Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Fighting the Battles within the War

Well, that went really well.

I'm sitting at the top of my stairs, playing Guard in my own upstairs halway between both sons' bedrooms. Not five minutes ago, each child got a royal spanking on his behind and a swift kick in the general direction of his room and told to stay there until he starts to feel the growth of facial hair.

Younger son is dutifully staying in his room, but facial hair is lost on older son, who needs to see psycho mom's buggy eyes to remember that he is in trouble.

The dog has been painted. Holes were poked on the screened in porch. Salt was dumped all over the kitchen floor. Older son is enjoying locking himself into rooms today, and why is it that nobody can ever, EVER seem to urinate IN the toilet in this house? I must have the most disgusting bathroom in town, and I clean it at least three times daily. We played a lovely game of Round Robin where I'd shuffle the kids into the kitchen from the back yard, and they'd run happily over to the french doors in the family room and run back out again. They were oblivious to my frustration level.

The younger son was zapping up the dog. The older son was zapping up himself.

And, I fixed my hair today for this?

The overall chaos that comes with rearing two children on the spectrum is what perhaps wears on me the most. I don't love chaos. At best, I can co-exist with it. Neither of my children pick up on social norms and expectations. Most days are a free-for-all. Correcting that is a long and arduous process. Lots of repetition and chipping away at the behaviors. The hope is that I can extinguish the behaviors before the behaviors extinguish me.

For now, I've won--I think? They are contained in their rooms. I'm sitting on the top stair, enjoying the calm after the storm. I'm going to build up some energy, because as soon as I let them out of their rooms, the game is back on.

They're toast.

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