Tantrums

About the following post: my mom and my husband have convinced me that a two-year-old screaming about having to leave the pool is not such a huge deal. It was the end of a long day, and I was feeling overwhelmed. Today I'm feeling good about having heard two new words in one day.

For the first time today, I took G. to the pool. i had taken J. and G. to the neighborhood playground, not realizing that our pool had opened today. They both ran to the fence and stuck their faces through, staring at the people in the pool.

Last year, during the summer of realizing all was not well, I never got my nerve up to try taking a two-year-old and a one-year-old to the pool (not to mention all three of them). This year I feel it's going to be possible (two at a time, as long as one of them is J.) We had a lot scrambling around looking for swim diapers and pool shoes, and headed out.

G. loved it from the start. He splashed around, and smiled at our neighbor who was splashing alongside him. We stayed in the baby pool, I don't think I could have managed it otherwise. G. tried two new words in one day, which never happens: splash and pool. He ventured off on his own a little, coming back each time to sit in my lap. We were there for almost an hour, with both of them perfectly content.

After I had marveled at how well it was all going, I tried getting them out of the pool. J. was stubborn but managed not to have a tantrum. Despite being the NT brother, he's been the most tantrum-prone until just recently. G. started to scream as soon as he realized we were leaving, and kept it up almost continuously for 20 minutes, until I finally got him in the door of our house. I had taken them there in the stroller, so we provided a screaming spectacle for all the pool patrons for our entire walk home. Our next door neighbor came out to see what was happening. I'm not sure if he knows what's up with the twins, but this may have given him an inkling.

I'm trying to focus on how much he loved the pool, and how happy we all were in the water. But I'm so discouraged by how hard it was to leave. I know that I've been lucky so far...I'd read about other kids' tantrums in public and wondered if that was in our future. Apparently it is, and I'm going to have to develop a thick(er) skin. Last week we also had a huge meltdown in the grocery store. That one involved J. crying, which made G. plug his ears and start his own yelling to block out J's noise. Luckily B. was blissfully unaffected. I decided I would stand there in the bakery department until it blew over, and it worked. I may not try taking all three of them to the store again for quite a while.

I'm telling myself it's the terrible two's combined with autism, and thinking that once the boys can communicate more, the screaming will decrease. I really, really hope this is right!

Feeling Optimistic/ Autism vs. the Easter Bunny

This morning I woke up feeling optimistic about the whole situation. As far as I know, nothing in particular has changed (although G. did come back out of his no talking/no signing stage, which was, as always, a huge relief).

Anyway, I just have the feeling that things will be alright. I spoke to my "autism mom mentor" this past weekend, and she gave me a lot of encouragement. Her son was never as delayed as the twins are, but she thinks he was more distant and aloof. Now he's doing very well although of course he's still on the spectrum. Part of her advice to me was not to worry about money for the next year or two, and get all the therapy we possibly can. My husband is always more laid back about money than I am, so I'm lucky in that way. The last few days I've put a lot of my energy into sensory integration--learning about how to do the brushing protocol, and ordering a swing which we can hang in a doorway. Since we've put a little climbing structure in our backyard, B. has been so happy! He has stopped biting his hand, and I suspect it may be because he now has the outlet of climbing. I'd like to get him something to climb on inside, but right now he settles for hanging off the back of the couch. One of the reasons I love our current OT is that she gets so excited about B.'s climbing or even about his sitting on the arm of our rocking chair. She is always able to see strengths in him that I so need to hear about right now.

G. said his first three-syllable word today. It was "Tortoro", the name of a character in a Japanese children's movie that a friend gave us. It's funny, he'd only said two or three words all day (although he has been signing a lot), and then suddenly he was saying "Tortoro......Tortoro" very quietly.

Next week we have B's MRI. I'll stay home with the other two boys, and my husband will take him. I wish I could go, but we couldn't find anyone who could come over early enough to babysit. A few weeks later, G. will have his MRI, and we can both go to that one. I'm not expecting that there is anything wrong in their brains, but the devl. pediatrician said they have strangely-shaped heads. They were monoamniotic twins, meaning that their cords were tangled throughout the entire pregnancy, so things have been unusual from the beginning. For three weeks we believed that they were conjoined, and someday I plan to blog about that crazy period of our lives.

Oh, the second part of the title of this post refers to a comment we got recently. I didn't actually hear it. A friend of mine was with B. at a playspace when a man and his son joined them. The son really wanted to play with B., and B. was happily ignoring him. My friend mentioned that B. has autism, and the dad said, "Oh, I don't believe in any of that!", along with a few comments about everyone having a diagnosis these days, etc. When my friend told me, for some reason it struck me as funny (If an in-law of mine had said it, I'd be outraged.) It hadn't occurred to me that I could choose not to believe in autism. Is it like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? Even if that were true, I'd keep believing in it, because it helps me understand the odd, funny, loveable ways of my twins.

For some reason, this got me wondering about what Tom Cruise and Scientology think of autism. I'll have to Google it.

My new attitude about blogging is that I am going to try to stop being intimidated by the blogs which strike me as so well-written and wise and the type of thing which could actually be turned into a book someday. I feel my style is more of a stream-of-consciousness, sleep-deprived, I'm-trying-to-ignore-the Heffalump-sounds-coming-from-my-older-son's-room style. It does feel therapeutic to blog, and it's definitely very helpful to read other autism parents' blogs and comments.