SNSS: Brothers and Sisters: The Next Generation

Today's wonderful SNSS guest is a mom who blogs as Jennie B. at Anybody Want a Peanut? She has two young children: a four year old son, Moe, who is on the autism spectrum, and his little sister, two year-old Jelly Belly, who is not.

Jennie writes about family life, and also about her evolving role as an Autism Mom. She is a wonderfully helpful read for parents who have recently received an autism diagnosis for their child, and whose heads are still spinning and hearts are in freefall. It is like having a conversation with a supportive friend, one who has been through what you are going through.

Jennie is also a sister herself, to a beloved brother she lost to cancer a number of years ago. 

In this moving post, Jennie looks at her children through the lens of a sister who loved her brother, and hopes that someday they may grow into a likewise deep love. Come, grab a box of Kleenex and read it now...

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Brothers and Sisters: The Next Generation - by Jennie B.

When I brought my daughter home from the hospital, my then 23 month old son Moe had an enormous meltdown then ignored me for a week. He paid no attention to the baby, preferring to spend hours alone in his room.

This was about six weeks before his autism diagnosis.

There were no pictures of big brother holding new baby sister.

Over the next few months, I was able to snap a few shots of Moe pushing Jelly in the swing, or staring intently at the baby in the bouncy seat. To the untrained eye, these pass as typical scenes, but I know that Moe had no interest in the girl in the seat. He just liked to watch the swing go back and forth, was drawn in by the spinning and vibrating toys.

Jelly, on the other hand, followed her brother around from the day she arrived at home, first with her eyes, then on hands and knees, then wobbly legs, and finally at full speed.

She did not care that Moe couldn’t talk; neither could she. He was just a bundle of energy closer in size to her than any of the other people she saw on a regular basis.

Jelly is now two and Moe is four. Not much has changed about their relationship since those early days. Moe spends less time alone in his room and tolerates Jelly’s presence. He is occasionally amused by her, but never engages her.

He lets her steal toys right out of his hands, but only because he doesn’t know how (or maybe just doesn’t care) to stop her. He enjoys having her at the dinner table, primarily because she eats more slowly than he does, and he can usually grab some tasty morsels from her plate. These days, this is generally followed by Jelly shouting “Swiper, no swiping!”

It hit me recently that Moe is now the age my brother was in my first real memories of him. Bill was three and a half years my junior and passed away 9 years ago.

My brother and I had a good relationship. As kids, we bickered, but we also got along as friends. We liked similar music and were unbeatable as a Pictionary team.

When he followed me to Berkeley, he as a freshman and I a recent graduate, my parents made us a deal that they would pay for any meal we had together. We didn’t need the extra incentive to see each other, but we appreciated it.

My parents were also thankful I was nearby to keep an eye on my brother, who was finishing up chemotherapy to treat a brain tumor that had been found during his senior year of high school. He did remarkably well, though on one occasion became very sick and needed to be taken to the emergency room.

It was the one and only time I was called on to be his caretaker. It turned out that he had a virus and would be fine, as he would be for the remainder of his college years, including a semester in Spain.

Beyond that emergency room visit, I never had to take care of my brother. My parents did all of the work that comes with caring for someone who is dying: bathing, dressing, bathroom needs. They did not want my brother to suffer the indignities of having his sister helping him in those ways, and allowed us both to preserve our relationship until the very end.

When I was pregnant with Jelly, my husband and I used to say that we had our first child for us, but we were having the second for Moe. Of course we wanted another child, but we also wanted him to have a sibling. I wanted my kids to have the kind of relationship I had with my brother. I wanted to know that they would have each other when Jeff and I were no longer around.

Although I fully expect Moe to be able to care for himself in basic ways, I have no idea how well he’ll be able to function as an independent adult. He’s too young and autism is too unpredictable.

I’d like to think that Jelly will always be around to support Moe, but I also hope that they can be just brother and sister, without any burden of care (even if she doesn’t see it as such). I want them both to enjoy the love and camaraderie that only growing up in the same household as another person can provide.

