Black and White

It’s been a while since my last blog, and there have been so many things on my mind that I have sorted through.

For instance, what do you do when your four-year-old won’t sleep through the night and there are no answers as to why? And you have tried practically everything?

What do you when you third grader makes a statement that he hates school because he’s tired of the standardized testing, worksheets, and that he’s seen as a score?

What do you do when you stand up for a cause you believe in concerning a medicine treatment, but don’t even get a fair chance, and you are defeated and cannot do anything about it? Oh, and it’s for your child, not you.

I wish these were hypothetical questions, but they aren’t. These are things that come with life… Life as a parent.

Since all three questions pertain to my boys, I wish I had answers. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all better. Jude would sleep well, and not struggle throughout the night. Jacob would love school, get the medicine he needs at it, and be valued for the sweet, funny, sometimes sneaky kid that he is.

Parenting is hard and is never as black and white as I once naively thought.

When the boys were really young, and needed comforting, I could simply cuddle them in a swaying rock, and tell them that all their worries were gone. These days, it’s not quite that simple.

And it’s definitely not black and white.

Jude’s Silent Tears

My inquisitive Jude has been known to throw countless meltdowns the past year. (Unless you ask his public-school preschool teachers, then they swear he’s calm.) But everyone else – well, we all see the same things. Jude has meltdowns. 80% of them are communication struggles, 15% is because he doesn’t get his way, and 5% is from getting injured. So, we’re accustomed to Jude’s cries, regardless of the reasons.

On the other hand, we can say with confidence that Jude is a happy child. For all that he has been through, and for the communication struggles he has, he loves to sing, dance, give hugs, and act goofy to make people smile. His giggles resonate throughout the house, and his little bottom likes to be parked near us, or on our laps as we work on lesson plans for school in the evenings.

One evening, while I was lying in bed trying to relax, both boys decided in unison that they wanted “mom time”.  Uninvited, they piled in bed with me. Eight-year-old Jacob grabbed my phone and wanted to see pictures of when he was a baby.

So, I started swiping through my phone while he laughed and commented how cute he was. (Typical Jacob – confident and proud.)

We came upon a section of my phone that held old videos. A file that I had forgotten. We watched recent videos of our family sledding (well, wiping out) in the backyard. The boys laughed with delight as we saw one where I ran into the dog, literally.

Then, onto the next video. And the next.

Eventually, we came to videos of Jacob as a toddler. We watched in wonder as Jacob sang and danced at age 2, read a book at age 3, and carried on a HUGE conversation about awaiting the arrival of his baby brother at the age of 4.

I was in Nostalgia Heaven. My heart swelled with joy and love as I gave Jacob an extra squeeze. He ecstatically commentated throughout the videos.

I realized Jude was abnormally quiet, so I glance over to my right to see if he was still by my side. He was. He was lying there, soaked in silent tears.

Tears streamed down his face, and he tried to catch his breath through the frowned corners of his little mouth.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned.

He didn’t even try to answer.

I had never seen Jude like this. Up to this moment, I was used to loud, dramatic waterworks, not gushes of silent tears that turned his cheeks into puddles, and his eyes into little blue pools of sadness.

I asked if he was hurt.

He shook his head, “no”.

Are you feel sick?

Headshake “no”.

Are you sad?

Headshake “yes”.

I asked a few more questions until I got all headshakes “yes”.

I’ll never forget the feeling that tugged at my heart as a quickly pieced together the mystery of Jude’s silent tears.

He had just watched a video of Brother as a preschooler. Jacob had commented a few times that he couldn’t believe what silly conversations he had when he was four. In symbols, and signs, Jude reminded me that he was four now.  A load of bricks fell onto my lungs as I took a slow breath. Jude was sad that he could not talk like his brother could at the same age. Well, he was beyond sad. He didn’t have the words, both figuratively and literally to express his sadness. He didn’t even make sounds. He just lied there, as silent tears flowed. And my, how they flowed!

What was a loving, fun memory for one child, was a painful reminder to the other. And as a mom, I was in between the two boys, trying to meet both their needs and feelings at the same time. One was celebrating with me. One was seeking comfort in our bond of grief we shared.

Black and white.

Nothing about parenting in that moment was black and white. I was parenting two different boys, at two different realizations in their lives, all from the exact same video, seen in the same moment.

