Friday, August 25, 2006

Trapped!

Oh please, someone rescue me! SOS or something. I am sure you are sick of me whining, but I am not done. Little Man is still not in school, summer program or anything. So I am trapped in the apartment with him. I love my boy, I really do, with all my heart. But being developmentally delayed means he just isn't growing up very fast. So I have a very small child in a larger kid's body. He is very unstable mentally right now and I am anxiously awaiting his appt with the psych on the 29th. At this point, the ONLY thing I can do with him is go to the movies. It is hell getting there and getting home, but he is good while the movie is playing. Otherwise, NOTHING, nada. I can't go anywhere with him. Not the store, not to the park, anywhere. Everything makes him melt down. He is hitting me all the time now, scratching, and UGLY verbally. He is dangerous around other people because he is pushing and hitting anyone within his reach. I am sick of being here in the apartment with him, but I don't dare take him anywhere. And he is just so demanding. He has the attention span of a gnat and moves from the computer to a movie in his room and cable TV. It means he and I fight over the computer because he screams at me if he sees me on it, mostly it isn't worth it. I am just so frustrated and quite blue with cabin fever. And honestly, I am tired of my boy. Tired of his demands, tired of taking care of him, tired of fighting him on every issue, like going potty, or not hitting the keyboard or throwing toys. Today he is deliberately running into the walls, not sure what that is about, but it is noisy! So there ya go. My whiny self. Tired and blue, that's me. yay. When Bald Man gets home, I am sooooo outa here.

3 Kids Who Want To Play:

Jenny said...

When Ella gets inconsolably unhappy with the kicking and screaming (I realize she's smaller) I always put her in a bubble bath and let her splash away while I read the paper and drink my coffee.

Jenny said...

Some times she's a shriveled little prune before I have my own wits back together enough to pull her out of the tub.

Sarah said...

Nick Hornby writes, about his own autistic son, "All parents of autistic children know the terrible cycle of guilt and apathy that comes with the territory: our kids are capable of entertaining themselves for hours at a time if we let them (and sometimes we do, because we're tired, and maybe despondent), but we know the entertainment of choice- spinning round and round, lining things up, watching the same videos over and over again- is not healthy or productive. But few of us have the energy to do what ... teachers do. We cannot create scores of different activities every day, all of the designed to equip our children to cope better with the lives they are living now, and will live in the future."

In other words? Sometimes, he just has to run into walls. Sometimes it's vital to his mother's mental health to have some time to gerself. Sometimes there's just nothing else you can do but blog about it.