No one speaks "BLINK" like mama!

Did Say Myspace?

 I successfully stayed at home 5 years before returning to the working world. Every moment I spent (At the time being a spouse of a Soldier) was spent doing some minuscule task that I had trumped up to do or die tasks. I was always in a constant competition with my planner....something that I still cannot manage to dodge. I heard that being a stay at home mama was supposed to be full of adventure! "One of the most important jobs ever!" was actually the quote on my MySpace page. 

Before Roberts boy A was born I never thought of what would happen if I had a child and carrying the title of a working mama. See i'm from a very small town *cough state. We still have those hard-core family values where we know our aunts and uncles, have family dinners, and Grandma WAS/IS/WILL FOREVER BE the director, cook, secretary, and teacher of her custom daycare inside of her home for her grandchildren. Thus when Roberts boy A arrived in the world, he attended his Na-Na's, and I joined the working world. 

HELLO HAWAII!

When my husband joined the Army it was the first time I ever had to place my baby in the care of a stranger. I knew that my son was different. Pre-diagnosis, we assumed he was just an old country soul. We thought he was a child with little to say, so I was already nervous to leave him with anyone. What if he was hungry, thirsty, or wanted a hug? No one new his blinks like me! I decided to stay home, until I needed to go to a doctors appointment which didn't permit children, Thomas was off Island for training, and I knew no one. I settled for on post care because it was hourly and they were all trained.

When I took a breath upon pulling into the parking lot to pick my baby up I realized maybe he was fine. He was playing on the playground with only one other child and 2 care providers. Then it happened, the moment that created such anxiety in my core I refused to let him out of my sight and by default his brother (who had just been confirmed at the time). I watched my baby be snatched off the ground by one arm. His face of panic showed me he had no clue why this was happening. 

I cannot tell you how I made it from my car to that playground. All I know is I was like a Bull/ Lioness hybrid. The rest is all she wrote. That one moment took me 5 years to get over. It shaped so much that followed. 2 additional children later when I think back at that moment, it charges something in me. One thing that it definitely did was mold my parenting. I slowly started shifting my parenting. I had 0 clue back then but my heart was learning Montessori. I took my anxiety and fear of being away from the boys and started to use it to form lessons for myself that I want to share with you.

How would I want others to speak to my children?

I cannot expect my children to know they are deserving of more respect than to be yelled at if I yell at them.

How would I want others to enter their personal space?

If I hit my child out of anger eventually would the expectation be that it is acceptable to be hit by adult.

Obviously there are exceptions to this within reason (refer to your Bible for user manual)

How do I want them to grow up and treat others?

If I am not patient with them, or show them grace and kindness consistently, would it be optional for them to afford these actions to others.

I can tell you that I still
have bouts of that separation anxiety, it does makes it easier that my children are at the building that I work in. As I transition back to being a stay at home mommy/ wife in less than 6 months, I rest of the glass half full that one event that was traumatic to me (because children are resilient) has guided me to being a stronger mother and advocate for my children. It has helped me empower them to acknowledge that they deserve respect......even if they haven't a clue of what the word is.

The Dark Dark HOLE

HERE I GO AGAIN ON MY OWN....WAIT NOPE THERE'S A HOUSE FULL OF HUMANS WHO NEED ME!

 I was picking up chip bags, sketch books, and uncapped markers when I hit rock bottom. I don't know what happened. It was almost as if a darkness covered me. I was worn out completely and I literally had to think if I had taken a breath. I mean come on.....of course I was breathing because I was able to do the magic of Cinderella's fairy Godmother but with the attitude of the Wicked Witch of the West but like breathing with the intent of not just surviving. My fuse was as short as a stick of lit TNT. I was in a dark dark hole. I cried. I mean ugly cried. The cry that brought such shame. How could I have let my emotions get the best of me?

SHAME! SHAME! 

It is so hard ya'll to get caught up in go mode that you forget every machine has an emergency stop button. I believe the shame came from walking out of the house and being told, "Oh WOW! YOU really have it all together." Thanks Susan, but Roberts Boy B just asked for a whole set of clothes because he spilled a cup of water on himself that he stowed in the back seat when I told him to put the lid on. I had become an enemy to myself. I I had started entertaining the invisible crowd of judges in my head I swore to never care about. Other people were patting me on the back when I failed to do so myself. There is no bigger defeat then not being your biggest cheerleader. Ricky Bobby put it so elegantly to inform us all that, "If ya ain't first, you're last!" SO today I am writing you this so that we may talk about self care.

