{"id":813,"date":"2007-09-10T13:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-10T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2007\/09\/in-the-weepy-hours-of-the-morning\/"},"modified":"2007-09-10T13:35:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-10T13:35:00","slug":"in-the-weepy-hours-of-the-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/in-the-weepy-hours-of-the-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"In The Wee(py) Hours of the Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was a real low point for Nat. He was so anxious in the morning, and it was because Ned could not adequately explain to him that after they got home from food shopping, it would not yet<\/span> be time for lunch. This made Nat aggressive throughout the entire food shopping trip, and it was quite a struggle for the two of them to be calm and safe. Ned was almost tearing up as he told me; I sure was.<\/p>\n

Homelife it was not much better; at one point Nat went stomping and arm-biting into the playroom where Ben was, and Ben yelled at him harshly. So I had to speak to Ben about that while also trying to attend to Nat. I am so fed up with saying to Ben, “You can feel however you feel about Nat; but you can’t say _____ or _____ to him or even around Max, because it will hurt their feelings. You don’t have to like him, but you can’t call him names.” Phew! I don’t know if he hears me and I am so sad about their crumbling relationship. I completely understand how Ben feels scared, vulnerable, and intruded upon; but I can’t understand why he can never find compassion or understanding for Nat. Never. It is like it is sealed off inside of him somewhere, and that scares me.<\/p>\n

I began thinking of what to do. Residential placement for Nat? It feels a bit too soon, although he’s just about 18 and will one day be living on his own, God willing. But to have him live at school feels like he would miss out on the chance to have any kind of bond with Ben. And how could the people at the school love him the way I do? Which is better for him? Tough love or mother love?<\/p>\n

This morning, at 3 a.m. — the time of day when, if you are awake, then God help you — I was going over everything from the day before. My heart was racing and I knew it would be hours before I could sleep more. I wanted to cry, thinking about Nat and Ben.<\/p>\n

Then, I think I stumbled upon a solution: create an apartment in our basement, with two bedrooms: one for Nat and one for either a higher-functioning buddy or a personal care attendant. Nat could gradually move in down there (it is actually above ground and bright in our basement, with bay windows and woodwork, believe it or not) and get used to his new digs. Then all we would need from the state Department of Mental Retardation is the funding for the Personal Care Attendant and a Job Coach, and not housing, which is very hard to get. But best of all, it would give Ben and Nat space from each other without uprooting the family entirely.<\/p>\n

And also I’d get to decorate the whole thing with all of Nat’s favorite colors!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was a real low point for Nat. He was so anxious in the morning, and it was because Ned could not adequately explain to him that after they got home from food shopping, it would not yet be time for lunch. This made Nat aggressive throughout the entire food shopping trip, and it was […]<\/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-813","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-d7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813","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=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}