“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Obsession.

Just yesterday I encountered another mom who used this word to describe her Asperger son’s unique fondness of something. Of sharks, to be precise, another similarity with my own boy’s obsession as of last year.

In relation to obsession, a while ago I noticed that there was such a narrow “window of safety” when it comes to my boy’s mood. He could be smiling ear to ear in one second, and angrily screamed on top of his lungs the next second. Mostly over petty things that were beyond my limited capacity of making his surroundings friendly enough to accommodate him.

One of my latest meltdowns (yes, mine) was when he accused me of not telling him the surprise I had for him. Well, first of all of course, it was a surprise. And secondly, I did tell him since early on that I had something nice that he should see for himself. Although he loved the surprise, he still unrelentingly bickered and demanded an explanation as in why I didn’t tell him the surprise. Go figure.

This was the bazillionth time of his testing my patience. As if my patience still needed testing.

Several distracting ideas, bribe offers, and twenty minutes of no improvement later, I had it. 

Mommy. Had. It. 

My pandora box cracked open. 

All hell broke loose. 

One of my worst meltdowns ever. Right there by the street where I pulled the car over on our way home from school. Thankfully my bodily coordination functioned well enough to manage that on autopilot mode.

Yells. Anguish. Anger. Threats. Desperate apologies. Tears. More tears. Ungodly words. Begs.

He frantically picked his bag that I had thrown out of the car with instruction to go on his own if he couldn’t make himself respect his parents.

I told you I had a meltdown. A baaaaddd one. Am so not proud of it.

Instead of just firmly discipline his disrespect and ignore his wayward thinking like I should have, I lost it and acted out too.

Mommy has her own issues. Such is life.

Looking back, I pondered. He had always been like that some of the days. Unintelligible. Unpredictable. Unmanageable.

There’s a reason it’s termed disorder. His brain doesn’t function in the same way as other people’s. His impulses are uncontrollable.

Am I never gonna learn to react better during my own inconvenient times? Does this mean I’m not accepting his conditions yet?

On some days I understand and keep it together.  On other days I can’t keep from misbehaving myself. On these days I just ask for my Father’s forgiveness for my being such a depressed, hysterical Mom. Ask for the redemption I desperately need. And grace to keep going.

As I sat there alone in the following quiet afternoon, Jesus’ prayer on the cross for people who crucified Him echoed in my mind: 

“Forgive them, Father, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

Yes, my son needs forgiveness too. For all the agonizing things he does that he can’t help.

This kind of days remind me what weak, sinful human beings we are. Always struggling to please our Creator but keep failing miserably. But thankfully, God’s grace is always sufficient to get us through these days and raise us up every time we fall.

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

Pouring My Heart Out

Here they are again.

The look.
The headshake.
Sometimes even point-blank critics.

I know he’s noisy. Speaks too loud. Asks too many questions. Comments incessantly.
If only you knew of the many things going on inside that cute head of his. Thoughts after thoughts after thoughts. Flashing by with the speed of light. Some days worse than others. He can’t shut them down or even slow them, down no matter how hard he tries.

And I know he wanders around. Sometimes aimlessly. Touches things (he knows some are absolutely forbidden, but on his worst days, he couldn’t help but try anyway). He laughs out loud for ungodly reasons. He’s impulsive. Rigid. Irritable. Easily loses his temper and throws one too many fits. Nags endlessly. You’d get tired out just reading about it.

If only you knew what he feels in his arms and legs that forces him to squirm and move about. The impulses telling him how he HAD TO touch or smell. The craving for sensory inputs to help him figure where his hands and feet are or how his body is positioned.

And boy I know how he looks like. Endearing. Sweet. Loveable. So much that if you spend only a short time with him (on his average days), how his mama & papa get all beaten up and frustrated would be far beyond you.

And I know the way we speak to him might seem somewhat terrible.
It’s because we don’t always know if today’s his good, average, or bad day. On good days a normal tone would do. On average days a firm tone, repetition and a pinch of extra patience should do. But on a bad day, a stern tone, repetition and a handful of extra strong patience rarely does it. On an extremely bad day, I can only hope it would quickly pass with me remaining willful to see another day, clinging desperately on dear sanity.

The signs aren’t always clear. A good day can turn into a bad dream in the blink of an eye. An insanely bad day, well, it doesn’t usually turn good... But various things did happen and sometimes we got the mercy of passing a really bad day peacefully and victoriously, where everyone learnt their lessons and accepted each other’s shortcomings.

We frequently and earnestly pray that the days we didn’t pass peacefully nor victoriously, wouldn’t leave too damaging scars.

And we (parents of neuro-atypical children) know that it wasn’t because of bad parenting. Nor lack of discipline or proper training. Nor can it be controlled or subdued. Therapy, diet, medication, are some of the things that might help. Or maybe not.
We just try our best and pray that miracles would happen. That he would outgrow it. Or would function better eventually. Or learns to cope and manages to live with his difficulties. Instead of getting crashed and burnt in the long, long struggles of growing up, developing and maturing.

But I know that you don’t know that. ALL of that. Or any of that.

Because if you do, we probably wouldn’t get judged this much.

With this post I’m hoping that in the future, whenever you encounter any of the above scenes, you would know better what (not) to say or do.

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

Ephesians 4:29

Tantrum tantrum

This time I’m gonna spill a bit of the “dirty laundry” of my motherhood. I hope it’s as bad as you think, haha!

I’m not a patient kind of person. Though some of my friends might think I’m pretty patient in some particular terms, but when it comes to facing a child with tantrums, I’m sooo far from being patient.

Yesterday, Darren had difficulty napping. For the time being, he usually takes a nap once a day, although sometimes if he wakes up too early in the morning, he’d take a very early nap in the morning, thus needing another nap in the afternoon, and he’d end up having difficulty sleeping at night.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s sleepy, because most of the time, like many other super-active kids, he’d FIGHT the urge to sleep to his last.
Lately I’ve been trying to get him used to lying down in bed to sleep for his naps, instead of being carried to sleep. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Anyway yesterday, I tried getting him to lie down to nap, and he ended up playing in bed, with any possible thing that he could come up with (by this I mean bed sheet, pillow case, etc. coz we don’t allow any kind of toy in bed, other than his lovey, to use Tracy Hogg’s term, a Panda Bear).
I warned him once, at first he was being “nice” and agreed to lie down, only for a couple of minutes before he went back playing.
And then I warned him for the second time, and this time he knew he was getting on my nerves and he DELIBERATELY tested my patience!
Tsk..tsk...tsk... how can a-little-over-a-year-old kids be so witty?!
By the time he needed the third warning I finally lost my patience. I left him in the bedroom, bringing with me his beloved Panda Bear.
He cried and cried in a 5 minutes tantrum, begging for Mommy and Panda, in a very longing voice, but this time I didn’t fall for it.
In the end, I asked his daddy (who was off duty) to carry him to sleep. He kept asking for Mommy, but finally fell asleep in his Daddy’s arms in less than 10 minutes. Yes, he was THAT sleepy!

-Sigh-
There went a little “battle” with my beloved Darren... Being only 16 months old, he’d surely have MORE, BIGGER, more annoying tantrums that I should anticipate coming in a few months, probably ones that would last until he’s 3 years old or so...

Ah... the bittersweet of motherhood....