INSERT FACE PALM, GET UP AND DUST YOURSELF OFF LADY!

What have you done for yourself? Sure you created little humans (WHO PROBABLY LOOK NOTHING LIKE YOU....) but what have you done to help maintain yourself. We all can list off a mountain of things other people tell us what self care looks like. I am not going to lie to you, and people think I am crazy when I say this, lately my secret pleasure of self care has been sneaking off to Sam's Club and grabbing the biggest Root Beer float I can get my hands on. Want to hear something even dirtier? One time I got two! I know right, I am a bad Mother-Hubbard. I then proceeded to the parking lot finished them both off while people watching, and drove home without any groceries. There I said it.

THE CHALLENGE!

Did you know that self care and mental health actually go hand in hand. It is not as easy as everyone makes it seem especially to mothers. One might even consider it a discipline to some extent. MAKING time for ourselves, as adults in general, takes intent. I challenge you to start slow. Practice being selfish for 20 minutes out of each day. Take a moment to breath with the purpose of feeling your lungs fill up. Taste your favorite treat. Smell those.........dirty socks under your couch pillow you can put in the laundry later!

I have a boyfriend

Okay so it happens to the best of us. Girl meets boy, falls in love. Like going from vegetarian to straight up burger eater.....what he's super cute. You get married have those babies and bam......laundry, bills, late nights baking, work, working out, cleaning base boards, scrubbing your face, eating, BREAAAATH.

NEXT THING YOU KNOW you're going to bed with his basketball shorts because you can't fit yours no judgement. You throw in a GI stamp, that's for another blog, you get where I'm coming from. When you calculate all of that....it makes romance hard to say the very least. Then God blesses your family with Autism and what is romance again. From my children not having a schedule that support day dates and my sanity not trusting babysitters, romance flew out of the window for a while. I remember a time where romance for my husband and I was pretending to set up a movie date at home. This event was code for eat food and fall asleep on the couch. I know right, that's super hot. You wanna know the worst part. I loved it. Then something happened.

I read an article one day that stated the divorce rate of parents with children with Autism was over 79 percent. 

I realized that we had to date with intention. So my husband became my boyfriend. I began to write him love letters in his lunch box. He would sneak out of the room to help me sleep in, shutting the door behind him. We began mid-day phone calls or texts that weren't about meltdowns over the wrong color of pants.

It is our responsibility to maintain the friendships that we have with our spouse's. Who else can you laugh with, that will understand that you have to cut the sandwich a certain way because you've already had 109 battles earlier that day and you are surrendering before 110. Make your spouse your boyfriend or girlfriend for the day. Date with intention. Now I'm not saying it was easy, but I am saying small gestures lead to a stronger parenting cohesiveness especially when the crazy hits the fan in our home!

MONTAWAAAANOW?

Some of you have heard her glorious name but for those in the back I will scream it out for the people in the back…MARIA MONTESSORI! Dang y’all, I wish there was a button for echoing just for drama effect. I get so excited when I speak about Montessori. I would like to say that it is because I am extremely bias on her teachings being a “Montessorian” and all. Here’s a quick rundown, Maria Tecla Artemisia  Montessori was a lady boss before her time, a brilliant trailblazer, a child whisperer if you will. She was a physician, scientist, and educator who is known for her beautiful work in research and hands on education with children who were mentally and developmentally disabled. In a time where children were to be seen and not heard, she advocated and demanded that children, when being taught especially, should be responsible for what they learned and how they learned it. This is a concept widely known as “following the child”. Instead of having a rigid formal education model, the child is free to explore their interest.

SAY WHAT NOW?!

I know, I know, you can hear your 4^th grade teacher in your ear telling you everything about this is not how it should be. I am a walking testimony of how beautiful Montessori truly is. When I was an active RBT (registered behavioral therapist), I had the opportunity of sitting in the brand new class that opened in our school. I was told by so many that I should get my oldest son Dragon into the class, as it would be phenomenal. My head instantly went to him jumping from counter to table, breaking every glass dish he seen in sight. Being a mommy of 3 at the time, who considered themselves sane within reason, and free spirited, I wanted to see what the commodity was about. You know, the new beautiful hippie lady who out hippied (is hippied a word?) me. I also wanted to see how she got a whole class of 5,6, and 7 year olds, this experience was beautiful. It brought me to tears and BLEW MY MIND YALL! Like when I say that I literally went home and Google searched everything one could learn about Montessori I read books, I watched videos, I eventually became obsessed to the point of, as I mentioned in my Bio, I am now a Montessori teacher.