I want them to commiserate about their crazy parents. And I want to give them a credit card to use whenever they go out to dinner together.

Of course I can’t predict how my children’s relationship will develop any more than my parents could have predicted that my brother and I would like the same music or go to the same college.

As a parent, I can encourage and influence, but their relationship will be their own.

And like everything else, I’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.

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I love how Jennie weaves between her past and present here. Her love for her brother shines though so brightly, as well as her sadness at his loss, and at the gulf that currently separates her children.

And, that fear that a typical child may be burdened with the care of their SN sibling at some point in their life is something I think all parents of SN kids worry about (I know at least I do).

And now that you have enjoyed Jennie here, please follow her back to her bloggy home, Anybody Want a Peanut? for some more great reading.

Be sure to read the post, where she contemplates the potential for sibling rivalry in her house, or this lovely lyrical one, about what Moe may or may not remember, understand. And be sure to catch this very clever post, with a delightful surprise at the end of it.  

Finally, you can find and follow her on Twitter, and go "like" her on her Facebook page, because she is so very, very likable.

Thank you, Jennie, for your heartfelt thoughts about siblings. I do hope your children grow up with as much love between them as you and your brother so clearly had for each other.


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Feeling the Love at Hopeful Parents

Why yes, it *IS* the 10th of the month again. So you should know where to find me... over at Hopeful Parents today.

If you've been reading my blog lately, you know some of the ups and downs we've been having. I was going to write about that, call my post "Riding the Rollercoaster" but then we had a meeting this morning with Jake's lovely school.

I walked out of it full of hope, and knew I had to talk instead about Feeling the Love.

So go read me at Hopeful Parents, then come back tomorrow for a new Special Needs Sibling Saturdays guest post, this week by the lovely Jennie B of Anybody want a Peanut? 

On being a daughter

Note: I initially wrote this post two weeks ago, the day my mother came home from her hospitalization, then promptly forgot about it, caught back up in the whirlwind of my busy life. I just re-discovered it, while searching for something else in my blog's draft hopper, and so having given it a polish, I send it out into the world today:

My 88 year-old mother came home from the hospital today, after a four day, probably-not-necessary-but-that-can-only-be-known-in-hindsight sojourn there.

I was with her for much of this time, only returning to my home for brief shifts of not-anywhere-near-enough sleep, and to reassure my children that I still existed and cared for and about them. (And to do Jacob's extensive vitamin/medicine pours.)

By the end of this journey, I have realized that I was in no way prepared for this. Throughout all my father's many hospitalizations in the last few years of his life, I had my mother to share the burden of the care and time with. And also, often, a third party, their very caring aide Mina.

This time? There was just... me.

And there is just not enough of me to go around.

But go I must.

After remaining awake for 99% of her 30 hours in the ER before being finally admitted into a real hospital room, my mother spent much of her remaining hospitalization sleeping.

And I, equally exhausted, dozed on and off in the chair beside her, keeping a lazy vigil made possible by the excellent care I knew she was receiving.

The thousand tests they performed have shown that all the scary things we worried might have been going on were not: no stroke, no heart attack, no bisected arteries, no clogged carotids, no normal pressure hydrocephalus, no heart failure, no silent pneumonia.

The vascular specialists, the neurologists  have walked away satisfied. But oh, yes, my mother was still deeply dizzy, the condition that had led her to call the nurse where she lives and begin this whole chain of events on Monday afternoon.

After hours and hours of wait, wait, wait, there is suddenly rush, rush, rush. My mother must arrive back home to her assisted living community by 6 pm or they cannot accept her (rules, rules, rules).  So once the green light had been given, her wristbands cut off in both a functional and a symbolic gesture, a surgical rupture of the umbilicus of her care there, I am left to dress my mother.

Ever attempting to be helpful, they sent the nurse's aide to assist; however, I know this is my task, and shoo him (him!) away.

My mother had been hooked up to all sorts of machines and monitors, which means she had a lot of... things... stuck all over her body. And so after removing her hospital gown, it was time to de-tag her.

