The more I delve into Autism, the more I think that it is just one of O’s issues.  Each of my kids has very different issues.  Autism is just O’s issue.  It’s a lot for sure, but it’s also perhaps more defined than the other kids’.  Peter’s sister’s came to visit for 4 days and O was a total cherub.  As sweet as honey.  He just ate up all of that one on one attention. I don’t think that he had a single meltdown.  There was no one telling him no.  The girls just thought that he was dreamy. He was walking around with a huge grin most of the time.  He just adored them.  E also really attached himself to them in a very sweet, endearing way. Of course O had some brilliant sayings.  He told Dina when she picked him up at school with me, “I’m so glad that you’re here”.  How precious.

When the girls left on Sunday, everyone started to behave like themselves again.  Impulse control is not just simply not happening in our house these days.  As Dr. C put it into perspective for us, kindly…when kids hit age 13 they lose their executive skills…they become all mid-brain thinkers, like toddlers..  Basically, they’re no different than 2 year olds.  Wow, so to put that into perspective, we have two toddlers, and a pre-k autistic child at home.  ALL of whom have ZERO impulse control.  Ahhhhhhh.  No wonder!

One of my sisters in law asked me how I deal with this all.  I told her that in times of extreme stress I try and string haikus together.  I do. Somehow it makes me refocus my energies. It makes me giggle in the midst of total chaos that I’m trying to create 5 and 7 line poems in my head.  Although, at times, my favorite 5 syllable line is ‘wow, this really sucks’ and when it’s really bad, a well used 7 syllable line is ‘God save me from hitting you’.  On the flip side, there are the sweet ones, ‘Ollie Wollie is too cute’ ‘MUST remember this moment’.  Way more sweet ones than not, but it’s the ones that are churned out at times of despair that make me giggle like a school girl.  I don’t know why I think that writing haikus are funny, but I do.

I feel guilty that I’m not plowing full steam ahead into autism research.  I don’t know when I would do this. I’m stressing out about pulling together a Christmas card…when is that going to happen? Making Christmas cards is always so much fun and something that I do to intentionally slow down the pace of the season by taking time out to write each person’s card. It’s my way of wishing each person a happy holiday season. I hope that I can do it this year, too. What I need to do is figure out gifts NOW. I’m such a rampant procrastinator. We had to get amazon prime so that we could order everything last minute! Bad, bad, bad! Need to get better at this.