13th Nov 2018
I hate being under this amount of stress. I have been told, by an ex-Headmaster friend, that the present situation of my son being denied his legal right to an education is stressful enough; then you add in my wiring, and his, and you have something altogether beyond the pale.
Of course, I am grateful – blessed, even – that my son doesn’tclimb the curtains and throw handfuls of his own faeces at me. Other childrenon the Autism spectrum do. And I am grateful that my son isn’t violent; yet. Heis aggressive. He does threaten to smash people and things with hammers. He didtry to drill into a babysitter’s handbag to steal a roll of electrical tape. He does push and shout and throw things, albeit selectively: papers and pens andthe recycling tub, soft fruits and small items are sent flying, whereas cups oftea and glasses are avoided in the search for missiles. Thankfully. It is a bitstrange, this selectiveness; one could be forgiven for imagining that it ismerely tantrum, for effect, but the volume and intensity can be sustained forup to 45 minutes, following which he is tired and quiet. Daniel’s difficultiesprocessing information – visual cues, speech nuances and the like – send theanxiety upwards and the behaviours that I find so challenging escalate.
I am not digressing when I tell you that my son is a high-maintenance boy. Parental attachment and input are high, and frequently sought. I might be washing the dishes and Daniel might be playing in the garage – the next room, and every couple of minutes the shout of, “Mummy!” comes, followed by, “I need you to see something/help me with something/fetch something.” Even if the item is on the end of the settee in the room that he is occupying, he will call me from as far afield as upstairs to fetch it and to pass it to him. He attests that he is unable to dress himself and undress; he will make a commotion for over an hour when I remind him that he is a perfectly capable boy by calling me repeatedly on my ‘phone from the iPad, or on my iPad from his iPad (over the last two days). He will interrupt me when I am doing things: domestic cleaning, eating breakfast, and woe-betide me if I try to have a telephone conversation with a friend. He will intercept these and even cut the call off using physical force or another device.
One of the worst aspects of being ill-equipped for stress is that I sometimes cannot face the tasks that I need to do on my son’s behalf: telephone the case worker, the social worker and others. “Slings and arrows” hit me harder than they ever did before. There is something rather awful about feeling brittle and washed-out, saying to myself, “Get a grip” and then not being able so to do.
I lay in bed last night, dog-tired and dozing, unable fully to fall asleep. I got up and sat in the kitchen for a while, playing mindless games on my iPad and drinking water. The hoot of an owl sounded several times,and I reflected on this epiphanic call; how the owl carries the souls of thedead to the underworld in Celtic paganism; how the purity of its call cuts through the mundane and brings the other dimension closer, reminds me of thedeeper expanses behind those that we see with our everyday eyes. I reflect onthe Goddess and on the energy called duende– the intertwining energy of life and death and its echoes slung into the landscapes that surround us; evoked through art, tasted through poetry andsensed keenly at these times, alone in the wee-small hours, when I feel trappedin a pause, a potential without energy, and I ache for sleep or better times.
ASD: on being a special-needs single parent 