autism-mom.com

After blogging on  for coming up on five years, I have decided it is time for a change and I will no longer be actively running the site. He wanted to make sure that the helpful information available on the site would still be available online to others who may need it, and suggested I keep the site live, even though I would no longer be actively on it. I had two thoughts when he said that: My son thinks the site is helpful – that’s the best kudo I could ask for With his encouragement, the  site will stay live online, but I will be shutting down my social media outlets and newsletter, and the website will be the only online presence. I am grateful to the online community of readers, bloggers, writers, and others who courageously share often highly personal and difficult details of their lives so that others may learn.

I told him that was a good start and that he needed to think of other specific details because just feeling like throwing up could be a sign of a lot of things, and that the doctor has to decide what she thinks is going on based on what he told her. I sympathize with the Navigator’s discomfort and have tried to help him feel better – limiting eating two to three hours before he goes to bed, smaller meals, propping him up at bedtime. After the doctor asked about his symptoms, she asked him how long this had been going on. Describing in detail the days of getting him outside, his shoes setting next to his backpack, and sitting on the porch for 30 minutes while he rages until he gives in and accepts going to school feels like too much information.

Sometimes it is dinosaur tag (the Navigator made that up) or chess, for which the Navigator makes up his own rules, sort of like Calvinball on a chessboard. He was into the Order of the Phoenix when he stopped reading it a couple of weeks ago, going back to dinosaur textbook stand-bys. While there is no one at the Navigator’s school like the evil Professor Umbridge (I nearly wrote “umbrage If you don’t know of it, you probably have the same dubious look on your face right now that the Navigator had when I proposed it.

There was the understandable meltdown, misery on the way to school, statements about hating me, how his life isn’t fair, and then … Sweetness. I feel bad for what I said” kind of hang-dog sweet, just my sweet boy sweet. When he told me of his computer plans and I gently reminded him that he no longer had access to his computer (fully tensing up for the storm I was sure was coming, battening down the hatches, planning for a bad, bad blow) he calmly said “that was stupid of me [to do what I did]. After weeks of fighting over not only going to school and doing homework, but about using a fork at the table or clearing up after himself – pretty much every direction he was given – being met with resistance, being ignored, or downright refusal and shouting, the sweetness was like a vacation.