Who knows?
I thought I was homefree. I thought vacation was almost over, and that we’d done okay, considering all the down time for Nat and my abysmal lack of planning. I suppose that is part of it; could there be any parent more ill-matched for a structure-and-consistency-loving autistic son than I, an impulsive, in-the-moment, mood-swinging’ gal?<\/p>\n
I was patting myself on the back for having gotten Nat five days of activities with people he enjoys. S took him running one day, to McDonald’s another day, and shooting hoops another day, all with ice cream at the end. And M took Nat to the Aquarium yesterday, and then to see one of those 3-D movie shows where the seats actually move, Disney-style. Each day I was told that Nat “did great, really enjoyed himself.”<\/p>\n
Not only that: we also baked a gingerbread house and decorated it, and I’ve been letting him eat it over a period of days.<\/p>\n
So we decided, spur-of-the-moment, to spend our last dinner of vacation at Bertucci’s, so that I wouldn’t have to cook, because I hate cooking for my children, who hate everything I make except for noodles and chicken nuggets. I make other meals, but I get so sick of having them grimace. Restaurants are one of the few activities we can do as a family successfully. I have always been proud of how my boys behave well in a restaurant. As toddlers, I never let them run around the way so many people do. They played with the toys they had brought and sat nicely in their chairs. And now, they are still well-behaved in restaurants. Nat, in particular does extremely well, even orders for himself sometimes.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was because I made Nat tie his own shoes. He likes the way I do it, nice and tight. Maybe it was because Ned cautioned him not to open his door too quickly so as to avoid dinging the car parked next to us. Whatever it was, Nat went into Bertucci’s pinching. Ned kept taking him outside, or sitting him down. Ned was really in control, more than I would have been.<\/p>\n
But we thought Nat was okay, which he was not, when we got to the table (a different one than usual, oh no). Nat pinched Max really hard and made a welt on his arm, and some blood. Max was trying not to cry. Ned took Nat outside. Everyone was watching us, or so I felt. I had to keep leaving Max and Ben to check on Ned and Nat. Thank God Max is old enough for that, but still, how terrible to have to be strong and in charge when you want to just scream and cry about your awful older brother.<\/p>\n
What could I say, to make it better? I told Nat to apologize, which he did. He even bent to kiss Ned’s hand, for some reason, God bless him. I stroked Max’s hand, but he is a huge thirteen-year-old; does he want his mother to do that? I talked about how awful this was, and how sorry I was. But do my apologies just make him feel sick, or guilty? Where does it all go? He sat there with the ice on his arm while we ordered drinks.<\/p>\n
I told them a story of how when I was a kid, my sister and I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house for a weekend and we discovered that we had no toothpaste in our bathroom. We started to fight about who would have to ask them for the toothpaste, since for some reason we both felt too shy to do it. We ended up in a huge fight, with Laura pinching my arm so hard that I had a welt, similar to Max’s. I told him we called these “bloodsucker pinches,” and he smiled a little bit. I said it is the kind of pinch brothers and sisters specialize in.<\/p>\n
I also said that I think I was a little luckier because my sister felt awful a few moments later about what she had done. But then I looked at Nat, who was looking down at his placemat. I said, “Well, who knows? He may be feeling pretty bad, too.”<\/p>\n
But does that help? What helps? Why did it happen in the first place? Who knows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who knows?I thought I was homefree. I thought vacation was almost over, and that we’d done okay, considering all the down time for Nat and my abysmal lack of planning. I suppose that is part of it; could there be any parent more ill-matched for a structure-and-consistency-loving autistic son than I, an impulsive, in-the-moment, mood-swinging’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-ny","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}