Predicting the unpredictable

Friday was a particularly interested day for us. It has been quite some time since our older son woke up over-stimulated. Our behaviorist thought it was because he had a friend coming over for a play date and was excited. Typically I would have agreed with that thought, but not on this day. Not on this day b/c he didn’t mention his little friend one time until I picked him up from school and reminded him that she was coming over to play.

This day was just one of those days you can’t plan for or predict. He came into my room around 5:30am asking to lay with me and for me to “squeeze him tight” which was my first indication that he needed to calm his little body and self regulate. He said, “Thank you mommy, squeeze me harder mommy.” For some reason he wasn’t able to do it on his own on this day. About an hour later he asked me to spin him around and “flop” him onto the bed. The spinning and flopping helps to trigger a calming mechanism in his little brain so after 10 spins and flops he felt a little better. Once we got to school and he saw all of his friends, teachers and everything in the classroom, the overstimulation kicked in once again. This continued off and on throughout the entire school day.

When I picked him up from Pre-K, as he was walking out to meet me, his teacher told me what they had been working on with him throughout the week. He has a habit of “fixating” on one friend or object for fear that this person or object won’t come back to him or won’t be available for him to play with when he is finished doing his “non preferred” task. We are really working really hard to teach him that this isn’t the case. Instead we are trying to get him to understand that the more he shares and plays with other kids the more fun he will have in the long run.

This may sound simple to most of you reading this blog yet for someone with self regulation, overstimulation, social-emotional delay, as well as speech and language integration delay it is quite a hard concept to grasp. If you saw my son for a moment, a few hours or sometimes even a few days you would think I was making up most of what I blog about weekly. Yet, if you spent days or weeks with us or even catch him on an off day, you would eventually have an “AhHa” moment and realize what I am saying is in fact true. Then and only then would you have a glimpse into his life and the life we lead every day.

The hardest part of dealing with all of this is that “the only thing predictable in our day to day life is that every moment of every day is actually unpredictable.” I use that saying a lot to explain what we deal with, especially to those that have never seen this side of him or those that have seen it, yet think he is just being a kid with an “off moment or afternoon”.

Don’t get me wrong - all in all, we are doing great. There are days that I think, “why me” but those “why me” moments quickly turn into “why him” moments. He doesn’t deserve to have to deal with working so hard to fit in, yet those are the cards that life has dealt him and so instead of feeling sorry for me and him, I chose to do the exact opposite. I chose to surround myself with the top teachers, professionals and best support system possible in order to teach him and our family ways to help him cope with these moments in order to allow him to live a “normal” life.