Mutterings Of A Mindless Mommy

Last night my parents watched the kiddos so my husband and I could have some quality time together. We went out together and were only gone about three hours but it was refreshing to have some time for just us. I recently heard a statistic that was quite frightening - something like 80% of couples of children with special needs end up divorced. When I married my husband I married him for life. We talked about this last night at dinner and can definitely see why; have children with non-typical needs is very stressful. My husband works approximately 70 hours a week plus he comes home and helps with the nighttime parenting. I am a stay-at-home-mom so can’t really count how many hours I work because I’m on-call basically 24×7.

I’ve been feeling really frazzled lately so last night was a nice getaway. I don’t know what is going on with my 5.5 year old but his behaviors are just getting worse. He is the most stubborn person I know. He’s beyond strong-willed, he’s beyond difficult, he’s beyond high-spirited - he is just Alex. Alex…is…a…handful. I love the kid dearly but I really want to figure out what’s going on in that little head of his so we can address some of these issues. Thankfully right now his ultra-stubborn and defiant streak hasn’t crossed over to the classroom but I know it is only inevitable - given enough time his at-home and out-and-about behavior is going to make its way to the classroom.

My daughter is also picking up on the defiance and stubbornness and has become a handful. She doesn’t have the ability to understand language well enough for me to sit down and talk to her about her new found behaviors so we just kind of have to roll with the punches. Her receptive language (the ability to take in language and understand it) it probably about 1.5 years delayed. For her we still do a lot of redirection, just like we’ve been doing since she learned to walk at 10 months of age.

All of the programs that have been on lately to celebrate National Autism Awareness Month have actually saddened me a bit. My daughter was diagnosed in November of 2006 and I went through the typical grieving stage. Then I bounced out and thought to myself “Hey, maybe my daughter is just a child with sensory processing disorder and language delays and she’ll lose the autism diagnosis one day.” Well reality has really set in this past week, it is quite clear that she is definitely autistic. She is not severely affected, and for that I am very thankful, but she is most definitely affected. I have been the rock for my family, being strong when they were all coming to terms with her diagnosis and now my little rock has crumbled. Thankfully all of my family is there for me and very positive about my daughter and her progress. Now its their turn to be my rock.

If you’ve made it to the end of this post I thank you. This is one of my “mutterings” type of posts - a brain dump so-to-speak. I speak what’s on my mind and get it out there, it makes me feel better in the end.