice is a big one.  Janey is hugely sensitive to the tone of conversation, if not the content.  We've had some family around the last few days, and while we certainly weren't fighting or screaming, we tend to tell stories dramatically, and Janey doesn't get that.  She hears our voices sounding sad or emphatic or upset, and she freaks out.  We often have to switch to what I think of as the "It's a GOOD thing!" voice, like Anthony on that Twilight Zone episode.

I often to remind myself that most kids Janey's age have emotional outbursts.  Often, although they will say what is upsetting them, the outbursts make little more sense than Janey's.  I remember that with the boys.  They could suddenly be hit by a huge wave of anger or despair, which they would label as being about a fight with each other or food they didn't like or homework, when I'm pretty sure it was just a feeling out of the blue, one of those pre-adolescent moments.  When I keep that in mind, Janey's outbursts feel a little more manageable and less scary than some of her past behaviors, as long as we don't let them escalate.  If they are the biggest challenge of this summer, I think we'll get by.

A Good Stretch

Janey is continuing her good stretch.  There were the two very tough weeks, vacation week and the week after, but by the end of the week after, things were starting to improve, and this week has been a great one---Janey happy, few meltdowns, good potty use, better sleep, and of course the tea party I wrote about.  She's done a few other very sweet things, especially a few nights ago when she was "reading" a book about a bunny aloud---using a voice that was obviously like a teacher voice reading to a class.  She said a set phrase (something like "Look!  The bunny has big ears!") for each page, but she said it in the sweetest way.  That was great.

What makes a stretch good like this?  And what makes a stretch bad?  If I knew that, I'd do whatever I could to use the knowledge to make all the stretches good.  There's a few things I can guess at.  One is routine---vacations are bad, bad news, usually.  Janey can handle weekends, and has a sense I think of what two days are, and knows when it should be Monday, as she doesn't like long weekends, but she can't handle vacations.  I'm so glad she has summer school---before that, the summers were very tough.  Another factor, I'm coming to see, is weather.  Good weather and time outside are vital for Janey.  She needs that---the time to feel the fresh air, to have room to move.  And a third is how the rest of us are doing.  Janey picks up hugely on our emotions.  Vacation week was extra bad this time around because we all were upset over the bombing and all the aftereffects.  If we are tense, although Janey doesn't understand what we are tense about, she picks up on our mood.  She is extremely sensitive to tones of voice especially.  She can understand them, if not the words.

Another things we've been doing is leaving an iPod on the base that has speakers at all times, so Janey can go over there and play songs from her playlist when she feels like it.  This often calms her right down---she goes through the songs until she finds the one she needs to hear, and listens to it intently.  Anything like that that we can do to give her some control over what she sees and hears seems to be very important.  Now, no matter what she asks for on TV, I usually set it to Netflix streaming and hand her the remote, so she can pick what she wants.  I think one of the big steps forward in the past 6 months or so is her learning to use technology like that a bit better.  When it's hard for you to talk, being able to pick what you want in such a way must feel wonderful.

Even if we go with all the things that usually make Janey happy, I know there will be more tough, crying times.  Life as Janey is probably a very frustrating thing to live, often.  She is growing up and I think, I guess, becoming more aware of what she can't do, maybe not consciously, but at some level.  I can picture her wanting things she has no way on earth of explaining, and that would make me cry too.  It's why I need to try so hard to figure her out, and why I need to do all I can to give her ways to control her life.