Of course, celebrating memories with Jacob was easy. But, I didn’t have the words for Jude. I couldn’t just cuddle and rock these cares away like I once did. This was the first time that Jude showed he realized just how difficult communicating is. I often wondered if he sometimes looked around at his peers and realized that he was not like them as they had the ability to carry on conversations. Now I knew my answer.

Heartbreaking.

Jude’s tears eventually stopped when I offered to give him a bath. I didn’t know anything else to do in that moment, so I used the fact that that boy lives for anything pertaining to being in the water. He smiled and yelled out, “Yay”, as he streaked down the hall in his birthday suit.

I don’t even know if Jude will remember the video moment, (You never know what a child’s first memory is going to be. I hope it’s not that one!)  but it was definitely one of the defining moments for me. Parenting is rarely black and white. It’s multi-colored.

It’s the grays of putting in the sweat and tears and praying for the best. It’s the hue of blue when sadness fills your heart and you don’t always know which decision is best, so you have to go with your gut. It’s the red that comes from fighting for your child’s rights, no matter what form that has taken in your life. It’s the purple of the compassion you have for wanting your child to succeed. It’s the yellow of happy days, and the green of a time when innocence is sweet.

Parenting is multi-colored. Sometimes all at once.

So what do you do when your hypothetical parenting questions are not so hypothetical anymore? You grab a paintbrush, hold onto your canvas, and watch slowly over time as your masterpiece unfolds.

Smart Kid, Poor Behavior

Ten minutes into a conversation with my eight-year-old, the comment I hear frequently from adults is, “Wow, he’s really smart!”

I know what you might be thinking… “Aren’t all kids smart in their own way?”

Yes, they are.

Or, “All moms think their children are special.”

Well, I certainly hope this is the case!

But, in order for you to be on the same page with me, let’s start with the fact that Jacob possesses intelligence that exceeds his eight years of life. He started using advanced vocabulary at the age of three. Within the first month of piano lessons, he taught himself Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and half of “The Final Countdown” by watching YouTube tutorials. Jacob understands and knows how to use sarcasm, is fascinated by WWII facts, has an IQ on the high side (we had him tested), and absorbs everything about science that he can. 

So yes, he’s “smart”.

Now, imagine Jason and my frustration when we see him exhibit “explosive” behaviors that do not make sense to us.

For example, one evening when four-year-old Jude cuddled up to me, I hugged him, and said, “I love you. You’re a sweet boy.”

Jacob snapped. 
Really snapped!
He exhibited explosive behavior. He threw his shoes and socks across the room and yelled, “I’m not sweet, right? You like Jude better than me! That’s what you’re saying. You don’t love me! Nobody loves me!”

Jacob ran to his room and slammed the door.  Loud noises come from his room as he called us names, and we can only assume he threw toys, as his room was a disaster zone later.

“Why is he so mad?” Jason and I looked at each other and sighed. I was not trying to compare children, or insinuate the Jacob was not loved. In my mind I was simply acknowledging that Jude needed me in that moment. But to Jacob, things in his mind played out differently than what was really occurring.

To Jacob, I was not simply meeting his brother’s needs; I was comparing the two. Jacob had felt that I did not devote the amount of time and intentional attention to him and his needs as I did to Jude. He did not feel loved to the degree he needed. Yet, my child with a large vocabulary reservoir could not properly voice his feelings in that moment prior to the explosion. Therefore, he acted in a way that left his parents puzzled and the household frustrated.

The truth is, this is not the first time that Jacob has exhibited explosive behavior, and for what is seemingly “no good reason”. 
He exhibits it at school sometimes. At home. In the car. At church. In public. 

Jacob knows this about himself, and yet in the heated moment, it is evident that he has absolutely no control over his emotions. What really puzzled Jason and me is that later on, Jacob would come up to us in tears, and feel remorseful for his explosions. I have even heard him cry himself to sleep at night because of this self-realization. “Mom, I have a problem,” he sobs.

Heartbreaking. As a mom listening to her sweet, sensitive eight-year-old try to reason out his internal struggles, it's heart-breaking. 

In fact, there almost seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when or where it’s going to happen. And If I’m completely honest, it’s quite humiliating when he acts like this, especially in front of an audience.

As educators who value our students' well-being, Jason and I are supposed to know what to do with children who struggle, and how to get the best out of them. In the classroom, we feel successful at this, but when it comes to our own son, we seem to fall short.

