Down for the count...

Another week come and gone, and here it is Friday once again.  

It's been a mess of the week here for us.  Mister Man goes through cycles (I refer to them as A(autism) and B(better) days)  periodically, based on all sorts of sensory triggers.   On B days, we're out and about, busy as bees.  But on A days we're just barely getting to the basics.  He becomes extremely emotional, often times very depressed… and has major sleep disturbance issues and problems with daily functions.  Often times these periods hit with little to no warning, and then it's just a matter of hunkering down and getting through it.  On rare occasions I can see it coming…my Mami  senses start tingling!  And of course 10 years in, I know there are certain triggers which are guaranteed to set him off.  

One given is any sort of extreme temperature.  Here on the East Coast the weather has been horrendous...humidity and heat are the defining characteristics of an East Coast summer, but this past week has been off the charts.  Air as thick as pea soup...allergens enough to be visible...and the temperature, oh, the temperature.  Step outside and boil from the inside out!   Even with the air conditioner running 24/7 on full blast, the inside of our home has maintained above 85° day and night.  Mister Man is miserable, dysfunctional and whimpery...and my bag of tricks is proving inadequate.  

Homeschooling this week has been a joke. It's accomplished little more than make us both even more ornery than we were to begin with!  One positive note in all of this is that last week we finally made it through our chapter on division, and one little boy is absolutely delighted to be done with it!  While he generally loves math, and is very advanced and capable, let's just say long division involving hundreds and thousands is not his forte!  This week we've moved onto rounding and estimating reviews, and decimals.  One new strategy I am trying this homeschooling session is allowing him to use the iPad for his creative writing.  Handwriting has always been a problem for him. Rather then waste the time that it would take for him to handwrite out a short story (an excercise in futility) it makes much more sense to me to allow him to use the microphone feature and create a word document.  We can tackle the writing dysgraphia in other ways, without interfering with the creative process.  Of course the microphone presents problems in and of itself.  Because he tends to speak quietly and not very clearly, the microphone transcription has written some very interesting babble.  So in that regard, using the microphone is almost like a speech-therapy session. He has to work extra hard at enunciating his words and speaking in concise sentences.  And he has to think out what he wants to say in advance, before pressing the button.  The first few days using this method were definitely challenging, but I feel as though we are progressing nicely.  His current story is really filling out quite well.  

As for me, my allergies have been wreaking havoc on my whole system.  About eight or so years ago I started getting this strange eye swelling thing. The very first time it happened I woke up in the morning and my eye was swollen shut. It looked as though there was a golf ball behind my eyelid.  The whole thing itched like crazy and it looked as though all the fluid in my tear ducts just backed up.  Over the course of the next few hours the swelling went down completely.  In the months following, this continued to happen about twice a week. Coming on overnight and disappearing in a few hours.  I tried allergy eyedrops, and even tried changing the allergy prescription I take every day. But to no avail.  About a year in, I noticed that it was happening less frequently but the symptoms were lasting longer.  And before the swelling set in, the area around my eyelid would itch horribly.  Fast forward to present day, and now it happens much less often, but the symptoms stick around for days. And instead of my just noticing it affecting my eyes, it seems as though my whole body is having an allergic reaction.  Years ago when this first started happening, Mister Man told me I looked like a one-eyed snake monster...because clearly it was incredibly disfiguring.  What can I say?  That description stuck in my mind. So now every time it happens, I not only feel unwell but also have that phrase running through my head!  Talk about feeling insecure!

Hoping for a weekend reprieve...

~Leanna

Full steam ahead!

How can it be that July has snuck up on us so quickly?  

The ringing of the last bell on the last school day of the year always seems to me to be the start of a race...a few short days of June to frantically prep and plan and then two altogether too-short months before school reasserts it's control over our lives.  If you happen to follow me on Pinterest then you know full well how many grand "plans" I have...and two months is barely time enough to make a dent!  

Summer vacation means two things in our little family...fun and hard work.  

The fun is easy enough...Mister Man is my favorite person to hang with whether poolside or picnicking, adventuring or lazing! Being able to stop-drop-and watch as he experiences new things or delights in little pleasures is  amazing to me.  It's that notion that his experience of life is so very different and yet so very similar to mine that just boggles my mind!  One of my favorite activities just about anytime of year happens whenever we are snuggled up on the sofa reading. At some point along the way when he doesn't notice I'll look up from my own book and just watch his face as he's reading along in his own book.  You can see the whole story play out on his features…this innocent, unrestrained, intense emotional reaction to the written word and imagination.  It's like a little dose of refreshment in this all together manicured, planned out world we live in where people moderate not just the expression in their voice but the expression on their faces as well.  

{ In my son at 10 years old, there is still a bounty of unguarded moments where true emotion shines through.  Full open-faced delight at the playground...shoulder-slumping disappointment...scrunched up worry, and oh, the sparkle in those brilliant blue eyes!   If it were only so simple a matter as wishing, I would wish that he always retain each and everyone of those expressions! }

Excuse the digression...

