Pee, spit and poop.

Faith, mom of Jeadon, 11 (at the time)

J has a new fascination with spit.  He collects it in his mouth, filling up his cheeks until he has a natural fish face.  He swishes it around in his mouth, making the most interesting noises.  He often wants to speak, and finding his mouth full, he then hums the words.  Sometimes he even tries to speak.... though it is not much clearer than humming.  Sometimes he starts to giggle and spit comes trickling, or gushing out.

I'm fanatical about smells.

When Jay was about 4 and still not anywhere close to being potty trained, I remember deciding that no matter what, he wouldn't smell.  I am a fastidious changer of pull-ups, an over-user of wipes and all kinds of cleaning agents and essential oils.  I can become discombobulated if I return home after a day away, and there is anything but the smell of childhood coming from J's direction.

Now, the science of pee and poop smell management I have down pat.  Spit now, was totally something else…..

This morning, I woke to the aroma of poop.  Large quantities of it, from the smell of things.  Usually, if Jay did something 'significant' while asleep, he would come and get me as soon as he is awake.  He'll tell me 'Eww!  Wipe!'  Nothing yet, so I waited.  I didn't want to wake up just yet... The pungent aroma was urgent, though....  I got up to investigate.  Jay was still sleeping, wrapped snuggly in his comforter.  I woke him up and began to peel back the covers.  It took a fair amount of fortitude to handle the sight and smells that forced my system out of it's sleepy state.

About an hour later, everything was squeaky clean, with only faint remnants of the various smells.  My son was extremely happy, having relieved himself of the considerable load.  I have to admit that while attending to the situation, I was tempted to think How the ... am I supposed to deal with this for the next .... years??? Potty training has been a moving target for us for several years.  J was somewhat potty trained at 5, had a regression and potty training was one of the many things to go. He was potty trained for peeing at 9, but the downstairs bathroom stopped working and he ... well, he stopped peeing in the toilet, so here we are at 11, wondering…

Do Something

Whooosh... Thwack!

From Faith, Mom of Jaedon, 12 (at that time)

What's that sound? I thought.  It was a dull thud, like a ball falling that doesn't bounce, or a doorstop that has been wrapped in cloth hitting the bottom of the door after being slid across the ground, or...like a window sliding shut. What could that be?  What window is that and who would be opening it?  I looked outside just in time to see Jaedon moving away from the upstairs passage way window.  I can be slow, but I quickly figured out something just sailed through.  It had been raining all day and I was panicking.  Don't do that Jaedon!  Let's keep things in the house.  Don't open the window!

Just then, we receive visitors. so multitasking, I engage them in scintillating conversation while keeping track of Jay's movements with some other..., Excuse me!  I dash off to rescue some item as it is being taken to the window. I usher the guests out and decide to take a look out the window. What if he had been doing this before I noticed?  He could have been populating the narrow crevice between our house and the next for days! This window is about 40 feet above the ground, and is pretty high up the wall. To get a good look out the window, I climb on the radiator and put half my body out the window. My heart sank. I was greeted with a slew of domestic items: a tube of toothpaste, the soap dish, some toys, a few books, the pajamas I had just taken off, 2 pairs of children's sneakers, 2 towels from the rack,.... And here came Jaedon, with another towel in his hand. Nooooo! I yell.  He looks at me with new interest and giggles. Oh boy. If there is anything that's going to get a big reaction, it's this. The lock on the window is broken, and I'm at a loss as to mechanisms for keeping the window shut. A hammer and a nail?

                                                         

The doorbell rings and Jaedon and I go arm in arm to see who it is.  It's our neighbor. The narrow crevice with my pajamas in it half belongs to him. Faith. A hmm... Could you get some shoes on and... Could you come.. I'd like to show you something.  He is obviously uncomfortable. I assure him that I'm aware of the situation but am prioritizing the things yet remaining inside the house. I'll deal with the things already out in due time. I explain the challenge and he offers the idea of jamming the window with a stick. He offered to fetch me an appropriate stick if I measure the window and I hurry off to do just that. In a few minutes, he is back with a hefty slice of wood that would have worked perfectly if I had measured the right part of the window.  I get it to work somehow, and slow Jaedon down enough to that I can at least have a minute to say calmly Let's not put those towels through the window, ok?  I'm finally able to release Jay from the close to vice grip I had on him, in addition to our arms being interlocked.  I finally get to go to the bathroom to handle my business alone.

Perhaps I became too relaxed. Jaedon started checking out the other windows in the house....Sometime later I noticed that my stick was no longer in the window.  From my now familiar perch on top of the radiator, I see the crevice with the obviously offensive stick, some toys and a bottle of lotion.

After Isaiah's blue tooth headset sailed through the bedroom window unto the roof, all the windows in our house have been (temporarily) screwed shut. In lieu of the inoperable windows, Jaedon is now depositing his finds behind the radiators, a more convenient, though no less irritating location.

Floss every night???

Andrea, mom of Lauren, 10

Lauren is often apprehensive.  She is definitely concerned whenever we visit the dentist, although the time before the last, she voluntarily sat in his chair.  The last time, apprehension in full swing, she ran around the office a bit, avoiding the chair.  Eventually, with Dad’s help, we persuaded her to sit in the chair for the examination to begin.

The dentist says, “I see a little build up of tartar here… and here… Are you flossing her teeth?  She needs to have her teeth flossed every night.  It’s very important.   …. (and on and on….) I floss my children’s teeth every night….”

I finally interject, “But Dr. S, your children don’t have autism.  I’m just happy I get to brush her teeth at all!”  He persisted with the discussion on flossing, trying to impress the urgency of the situation on me.  Maybe this was like the straw that broke the camel’s back.   I abruptly walked out of his office and started to cry.  Doesn’t he understand?  How can he compare what he can do with his typical children to my child and my efforts?  Just getting to the dentist is a major accomplishment, not to mention flossing!

Be a neighbor

This week, were you a .....?

Headphones

J, mom of K, 16

"We're over here... look for the tall boy with the big headphones..."  This was the description I laughingly gave to my friend as we tried to re-find one another at an amusement park where we'd gotten temporarily separated.  I have a sense of humor.  So, while the hoards of people bumping past stared at my teenage son with his enormous noise-cancelling headphones avoiding my direct eye contact, I made the decision to be light hearted and to imagine the situation from my son's point of view.  I have a wild imagination, and I'm quite sure that with his autism, he honestly doesn't notice them.  Or care. 

But think for a moment that he does care.  His thoughts might go like this:
"Look at those odd people with no headphones.  They must be miserable.  Don't they realize their ears are exposed?  Their eardrums are exposed to all this chaotic noise.  How can they stand it?  Poor things....walking around like that.  I should try not to stare."

An Everyday Moment

God, and the devil, both in the details.  In so many ways, it's the small things that matter.  Actually, the small things are very large things and can mean the difference between life and death.  Like a little bit od poison, a small thing, consistently applied, can go a far way to undermining the value of the big ideas we want to live by.  In just the same way, a small thing, consistenly applied, can go a far way to adding value and energy to a big idea.

So it is in our lives as parents of kids with special needs.  It only takes Johnny refusing to wear his pullups all day everyday to radically change a parent's treatment philosophy about autism. It only takes a messy home everyday to create painful arguments between family members.  It only takes a week of sleep deprivation to alter relationships between parents and their children.

It only takes a moment of listening, of stopping, of loving, of being with someonhe who is on the brink of the verge of despair to help them NOT to take the plunge.  It all happens in the every day moments.

How can you bring the sacred into someone's moment today?