Hello.

I have nothing earth-shattering to share.  I just want to take some time this evening and write, which always makes me feel better.  The past few weeks have felt like a dizzying roller-coaster that has left me somewhat shakey and trying to get my bearings yet again.  Nathan’s behavior for about 2 weeks was enough to make me snap.  I was met with resistance and a massive fight over absolutely every little thing.  From putting on his clothes every morning, getting him to share with William, and generally doing the exact opposite of what I was asking him to do all. day. long.

I lost my cool probably once, if not twice every single day.  That tends to manifest itself by me screaming at Nathan and then, of course, I feel horrible.  It was just miserable and I felt like such a failure.  I was not the glowingly patient mother I imagined myself to be.  It created a downward spiral.  I got frustrated, snapped, felt horrible and then felt even more miserable.  Then, to top it off, I sat up at night and worried over the damage I must be causing Nathan.  The loss of sleep, of course, just shortened the fuse even further the following day.

Thankfully, the earth stopped shaking and things got better.  Nathan started behaving better, I began to regain my patience and footing bit by bit and we are generally on an even keel again.  But the whole thing has left me feeling like a speared bull.  Sad, tired, and out of fight.

Nathan has been doing well the past week and it has been encouraging.  Then today we went to a little water park where the water shoots out of the ground and walls in some pattern that I was never able to figure out.  Nathan was so over-stimulated and excited that I began to see all the autistic behaviors fly out in full force.  From the hand-flapping, repetitive motions, head-shaking, you name it.  I was caught between happy to see him so excited and having fun to devastated.  Then a little girl came up to him and put her hands on either side of his face to get him to stop shaking his head.  He stopped and looked at her and then went right back to shaking it.  Undeterred, she then took him by the hand and lead him to the middle of the sprinklers to play more in the water, out where he was too afraid to go alone and where he certainly would have resisted dad of mom spectacularly.  It was exactly what we had been trying (and failing) to do.  Nathan, a bit unnerved, let himself be dragged by her to the other fountains to play.  The flapping stopped.  The head-shaking stopped.  All the repetitive behaviors temporarily paused.  He looked like a regular kid having fun.  It was such a wonderful thing to see and pretty much made my day, if not my whole week.  I wanted to just throw my arms around this little girl and kiss her.  It was a very special sight and I’ll never forget it.  I wish I had taken pictures!

So I suppose I have temporarily hopped off the roller-coaster and am hoping that I stay off for quite a while.  It will take some time for me to recover from this one.  I mustn’t forget to add the fact that I have started my chemistry class three days a week (and yes, it’s just as horrible as I remember it being in high school) and it’s more like I have hopped off a roller-coaster and onto a tread-mill that’s going just a little too fast.  I guess I need to go back to the mantra I created for myself a while back:

All is well.  All is well.  All is well.