The fun, as I wrote, is easy enough. I've stocked the calendar with a veritable feast  of daytrips and crafts and summer activities.  Because the one larger vacation that I planned for this summer has now doubled (if not tripled!?!)  in price, the rest of our summer trips will have to be much more budget friendly then I had previously planned.  Luckily, we've got this whole budget thing down.  If there's one thing this little family of mine knows how to do right, it's how to make fun affordable.  I tell you, I firmly believe that the world's best financial planners are the single mothers! Why, we know how to extract every single cent out of a dollar and make it work!  That whole national debt thing? Assemble a team of single mothers to tackle it, and I can assure you they'll iron all the kinks out! :) 

As for the hard work, that's the challenge for both Mister Man and myself.  While  I supplement his public school education year-long with a dose of homeschooling, that ramps up into overdrive when summertime hits.  Those previously mentioned last few days of June?  I spend them running around like a chicken with its head cut off looking for all the supplies I'll need for our Summer/Homeschool, assembling lesson plans and reward charts, creating hundreds of worksheets and assignments, and repurposing the dine-in kitchen as a fully equipped classroom.  

Despite the school's staunch refusal to allow Mister Man to skip forward a grade or two, I have chosen to be "that sort of mother " who continues to challenge her child.  The grim reality is that my son's educational needs are not being addressed within the public school system during the course of the school year.  Because of his autism diagnosis and the social and communication issues that come alongside, I had chosen to hold him back from entering  kindergarten for an extra year in hopes that all the therapies and skill building would help him better adjust  to the demands of a typical main-stream schoolday when the time came.   While I still hold that this was the best decision in many ways, it has certainly come at a cost.  Mister Man is extremely bright…far more so then I.  His inherent intellect is but one facet of the greater problem with his school.  I think it far  more reasonable to assume that it is his curiosity and his love of learning that makes it so difficult for him to stay focused in a classroom that is meeting the needs of the lowest average.  Granted, the school does provide two honors programs, one in math and one in   science.  So at least every once in a while he gets out of the classroom and into a smaller group where the students are at the same level that he is.  But for the most part his schooldays are made up of nothing more than busy work. Copying over the same information that he learned two years prior on his own or at home with me.  

Come fall he'll be entering the fourth grade at school.  But by summer's end if all goes as planned,  he will probably have mastered sixth-grade math, science, and reading comprehension.  And written more than his fair share of "Henry stories" to boot!  

The challenge for me is always finding ways to continue to interest and challenge him.  He gets easily bored if we go over one lesson to many times.  It's as though his brain is akin to a computer… it takes in nd all the information the first time, all the tools and all the rules and new data...and builds a permanent file.  So once he's gotten the concept and gotten it right, to him it's a waste of time to go back over again.

And then there's that tricky aspect of creative writing.  It's fair to say that this is the area of Mister Man's greatest struggle.  It's not the writing that presents the problem per se, it's the necessity to draw from his imagination and create something new, rather than relying on fact and figure.  And I myself have difficulty comprehending his difficulty, because I see him draw from his imagination and create something new in all these other areas of life but somehow there's this stopgap when it comes to putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard. 

Sometimes the simple approach really is the best approach. And nowhere has this showed itself to be more true than when it comes to my son and his struggles with creative writing.  It's a lesson I learned the hard way, after having created all sorts of original documents dealing with the writing process and writing prompts.  One after another, those worksheets were met with anxiety and frustration and finally a sense of failure.  Finally, the light went on. I made the simple suggestion that he try writing a story about his favorite stuffed animal...the beloved and quite more...Henry the raccoon.  

And yes, it was that simple.

To this day the stories continue.  The adventures of this little furry buddy are vast and unending.  He is limited only by the imagination of his doting owner.  

What a lucky mother I am to have these years' worth of pages to cherish far into the future.  From awkward scribblings in kindergarten to concerted block type print from last summer...it's a whole history captured on page.  I've no doubt the adventures dear Henry goes on this summer will far surpass the ones of previous years.  And in years to come I will probably be able to see little bits and pieces of our summer as reimagined and rewritten for Henry to experience literally.  

Wearing all the hats can at times feel monumentally overwhelming.  My single mom story reads like a whole cast of characters...mother, teacher, therapist, friend, father, disciplinarian, taskmaster, example, comforter...the list is endless.  To define myself in the simplest of terms, I must be all things at all times for this one person.  And that can be overwhelming, and stressful, and confusing.  It can be exhausting and frustrating and disappointing.  I can feel like I'm succeeding in one moment and failing the next.  And that's not even taking into account all the sleepless nights when I am busy covering all the bases.  

But if there's one thing I want you to know about all of this, it's this one bold truth:

It is all worth it. 

He is worth it.