My father used to hate help with dressing, even when he could clearly no longer function on his own, a man deeply fond of his dignity. So we would often find those little EEG tags, or, stranger still, full monitor buttons, like extra nipples stuck onto his body in odd places, weeks (weeks!) after a hospitalization.

When I would attempt to remove them he would become upset.  In his mind, the doctor didn't tell him specifically to take them off, therefore they should remain attached. Likewise those little cotton balls band-aided to blood draw points designed to apply pressure briefly after the event, to help prevent hematomas from developing.

My parents have been known to wear them for days after a doctor visit, having never heard, absorbed or remembered the instructions: "Keep this on a few minutes, maybe an hour,  to make sure the bleeding has stopped."

My mother's skin has gone all crepey, nearly translucent, in spite of its always olive tint; it stretches tremendously, so as I pull at the tags I am begging the glue to yield before I cause her any pain.

As a mother, I think about how my mother must have painstakingly cared for my physical needs when I was a baby. And now here I am, full circle, caring for my mom.

When the technicians had asked her to move into positions that caused her pain, I would rub her back, hold her hand; simple reassurances, but making all the difference in the world.

And then, at the very last, a pair of eager ENTs came down, fresh faced residents full of cheer. They put my mother through some moves -- lie down, turn her head, turn her whole body, sit up this way and not that -- to help re-set the gyroscope of her inner ear.

"Watch us!" they'd said, "This should help, but it often needs more than one session.  You can do this with her at home until she's all better, or if it happens again." Their enthusiasm was infectious. I learned the moves.

We made it back before six. They let us in, welcomed her home. Willie, poor ancient cat, was beside himself with joy to see her.

And then, miraculously, after days of somnolence in a hospital bed, Mom was eager to go down to the dining room, to take back up the reins of her social life: dinner and a (closed-captioned) movie with the other two feisty old broads who call my mother friend.

They are the three musketeers, the nonconformists of the bunch, aware of life's absurdities, always peeking behind the curtain, looking askance at the dour little-old-lady types who populate much of the elder brood.

And thus I leave her, at the dinner table with her friends. Laughing.

And so I can leave with a lightened heart, as they lighten hers; for with them she once again laughs. Oh, how they laugh.

Mom and her friends

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H is for Holding Hands

Today my mother was tired when I stopped in to visit, to take her downstairs to lunch. And while many a day I will coax and cajole, force her to rouse herself, to rise to the occasion, today I didn't. I let her be.

Do you know why? Because I was tired, too.

So I didn't make her make an effort, make her rise and dress, put in her teeth. I did hand her her hearing aid, however, to make conversation less about shouting and guessing.

And then I laid down beside her on the big, now half-empty bed and held her hand.

And we talked.

About the little things; about everything and nothing.

I told her how we had just this morning measured Ethan, to find he had grown a full half-inch in a month.

She patted her head and mine, proclaimed us both lucky in our luxuriant curly hair.

I talked to her about Jacob. "He's still autistic, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes, that's for certain."

Her eyes soften, wishing there were something she could do, finding nothing. 

"But he's doing well? He's in a good school?"

"Yes, Mom, very well, and a very good school. He wants to see you. I'll bring him by soon."

I haven't brought Jake to see my Mom since I put her cat Willie down last week. For a quite a while before that even, as he was growing quite frail.

Jake loved that cat, will have a hard time with him gone. I'm not ready to handle that. Not yet.

"Haven't found me a man yet, have you?"

"Nope, Mom. They're either too old, too young or too... dull."

She nods in agreement, knows my father will be a hard act to follow. Yet, still, she longs for companionship.

We lay side by side, a short arms reach apart as I know she had lain for 51 years with my father on many a morning and evening (and, in their later, retired and tired years, an afternoon, too) talking about everything and nothing, the easy rhythms of intimacy.

I know this well in my own life, with my husband (though in these frantic years of still young children, our quietly together times are much fewer and farther between) and with my son Ethan who jealously hoards his bedtime talking time with me, needing so much to process his day before releasing it to slumber. (Not an easy sleeper, this one, not at all.)