Before I walked into that classroom, I would have liked to think that my sane was saner than the average Autism mom;

I mean lets be real Autism moms all have a little quirky to deal with the quirkiness ya know? What I discovered was, I was not living fearlessly in raising my boys, as I would have liked. I had to do some real soul searching and fast because what I was discovering as I read more and more articles, was that I was the one holding my sons back. WHAT A HUGE REALITY CHECK. Me, a seasoned RBT, who literally could take a punch to the face and not blink, WAS A FRAUD to my initial perception of what I felt my parenting style was. I fixed all their meals, I cleaned up behind them, I controlled every aspect of everything they did because I feared they would either hurt themselves or wouldn’t have their needs met. The worse part about all of this was at the end of everyday I would be exhausted, stressed, and depleted of any memory of anything they had learned. I mean seriously, I couldn’t think of one, just a singular thing that will make my children more independent future adults.

THE CHANGE

One day I woke up. It was seriously like lightning struck my core. My sweet husband has always made it a point to apply pressure to the boys, while I sat back on the verge of tears out of fear that they may fail. It was time to cut the maid apron off and allow my children to do what they are naturally capable of. We started slow with me fixing one meal for everyone. I had made habit of fixing the same meals each one would like. I forged forward with giving them the experience of trying things that none of us knew if they liked or not because they were never given the opportunity (by me not placing it on their plate) to try. We left their desert in the center of the table and set the standard of bites to access it usually 3 and always with something on their plate that they did enjoy and was familiar to them. Success did not come easy from this. I remember a few nights crying in my bathroom as I felt like Cinderella’s step-mama who didn’t let her go to the ball when they were denied their desert.  As time went on we incorporated having them help prepare meals, and setting the table with glass, GLASS cups and plates. They became responsible for restoring their eating area, scraping their plates, and placing their dinner items in the dish washer. EVEN MY THEN 2 YEAR OLD! They were so in their element helping me cook and bake. They eventually graduated to baking things for their dad, because if you haven’t figured out by now he’s the MVP of the house. Shortly after the chef hats came lessons in vacuuming and making their beds. We now have so many things that they do as far as chores, my list would take forever. We use Montessori principles in our house, WE ARE a Montessori family. I enjoy that the boys are learning to care for themselves, each other, and their items. I love that my house is tidy and I’m not exhausted at the end of the day! All it takes is a leap of faith, patience, and the knowledge that something may get broken along the way. All the hard work is in the beginning, but after practice and repetition I can see a colossal difference in their confidence and independence. So, what’s your first step?

Montessori and Autism

The Ole’ Car Trick

I feel so cleaver and sneaky. You know the type of sneaky when you tip toe to the kids snack closet 20 minutes after the last, “mom I need some water!” (Because everyone knows that’s the time period of action!) So Today my three-year-old Rocket has been amped like, Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands amped.  Wednesdays have been a little rough for him, as his older brothers have been having therapy away from the house on these days. We have had waves of tantrums, runaway train scenes, dinosaurs torturing my unmanaged curls, and even tsunamis in our lovely greenhouse from a water hose that “CAPTIAIN RYAN”- Rockets stuffed friend turned on while getting herbs for dinner.

First I settled for the car wash. I loaded him and the baby into the car, in which we emerged on an adventure through the ocean with octopuses, eels, and even a merman. When we reached the end of the sudsy experience the fussiness began again. My eye twitches as I hear relive the scratching words, “I NEED MY BRUDERS AND MY DADDY!” The baby cries, of course he does. What else would he do with such noise raging next to him?

Not to worry though, I have had two before Rocket and I am a K1 teacher. Lets get this party started, I thought to myself. I next set my sights on the old reverse Psychology. You wanna get wild little dude lets do it. I turn on YouTube and blast every Go Noodle video known to man. We danced and laughed. He loved how loud I allowed the music to be. I enjoyed the fact that he was getting energy out and was distracted while having fun…OOORRRR NOT, because as soon as he seemed to calm, YouTube decided to throw me a curve ball and play one of those AD’s you cant hit the tiny SKIP on. HOME BOY LOST IT. At that moment, I was the director of all things commercial and I was getting in the path of his hands being up high and his feet being down low. Again he reminded me that he missed his brothers. I did too.

Ok, I will not be defeated. If getting hype wouldn’t work I figured I would aim for mellowing out with some Arial Yoga. He LOVES my swing. I reckoned I would put on my oils, play some soft music and stretch him out.  My kids in the class room love it. But for all things Quarantine crazy I kid you not told me that, he was not sleepy. He was on to me. I had to do something quick.