I have mentioned some of the awful things I have heard from others about my parenting skills (or lack thereof) in my past blog entries. So when Jacob is having a meltdown that isn’t sensory triggered, and seems irrational, we start to get embarrassed and fear that people think we are bad parents. For the longest time, we even took his behavior to heart and started admitting self-defeat. 

But then, someone recommended the parenting book, “The Explosive Child”.

(Please note that I am not getting paid to advertise this book, nor have I ever met the author. I am also not stating this book will change the lives of everyone who reads it. I’m simply explaining my own “aha” parenting moment, as it relates to dealing with my explosive ASD/DMDD child.)

PSA over. Back to my story. 😊

Let’s face it... with a nonverbal preschooler and inquisitive eight-year-old running around, I don’t have the luxury to sit and indulge in leisure reading. So I did what any time-swamped, stressed-out, desperate-to-try-anything-different mom would do, and bought the audio version of the book so that I could listen to pieces of it anytime I got ten minutes to myself. 

In fact, Jason and I recently started listening to it together whenever we're both available. It isn't as often as we hoped, but at least we're trying. We are only a couple of chapters in so far (mostly because we started over so that we could take specific notes and do the homework), but it’s already starting to change the way I think of Jacob.

There’s a profound quote from the book that really resonated with me. The author, Dr. Ross Greene (2014), answered the question: What causes an explosive child to explode?

The answer: 
“Whenever he does not have the skills to deal well with the demands that are being placed on him. By the way, that’s when all of us are at our worst." 

WOW! …

But wait a minute. Are you suggesting that my “smart”, sarcastically funny, piano-playing eight-year-old scientist does not have how to deal with his problems?

That’s right!
My mom brain started spinning at this suggestion. I didn't buy it at first. How can a "smart" kid make such poor behavior choices?

Over the past month, the more Jason and I started really tracking Jacob’s behavior, and listening to his frustrations, the more we realized that was the case. As smart as he is, Jacob does not always have the coping skills he needs in his toolbox to figure out how to respond to situations that bother him.

Jason and I have even come to realize that Jacob's frustrations don’t always have to make sense to us either. We already know that Jacob is paranoid, thinking that everyone is out to get him. We also know that Jacob struggles with low self-esteem and has suffered from depression in the past. Whenever you take these combinations into account, and combine them with the fact that he is not always able to pick up on social cues, there won't be many explosive sessions that will make sense to us. After all, we are fully-functioning adults who have the ability to problem-solve and logically reason things out. He is eight, and like all children, has to be taught the proper way to handle situations in life. It's just that his brain works differently than mine, yours, and probably most of your kid's. So, he is going to take a little longer to figure out what the acceptable protocol of behavior is than the "typical" child will.

It's really difficult for Jason and me not to take Jacob's outbursts personally. We sometimes view Jacob's inability to react correctly as a reflection of our parenting. After all, in our case, that is what we have experienced that society thinks at times, judging from the comments we have heard. We are learning to apologize less, to hold our chins up, and to remember that God thinks we've got this, or He wouldn't have given us Jacob.

To date, we are still working through the book. Whenever Jacob has explosive meltdowns, we have been able to catch most of them before they get too far out of hand. On some occasions, we have even been able to redirect him, and talk them out with him. Other times, we were not as lucky to stop them before they turned into bigger problems. The most important thing that we have learned through this recent realization is that Jacob needs endless amounts of patience, love, and calm modeling. We are choosing to change how we view Jacob’s needs. 

Does his explosive episodes still embarrass us in front of certain crowds and people?

Absolutely! 

Do I still hold my breath when I pick him up from school, knowing his day was full of struggles and that he is still socially behind?

I would be lying if I said, “No”.

Do we have it all figured out, and the perfect plan in place for Jacob?

Does any parent really have it all figured out? I'm going to venture out on a limb here and say that they don't. For us, it's definitely a "no"...

...At least not yet anyway. (I love Growth Mindset…the power of “yet”!)

I know that I have not written much this past semester, even though I continue to have new realizations about parenting, and the boys' progress. It has been much to process, and that takes time. I do feel compelled to share my ongoing struggles and journey on this ever-winding trail of blood, sweat, and tears called motherhood. It's never going to be perfect, but of there is one thing I have learned in this journey, it's to redefine "perfection". And if you're like me, where you often feel like you don't know what you're doing when it comes to your children, know that you are not alone!