I held my mothers hand. We talked of this and that, and then we drifted off into sleep; took a little nap, side by side, our fingertips a bridge from daughter to mother.

"I'm going to be 89 soon," she'd said, "Imagine that."

"I can. I do. I'm no spring chicken myself, you know." 

"I plan to make it to 100." Then, shaking her head, "Not likely."

"Why not?" I asked "Why not?'

She smiled.

We napped.

I woke first, slipped my hand from her now lax fingers, stepped into the kitchen to do a little cleaning up after my formerly fastidious mother who now sees no dirt.

Came back to wake her, to say goodbye. (There were groceries to purchase, children to retrieve from schools.)

But first I sat softly on the bed, gently clasped her hand once again, leaned over to gaze at her barely lined, still youthfully smooth face; whispered quietly, beneath the threshold of her dimmed hearing: "Why not, 100? Why not?"

This post has been linked up to Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday writing meme. But, you know, unlike most of my alphabet posts that truly are inspired by jazz-like riffing off a word, I wrote this first (riding the crosstown bus home from my mother's apartment) and then found an "H" word within the post to hang it on. And really, you're lucky, because the other way around? You might have had to read about my "Hell in a Handbasket" week.

I'm also linking this post up to Maxabella's I'm grateful for...  because I am so grateful for this lovely moment with my mother.


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The gods of Autism throw me a bone

Yesterday I had a really rough day with Jacob.  But then sometimes, as if to tip the scales back a bit, the universe will throw me a bone; the gods of autism will show me something other than their asshole side.

Last night at bedtime, for the first time in ages (months I think), Jacob, out of the blue, said: "I love you, Mommy."

And then, spontaneously, this morning? He said it again. 

Each time he said it I stopped what I was doing, went over to him, kissed him and told him that I loved him, too. Told him that I always know he loves me, but that it's also nice to hear it sometimes.

And then, to top it off, Jake's bus was running really late this morning. Really, really late, leaving us standing around in front of our building waiting for about half an hour.

There are days when this happens and it's a disaster, Jake getting agitated and anxious as the minutes tick by with no bus in sight.

All those dark winter wee-hour mornings spent sitting on the radiators in the cold outer lobby, hoping the bus wasn't stuck on an unplowed street, answering Jake's constant question "When is the bus coming, Mommy?" with yet another "I don't know, honey."

But that was not today.

Today was a perfect June morn, not too warm, not too cool, so we could stand outside and take in the breezes, admire the blue cloudlessness of the sky, the green of the trees of Riverside Park, lush in their newly clad spring foliage. Jake in a good yet not over-the-top giddy mood, chatting away with me, less annoying and repetitive than most mornings.

I had lucked out while parking yesterday, snagged the rock-star spot right in front of our building, and Jake was thrilled to find himself standing beside the family car as we waited.

"Paint the car, mommy? I want an orange car." Jake requested, and we engaged in a fun and silly conversation about all the ways we might repaint the car.

Jake refrained from yelling "Go away doggie, shoo!" at the many dogs that get walked past us every morning on their way to the park. He actually wanted to pet one particularly sweet and docile creature that lived in our building, chickening out at the last moment but seemingly satisfied when I stroked her in his stead.

Cheerful right until the end, when the bus pulled up, driver full of apologies and tales of a major accident on the West Side Highway snarling traffic for miles.

I kissed Jake goodbye, waved to the bus as it lumbered up the street, headed back inside to wake and ready Ethan for his coming day.

Thank you, universe, thank you (kinder, gentler) gods of autism.

I really needed that.

I'm also linking this post up to Shell's Pour Your Heart Out linky at Things I Can't Say


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And so it goes

I thought it would all get easier as Jacob got older and matured, grew into himself; as his language developed, engagement with the world expanded.

Time to think again.

Right now it is getting harder and harder to go out with Jacob. Along with expanding interest he is becoming less easygoing. He now wants what he wants when he wants it. And also? He will not be easily denied, distracted, redirected.