Gloves off  I shouted, “Time to go for a ride.” He was excited and so was I because I know 1 thing for certain and 2 things for sure, the AC, Texas back roads, and the windows slightly cracked for nature’s soundtrack would take him out. I made it 10 minutes down a back road and I turned around to see a very sleep baby and a cackling, glaring Rocket. CHILD PLEASE SLEEP. It was time to pull out full blast AC mode. 15 minutes pass I see him staring out the window silent.       20 minutes and around the corner from his Godmothers house, (What? Pfsss  no, I wasn’t contemplating dropping him off! What kind of mama do you take me fo…..)  He was out cold, literally I think the AC froze him. Silence fell upon the Roberts car. I pulled into a parking lot and for one moment I danced a victory dance that is until I looked in the backseat mirror to see the baby staring right at me.

*Names of my children have been changed =P

AUTISMOMWHAAAAA?????

Autismomgicians. That was the title I have given myself and others like me.  People always laugh when I tell them the statistics of having a son with Autism. Not in a hurtful, jokes on you, poking fun way but in complete and utter amazement. I worked in the field with individuals with Autism and different special needs in college for a total of 3 years before the birth of my oldest son.  The response when people find this information out a simple, puzzled, “Huh.” Yes I am one extremely lucky lady. In 2018 the CDC states that 1 in 59 children, 1 in 39 boys, and 1 in 151 girls, will be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I am blessed to call myself the mother of 2 out of soon to be 4 sons who are diagnosed with Autism.

 The puzzle concept displays itself in our home with all the colorful differences that come with this diagnosis, ASD. On one hand, I have my middle son who could read without being taught, who needs to be engaged with mental stimulation as he is deeply passionate about learning and art, who cries while listening to Vivaldi and wants to cook. The child is so independent and self motivating that even my husband and I laugh because, well to put it bluntly, he thinks we are slackers at points in his very busy day and he is not shy to point it out,” You stink, I will kiss you after you brush your teeth!”…yes that kid. On the opposing end I have my beautiful wild one, my oldest child. He is limited voluntarily verbal; we have given him the title of being my angry positive motivator because if you didn’t know him, you would think that when he shouts “Hooray! You did it!” into his hands he is cheering you on with all his might, but the truth is…those are not so kind words in his “moments”. He gives the best hugs, he has the brightest smile I have ever seen in my life, but the kid will need someone to feed him grapes from a vine, fan him, and force him to take a shower for the rest of his life. We hope that his sweet beat boxing skills make him rich because he is not motivated at all… unless you have skittles, then maybe, yes he’s that kid.

I guess I am telling you all of this to explain my title and to explain that when speaking of a child on the spectrum we are still speaking of a child, beautiful, unique, and different. In the world of parenthood sometimes we get so busy with everything that surrounds our crazy beautiful day. Sometimes the diagnosis becomes a label of what will or a cloud hanging over us blocking out this beautiful light that’s surrounds us everyday. Everything becomes so serious. It becomes this life size Tetris game where comparisons to other families and kids seems like the common mistake to make the puzzle fit together. What happens if, what do we do when, should they be doing this by now? We always think of how much our children with ASD need us to figure things out for them, and while they do need us a lot, can you honestly say that you stopped to think of how much they do for us?

Having two sons on the spectrum (Autism Mom or Autismom), has made me more patient than I could ever imagine. In fact, I am noticing that I would gladly face the challenges that they bring to the table everyday, than that lovely 2 year old stage my youngest “Neurotypical” developing child just metamorphosed from. I laugh at things society says are rules for example, no glitter or bright eye shadow after age 16. I engage in self-stimulating behaviors such as getting close to that same glitter on the floor to see the light reflects differently. I understand the meltdown of being presented Vanilla ice cream, after being told it’s Cookie Dough. I have these magical gifts (Magician or gician) of understanding and more because I have the joy of being the mama of two boys on the spectrum who teach me to look at things differently and challenge reason. My greatest lessons come in the moments I wonder why they engage in a certain behavior, try it for myself, and realize how much I have missed out on, I don’t know, bending my fingers in a dragon shape and flying it close to my eyes. I am a mold bender because of them. I live theatrically because in our house \ we don’t let it (Autism) define us; we say what Autism looks like and it is laughter, excitement, learning, and growing. Our anxieties, nor fears, nor questions about the future will change the future, therefore we choose to be fearless and dive both feet in, because while we didn’t chose Autism I would choose to be an Autismomgician any day.