GBE2 Challenge: Upset

I'll tell you one thing that just does not sit well with me, and that is when our older son is upset.

I'm definitely not playing favorites. I don't like our younger son to be upset, either. But, when he is, I am at least able to have some form of conversation with Little Brother--even if it is very basic. With that child, I know, somehow, I can work my mommy magic and usually make things ok in the end.

Mommy magic doesn't always work on our older son.

In fact, mommy magic was sketchy at best from the very start. In the newborn days, I did everything I was "supposed" to do: I fed. I burped. I swaddled. I rocked. I held him close. I put my skin to his, cheek to cheek, so that he would learn the feel of his mama and be comforted by me.

What I didn't know what that everything I fed him was upsetting a gastric system that was intolerant of what was going into it. When my fingers patted his back in an effort to burp him, his disregulated sensory system felt pain with my touch. When I swaddled him, he felt trapped instead of comforted. Instead of feeling soothed by rocking, he felt sick. He didn't want to be close to me. People scared him. Touch hurt him.

Everything I was "supposed" to do was wrong. Everything I did upset this child.

It took me years to understand why he didn't trust the world. It took me years to understand him. Even after his autism diagnosis at two years old, we didn't fully understand that just about everything in his world offended him, this child who could not even tolerate more than two adults in the room with him at a time.

Sights, sounds, touch. His food. Our demands. The unpredictable. These are the things in life that upset my spectrum child. They propelled him to walk at an early age, and, before we knew it, he was running--running in full blown flight mode away from life.

"He's spirited," we were told as I dashed in and out of rooms after our bolting child.

"That boy is a genius! His brain never quits," others would say as I attempted to quiet our proverbial bull in the china shop.

"The most active children lead to the most productive adults," still more would explain while they all sat politely with their polite little babies, and I was a sweaty exhausted mess running after our Energizer Bunny.

How I wish I had known that his over-activity was actually anxiety, a cry for help when he had no language to tell me otherwise.

Oh, he tried to tell me. He cried. He cried and he cried and he cried. The child was simply never happy. Ever. There was no language. No pointing. No level of engagement to explain the crying. There was simply CRYING.

A newborn crying...

...turned into a young baby crying...

...who then became a toddler crying...

...who grew into a crying preschooler.

Showing that he was "upset" seemed to be his best form of communication, and that fact tied my stomach up in knots. For, as our nonverbal infant grew, his cries became less about his sensory pain or his gastric pain and more about the emotional pain of a grade schooler unable to express his feelings.

I simply had no idea. My mommy magic was completely defunct.

"It gets easier," I was told by more experienced moms. "Give him a chance to grow."

But I was not convinced: not our kid. Known for being one of the more challenging cases in our area, he just didn't seem to develop the way anyone had told us he would. I didn't hold my breath.

Instead, I just aimed my nose to the floor and trudged forward. Challenge after challenge, crisis after crisis, we chipped away at whatever obtacle lie before us. And, if I stop to think about it, I suspect that is what he had been doing all along.

Life works so much better when you feel as though you are part of a team.

Today, he is ten years old, and, yes, it is a bit easier. Time has afforded us both maturity and skill. But, even still, his desires have developed well beyond his language, and sometimes, he bursts into a mournful cry over something we both know I will not be able to understand right now.

Oh, how I hope for greater things in his future!