And Jacob? Loves babies. If I am anywhere near a baby or young toddler  (= pretty much anywhere out of our house) I can't take my eyes off him for a minute, so great is his love of and desire to interact with babies.

With babies we know personally? Usually a tolerable situation will emerge (with close supervision) and can actually be a great source of delight for all concerned. Because Jacob will talk to a baby for hours, asking him questions, shaking a rattle in front of her, taking a just walking toddler for a cruise around the room.

And the babies? They love Jake. Because he talks to them like they are people, equals, doesn't talk down to them in baby-talk; will pay them endless attention. And what baby doesn't want endless attention from a big kid?

Jake with baby friend at Greta's Bat Mitzvah this May

With complete strangers, however, who see this giant, 80-pound, 10-year-old-looking, yet 3-year-old-acting boy about to pounce upon their tiny baby? A frightening situation at best.

I look away for a minute, like to check on my other son, make sure he is still in sight. When I look up there is Jake making a bee-line for a stranger and her... oh, no, sleeping baby. So I have to drop everything and run an interception move, shouting at the top of my lungs: "Jacob, no! Come back, we don't know that baby!"

Sigh.

Today was Ethan's 3rd grade end-of-year picnic. I had no sitter, my husband was both working this evening and so jet lagged (having just returned from his week working his ass off teaching in Milan) as to be a useless zombie this afternoon... in other words, I was (once again) alone with both kids.

So I had to bring Jacob along. It won't be so bad, I thought, even though Jake goes to a different, specialized school, he has been coming to his brothers events for years, no biggie.

Jake used to be easy at these things, happy to sit near me and play with toys I'd brought along.  But now, runs off to the far reaches, often in search of babies. Fortunately, relatively scarce at this big kid gathering.

But the other thing he does? Try to talk to and interact with the other big kids? It doesn't go well.

Because he's strange.

He's either talking about movies, reciting when they will open and what they are rated, or he's asking strange questions. The kind that might get him beaten up, like: "Are you a baby?"

Or? He's walking right through the middle of heated ballgames, not noticing there's a game going on. Or even worse, noticing and grabbing the ball and running with it, because he thinks that's playing with the big boys.

Great. Something else that will be getting him in trouble. (That happened, badly, yesterday. I started to write about it, just couldn't finish that post "And so it begins" yet, even though it should have preceded this one. It's still too raw, will be coming soon.)

Today? He'd brought a large toy train with him, and proceeded to find the one patch of dirt in the entire lush green lawn to sit in and roll his train around. He basically swam in the dirt.

Some younger kids came along to help him dig a hole with a stick and bury his train. I am sure their parents did not appreciate the lure of the dirt, but frankly as long as he was staying out of trouble I was happy.

Until he started throwing some dirt. And a little girl didn't appreciate that; retaliated by shoving his face into it, before I had completed my charge up to him to stop him.  

And these days? Jacob, once upset, gets stuck. Really stuck. And so I have a hysterical, crying, screaming autistic kid on my hands now, too covered (head to toe) in dusty dirt to make a fast escape.

So there I sit, surrounded by the other families trying not to stare at the spectacle on my blanket as I clean Jake off, pack up all our stuff. I make arrangements with our next door neighbors to bring Ethan back with them so he doesn't have to cut short his thrilling dodge-ball game to slink home with his autistic brother.

And I thank my stars that Ethan is in a wonderful (NYC public) school, that this is not a much judgmental crowd. My friend Sandra's daughter, kind and sympathetic, is offering Jake her treats to try to cheer him up.

Another mother whose children have issues, who is on the PA's Support for Special Needs Committee with me, comes by as we are nearly ready to go and marvels at my patience. I can't really take credit for it; it's the patience of the weary, of the worn down to a nubbin Mom that I am these days.

The tears are winding down, finally, as we board the bus up Riverside, only a few stops but far too far to walk my exhausted son. I am grateful for a nearly empty bus, as he sits down in the front "elderly & disabled" priority seats.

And you know, he IS disabled, even if it's invisible. We can rightfully claim those seats, but still, I'm glad that we're not making some old lady walk to the back, not engendering the stink-eye from the other passengers.

