It's a small world after all

Had a fairly quiet day today. Woke up early and had a workout in the gym in the house – gotta love having a gym in your house! Needed one of those ten years ago! Oh well, loving it now! Makes life and keeping fit so much easier. Kai has not been totally well, fighting a cold, or swine flu so he had a massive sleep in.

No big plans today. Kai needs some time to settle in and I needed to spend some time on my new book on autism and needed to send emails and try to get my phones working (grrrrr) and so I organised a play date for Kai.

Now how is this for strange? This little boy who came to play is so adorable and funny and sweet and so so so incredibly creative (seriously, future George Lucas here) but I swear to God, if this boy does not have full blown Aspergers then I am a monkey’s uncle. Except I don’t think his mother knows. I don’t think he has a diagnosis. I don’t really know his mum well enough yet; she is a friend of a friend but having spent the day with this boy I am in a real dilemma. What do I do? Is it any of my business? I’m no doctor but I know these kids well enough to know there is no way this boy does not belong somewhere along the spectrum of Autism. And getting a diagnosis changed our lives and it would definitely change theirs too.

And you know what? Even though Kaizie and I have had some great days this past week, privately I have had a pretty rough week with Kai. There has been way too much change for him, poor little boy and it’s only after having two down time days at our new home and a few new routines put in place that he has calmed down and is starting to feel secure again.

We’ve had some pretty big “Brown texta” moments, which has become my code word for BAD DAYS and big crying sessions when he just can’t cope with all that is going on around him.

I’ve spent the week cutting new shorts shorter, traipsing Disneyland looking for shorts to replace the hot and annoying long pants he wore to try to copy the older boy we went with, and yesterday, I spent three long and tough hours talking him down from the tree and out of the utter despair he expressed for not being able to get rid of his Aspergers. Breaks your heart when a day at Disneyland makes your kid feel worse instead of better – but big crowds, loud noises and the unknown does that to kids like ours. It might be a small world to Walt Disney but it’s a very big, bad and scary world for kids on the spectrum and sometimes it’s just all too much.

But, and there is a point to this post, this kid was much much much “worse off” than Kai - so much further along the spectrum than him, and after he left, and as Kai and I spent the rest of the afternoon shooting hoops and throwing a football (all the things you have to do when you are the only parent) I was thankful for the first time this week.

Lesson: things could always be worse. And talking to his mum, I can see she is tired and frazzled and I see so much of myself from five years ago in her except that I now have a diagnosis and that has made the world of difference to us and I wonder when, and not if, we will we have The Conversation?

But enough of that for now. Today I am grateful my son is the way he is. And as I look back at all the change he has endured over the last few weeks I am so very proud of him.

Little Poppy Love Muff