It is very hard to get it right.\u00a0 When Nat is home for the weekends, it is tough to figure out what he’d like to do, other than walking all over the house, again and again, or going from bed to couch to bed.\u00a0 I suggest movies, reading, or music to him, but yesterday he kept saying, “no.”\u00a0 I don’t feel I should force him to do something on a Sunday.\u00a0 But I do wonder if he would be happier having a schedule.\u00a0 At one point, I even thought I heard him say “schedule,” in his stream of self-talk.\u00a0 I stopped him and I said, “Nat, we could make up a schedule.”\u00a0 “NO.”\u00a0 Am I supposed to pursue this, behaviorist-style, and force the matter?\u00a0 At 20, if he views home as the total stimming ground, how do I change this view?<\/p>\n
When I think this way, my head gets very murky, like I’m suddenly swimming in the part of the Bay that’s got the icky hidden underwater grasses.\u00a0 You can’t put your feet down anywhere, because what’s in those grasses?\u00a0 Some kind of weird tick things?\u00a0 Crabs with open claws poised?\u00a0 Way-too-soft mud?<\/p>\n
I rewind a little and think in terms of real activities to do with Nat, that we both enjoy, rather than “what are Nat’s choices of activities I could set him up with?”\u00a0 When I think the latter, I get overwhelmed with how few things I can think of.\u00a0 But when I think, “It was nice and easy going to Starbux with Nat,” and I imagine the walk, and how long it will take, and the people staring or not, I almost always decide to do that.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I did not.\u00a0 It did not even occur to me, I have to say.\u00a0 Yesterday was a day like an old puzzle you find, where you know there are going to be missing pieces, but you work on it anyway.\u00a0 I knew from the moment I got up that I was not going to have enough to do.\u00a0 I knew I was going to plant seven shrubs but this would be over in an hour.\u00a0 I have a good book, and a new crossword, too.\u00a0 Yesterday I had cleaned the house, top to bottom.\u00a0 Laundry was chugging away. Groceries totally need to be bought, but I just didn’t want to.\u00a0 Or I’d see if someone would do it with me.\u00a0 Max busy with friends, Benj busy with some new animation project.\u00a0 If I don’t know what I’m doing with myself, how can I begin to know what to do with Nat?<\/p>\n
Bad thoughts beget bad feelings, so for a lot of yesterday I had a kind of low-level guilt running through me like a cold coming on that you think you can ignore.\u00a0 Max and his friends saw the bare cupboard and offered to go buy a few things so they could make pancakes, bacon, and eggs for dinner.\u00a0 Fine with me.\u00a0 I hate making dinner, I hate food-shopping.\u00a0 More guilt, but okay, go ahead, knock yourselves out.\u00a0 I listened and heard some joking about how we were out of food, but this annoyed me because why do you think we’re out of food?\u00a0 Because Max and his gigantic friends move through the kitchen every few hours like locusts.<\/p>\n
I roused myself to bellydance for the time they were gone shopping (so no one would see).\u00a0 They got back and got busy with the dinner preparations.\u00a0 Nat kept traveling all over the house.\u00a0\u00a0 I started to feel bad that he had no social group this weekend, so no friends.\u00a0 I wondered if he wanted to be with Max and his friends.\u00a0 I wondered if he was sad being alone, on his house journey. I would have been.\u00a0 I was.<\/p>\n
(A tiny little thought flashes through my head right now, too little too late, but it says, “were Max and his friends gainfully occupied by playing video games all afternoon between snacking?\u00a0 Is that better than what Nat was doing?\u00a0 I think so because it is “social.”\u00a0 But at least Nat was getting exercise.)<\/p>\n
Max’s friend put out a plate of bacon, while they finished up setting the table.\u00a0 The plates of fluffy yellow eggs were set at each place.\u00a0 Nat was already sitting down, eating.\u00a0 At that point, I should have told him to wait, but it never occurred to me.\u00a0 I grabbed three pieces of bacon off the plate and gave them to him before we all sat down.\u00a0 Because I wanted him to have “this little bit of joy, Poor Darling.”\u00a0 Those were my feelings, the underlying ones.\u00a0 Let Nat get away with not-so-great behavior because I feel sorry for him!\u00a0 (I only realized this in the middle of the night last night).\u00a0 Plus, what did Max think, seeing me just go and let Nat eat before everyone else?!\u00a0 Did Max think, “oh, well, it’s what Nat does.”\u00a0 Did his friends also accept it, because Nat is “different,” and so in a category by himself?<\/p>\n
By trying to take care of Nat I think I was unfair to Max.\u00a0 I think I was also unfair to Nat, by not treating him like everyone else.\u00a0 Okay, okay.\u00a0 Learn from it.\u00a0 Next time, he waits his turn.\u00a0 Next time, he helps and sets the table.\u00a0 Think like Scarlett, tomorrow is another day.\u00a0 And sure enough, it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is very hard to get it right.\u00a0 When Nat is home for the weekends, it is tough to figure out what he’d like to do, other than walking all over the house, again and again, or going from bed to couch to bed.\u00a0 I suggest movies, reading, or music to him, but yesterday he […]<\/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-1538","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-oO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","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=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1540,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/1540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}