Because I just couldn't take that today.

Soon we will be home; he will be bathed, pajamaed and happy again.  Soon he will have moved on into ready-for-bed mode. But me?

I have left a part of me on that lawn where the other parents are playing ball with their kids or chatting with their friends. Where I am wiping the dirt from my sobbing, screaming son's limbs and wondering what is next.

What, my God, is next?


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SNSS: Siblings and the LD Person

And now for something completely different... today's SNSS guest post is by a MAN: Peter Flom, a Dad, who is the father of a child with special needs. But even more remarkable is that he is also, himself, a person with special needs, officially on (the fringes of) the autism spectrum with Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NLD).

He writes about this on his blog, I am learning disabled, where he talks about his experiences in life as someone who is different. He also faces special parenting challenges with his two sons, the eldest of whom is also "on the spectrum."

The other different thing about today's guest is that I did not "meet" Peter online, he is actually a friend in real life. I have known Peter since our sons became friends when they were two and a half; his wife is one of my closest friends. 

Peter is very lucky in that he had parents who believed in him at a time when "different" children were often discarded. When his mother was told told he would never learn anything or have a normal life, and that she should send him away? She ignored the "experts," instead founding an amazing school for special children to properly educate her son. 

And it paid off. Peter is a statistician holding a Ph.D. He is a family man with a wife and two sons, has many friends. "Ineducable?" I think not.

Living with his differences personally gives him a special perspective on the lives of his sons, which he shares with us, with much warmth and humor, here:  

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Siblings and the LD Person - by Peter Flom

Part 1: Me and my siblings:

I’m learning disabled.  It even says so on my blog.  Well, I’m not FORMALLY diagnosed with LD.  That’s ‘cause I’m 51.  MY diagnosis is “minimal brain dysfunction”!  Woo!  Sorta makes you glad your kids are young, huh?  Your kids just have autism or Aspergers or whatnot.  *I*’ve got a dysfunctional brain!  (At least it’s minimal!)

The LD that fits me best is probably Nonverbal Learning Disability.  But I note that (per the book) people with NLD have no sense of humor.  We are ESPECIALLY bad at things like sarcasm which depend on tone of voice.  Hehehe.

Yeah, life for us LD people was even worse 40 years ago and more.  MBD was my FORMAL diagnosis.  Informal diagnosis were things like “lazy,” “crazy” and “stupid” (from adults) or “spazzo,” “retard” and such (from kids).

But some things made it easier.  And some NON-things made it easier too.  Two of the non-things that made it easier for me were my brother and sister.  I got lucky.  One of the ways I got lucky is that they think THEY got lucky.  Not a lot of people would have thought of having me as a sibling as luck. 

My sister (technically, my half-sister, but we have an unhyphenated relationship) was 12 when I was born.  She was an enormously competent 12 year old.  So much so that our mother trusted her to take care of me.

Once, when I was a baby, she took me to the park and was pushing me in a swing.  A woman came up to her and said “WHAT are you DOING with that BABY?!?” and my sister turned to her and said “that baby is my brother, and I am ENTERTAINING him”. 

18 months after I was born, my brother came along.  I was an odd-looking, skinny, cranky, strange acting child.  My brother was a blue-eyed, blond-haired chubby cheeked cutie.  So, everyone oohed and aahed even more over the new baby than usual.  My sister decided she was having none of that! 

No!  *I* was the one.  Until a couple months later when she told our parents that she couldn’t help liking our brother because “he makes himself so charming.” But, nevertheless, I’ve always been closer to my sister than my brother has.

So, there I am, this messed up little baby with this adorable brother.  Recipe for …. A GREAT RELATIONSHIP.  It’s weird how these things work out sometimes. 

My brother and I shared a room until I was about 15. For most of that time, it was by choice. In the apartment where we spent our tweens and teens, there were two rooms for us.  But, until I was 15, we shared one as a bedroom and used the other for other stuff.  And, even after I decided I wanted my own room, we did a lot together.

