Good days and bad days are relative, especially when you're an Autism parent. A good day might be only having to live through a few meltdowns and a bad day might be absolutely catastrophic.
There are of course, plenty of days that fall somewhere in-between.
Today for me was mixed bag.
Lizze was down for most of the day, which sucks for a million reasons, not the least of which is the fact that she's truly miserable. Sometimes the struggle is physical and sometimes it's emotional in nature. Other times it's a combination of both.
Today was a combination of both and life just wasn't fair to her.
Anyway, after school today, I picked the boys up and took them to my parents house to carve pumpkins. It's become a tradition and the boys love it.
Unfortunately, Lizze wasn't in a place to really go anywhere. It's not that she didn't want to, because she did. The problem was that it would have simply been too much for her.
I get it and I totally support her decision. At the same time however, I also realize that means a whole lot more on my shoulders as a result.
The kids are still amped up from family night at school on Wednesday evening. I knew this wasn't going to be a simple task and with my 92 year old Grandpa living with my parents now, I didn't want the kids to overwhelm him or my parents.
I figured it would be best if I stuck around and made sure the kids stayed in line. I like being part of this anyway but sometimes, it's the only break we get from the kids and we have to take advantage of it.
Going into this, I was already overwhelmed and while I knew my parents are very capable, I just felt better sticking around.
Truthfully, the boys did really well. They were excited and hyper as a result but they really weren't doing anything wrong. Regardless, I was very much on edge and really could have used the help that Lizze would have brought to the table. I know it's not her fault and I wasn't upset. I was just overwhelmed.
I really struggled with Gavin because he would not shut up. That kid talked about everything.
One of my Twitter followers said her son does the same thing and they call it *narrating his life. *I like that because it's a more positive way at looking at something that drives me crazy.
The entire night, Gavin was narrating his life. It was truly pushing me to my breaking point.
At one point, I walked into the back room to get away from his incessant narration. He went into the basement to help my Dad with something and I could hear him narrating through the goddamn floor. I could hear him following people around and narrating their ears off.
I finally reached a point where I walked over to him and told him straight up, *stop talking. *You can't really hurt Gavin's feelings, at least not in a conventional way and he needs you to be very direct with him. If there's room for interpretation, there will be problems.
I just told him to stop talking and re main that way for 5 minutes. He actually did pretty good with that. I know it's not easy for him and I was impressed with how well he followed the directions.
I'm not trying to be an asshole but he has to learn that he cannot bombard people with his narrations.
When I said that you can't really hurt Gavin's feelings, I was being serious. For whatever reason, you really can't hurt Gavin's feelings. He feels things like frustration and anger but I'm not sure I've ever seen him have his feelings hurt by someone. It's not like we set out to test that theory but it does make being so direct with him, a bit easier.
We survived and I ended the evening with most of my sanity intact.
This isn't all about my kids behavior. This is more about me, simply reaching my limit and not being able to cope with anything. This is really about me, not about them.
Tonight was just very, very overwhelming for me but tomorrow is another day and perhaps it'll be one of the better ones. I'm definitely due for a better day.