I helped him with his homework (yeah, well, my dysfunctional brain is good at some stuff, like math and writing).  He provided relationships.  Because I had no friends from 6th to 11th grades.  None.  I think I had one date (and that was a disaster) and I don’t recall any “play dates”. 

But my brother had tons of friends.  He loved being around people.  And people loved being around him, too.  He made himself charming.  And I got to share.

Meanwhile, my sister had gone off to college (but she came home some) and then got married.  She lived for a little while in Lawrence, Kansas, but for most of the time she lived in Chicago.  I used to go visit.  A lot.  Several times a year.  Because it was just a lot easier being in her house than being in my parents’ house.  How many people go to Chicago for Christmas vacation?
 
So, even though for a lot of kids in the autism ballpark, sibling relationships are really hard, for me they were good.  Why?  Well, Calvin Trillin was once asked the secret to his long, happy marriage.  He said “I walked into the right party.” 

That’s how I feel.  I got lucky.  That’s not much help to others, I guess.  I don’t know how my brother and sister decided to put up with me.  But I’m really glad they did.

Part 2: My two sons:

We have two kids.  One is 14.  The other is 8.  The older one is in the ballpark -- that is, the whole AS/HFA/NLD/PDD/NOS/WTF ballpark.

These two boys are very different.  Darling Older Son (DOS) is asocial, stoic about physical pain but very sensitive to noise, has stable emotional states, thinks and cogitates before asking questions, is often lost in his own thoughts, speaks relatively little (although he speaks well), and operates in a narrow emotional range.

Darling Younger Son (DYS) is social, hysterical about physical pain but not overly sensitive to noise, emotionally labile, speaks in what seems like stream of consciousness, shares his thoughts readily, and is given to hyperbole  -- he does not have bad days, he has the WORST DAY in the HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE; or, sometimes, best day.

Like many sibling pairs, DYS wants to be around DOS much more than vice versa.  Unlike many pairs, DOS is just not able to deal with it.  But unlike some, where one child is in a different part of the ballpark, it seems like he OUGHT to be able to deal with it. 

SOMETIMES he can.  For short periods.  On his terms. 

If he couldn’t cope, ever, at all… well, he would be in a more central part of the ballpark, and farther from us.  But it would be easier to understand, in a way, and easier to explain, certainly.  When a kid is verbal enough to say “Little brothers are OK. Until they learn to talk” then why can’t he be verbal all the time? 

Well, why does a 2 year old want to be alone?  Why does a 14 year old say “I really like a lot of space” while an 8 year old says “But I LIKE sleeping on top of you, Daddy!”?

I don’t know.  People vary.  Including our children.  We don’t have acronyms, we have kids.

We can be thankful for some stuff.  DOS has never been violent towards DYS.  He doesn’t lie about him.  He can make his wishes known with language, even if it isn’t always language DYS wants to hear, or can deal with. 

Will they get along better later?  Probably.  I hope so. 

Siblinghood is powerful. 

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I love how Peter's love for his sons and his endless patience with them shines through here.  One of the wonderful things about Peter is his accepting attitude towards his children, as he says above: "We don’t have acronyms, we have kids."

I can also say, with firsthand knowledge, that far from "lacking a sense of humor," Peter is one of the funniest people I know.  I love his jokes, like this one, about Aspergers.

Now that you have read Peter here, you're going to want to get to know more about him, so go to his blog, I am learning disabled. He doesn't blog often, but when he does, it is always worth reading.

Try the post where Peter talks about his view of autism as a ballpark, or this one, where he lists some things NOT to say to him, or this one, where he talks about thinking so far out of the box, he doesn't even see it.

Besides writing on his own blog, Peter is also a contributor to many other sites including Yahoo's Associated Content, and Daily Kos where he is an active and involved writer and community member.

Finally, you can find and follow him on Twitter, where he maintains two different handles: peterflomLD for his thoughts on special needs and as plain old peterflom for his thoughts on all else, including (liberal) politics.

Thank you Peter, for kicking off June, Father's Day month, with your insights as both a father and a sibling. I am happy and proud to call you my friend.

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