No Rest for the Wicked

It was ten days before Christmas and all through the house all of the creatures were stirring because Noah was restless again.


Noah has had sleep issues on and off for…well since birth. We did get it under-control this time last year after taking melatonin for a few months and being fortunate enough to take our first vacation. He was staying awake until midnight or later most nights, but once we started the melatonin he was going to sleep by 10 most nights. Since the clocks went back, it’s been a growing battle. Now the mornings are back to the joyous times of the past where he battles me about going to school, or wants me to build him a time machine.

I get the time machine request. He isn’t the only person I know who wishes to have more time, or wants to go back in time to make changes. Perhaps if he listened to me the evening before and went to sleep when requested, he would have woken at the normal time. But it isn’t all his fault. His body is wound up and restless. I get it since I had restless leg syndrome during my pregnancy-which is this creepy feeling in your legs where they want to run but are too tired to do so. Except it’s not just his legs, it is probably his whole body.

I have considered doing the melatonin again, but I know more occupational therapy is a better fit. Unfortunately his current OT can only work with him in school, and though she is practically magical, she is very pregnant and can’t toss him around like she normally does. I have no doubt she does the most she can with him. I have done occupational therapy with him over the years; however I am not as magical in that way. I also have limited time and energy because of necessity of work, which occupies just about every Noah-free-minute I have.

It is an annoying circle. Insurance doesn’t cover autism therapies, so you have to rely on the school or pay for it yourself. But to pay for it means you need more money. But if you already don’t have enough you need more work to pay for it. Yet there are only so many hours in the day, and if you burn yourself out trying to make the money. Then what is the point if you’re dead before your time or now in need of therapy yourself?

                                                 Ah Summer...and Beach Success!

 Regardless of the trials, I know the only thing I can do is keep moving forward. Staying positive is all you have sometimes, and being persistent is more important to finding success then most other things in this world. You have to figure for everyone who succeeds, someone else had to fail. This is why I keep going, one day it will be our turn, and we will be the ones who are fortunate and successful and it will be our jobs to help those who aren’t as fortunate yet.

But for now, I suppose I will give him a few more crashes and tickles, and some melatonin.

When Noah is restless he likes to get into things, line them up and crumble playdough...or paint the dogs, floors and what-not with glitter glue.

Noah and the Bus

Noah and the Bus




First of all I am overall grateful for the bus that picks Noah up for school every day. It is usually less stressful than the stressful drop off system. Where you are driving your car through a too small parking lot where people are shouting to have the kids jump out of the cars. They need to keep the line moving, but with all the cars and people and they shouting, Noah was stressed every morning, and getting him it the car was a daily problem. The bus is normally fine however, when something snaps in his mind, all bets are off.



Today was one of them mornings; the bus is running late as usual, Noah was exercising with the Wii Fit, and not really eating all of his breakfast when he began to get frustrated with every activity. Because he could not do it, the Wii fit basically is designed to sense your center of balance, and his is always off. So on days that, he is more unbalanced than usual, it is way off, and will result in him not being able to complete the tasks. So this can compound two problems, the problem that he is now frustrated in what he isn’t accomplishing, and the fact that he is unbalanced to begin with, which is the actual cause of his frustration being out of his control.



The unfortunate aspect, in the morning rush, is you don’t see it coming, and frankly a lot of the time you do not see it coming. There can be tells, but on this morning there were few to none, none that I saw at least while getting his bag and lunch packed and getting him ready.



The bus pulls up and is honking, Noah is still trying to complete the obstacle course, and he is stuck on it, he needs to finish it, so telling him you are giving him 20 laptops if he gets on the bus will not matter at this point. So I have to just turn it off. He then starts to run through the house and I have to catch him and get him to the door. He will not put on his jacket, his shoes, or carry his bags. I have to carry all of this and him to the bus; only, it is not possible to carry all of these things at the same time. He takes off and I get his stuff to the bus while he just runs around the yard refusing to go to school.



The aide on the bus can’t help, not allowed to leave the post, why they do not have an additional aide I imagine is due to funding. So this leaves him and me at a standoff in the yard. There is nothing that will get him on the bus, I cannot threaten or bribe. I only can catch, run faster and scoop him up and put him over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I do this, and put him on the bus, with no shoes, and no jacket. The jacket fell off in the house, he wants it, but I don’t go get it because all of the kids on the bus are waiting, they have issues too.



It’s a terrible time when it is happening because of the stress, anxiety involved, and the fact there is no patience in the adults involved either. They want Noah on to get to the next stop, they probably deal with this type of stuff all the time, and it is not a daily occurrence here, but it happens enough. But the point being, there is no help, even if you’re asking or pleading, or even just asking for what they think you should do. They have no suggestions, and they do not know what to do.



The most frustrating aspect is there is no currency to work with, in these particular moments. Children generally behave based on consequences of their actions, both good and bad. And when his mind snaps like this, there is no scale, no consequence that is high enough to make him comply. There is nothing that can be taken away or given to make his mind snap out of the fight or flight response. So the only thing that can be done is to physically catch him and put him on the bus. There is no preparation that can help, it is not as if I can decide to take away the exercise or the computer or the games, they are not the problem anyway. And the alternative is to just have him sit and wait for the bus, but having done this in the past, I learned this will only bring more anxiety since the bus does not show up at the same time. And even if it did, there would inevitably be some kid somewhere having a bad day that will delay the bus.



So the only thing I can do is put up with it and accept that some days this will be the case. After it’s over I need to decompress and center myself, and train to just run faster.



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Well they say Einstein had a form of Autism, turned out well for him

                                                 The Genius at Work

Noah has been very apt with technology most of his life. He has been capable of setting the timers on the VCR, all of the clocks in the house, and the DVD recorder. Some adults do not even know how to set the timer on their VCR/DVD recorder, Noah just figured it out without being shown. He only carries this ability to reading, nothing else that he has learned has come from learning on his own, or being modeled.




He started messing around with the computer when he was tall enough to see the keyboard and would peer at it in a curious fashion when I would be doing some work at the computer. Little did I know that allowing him to play with the calculator and play on some child websites would lead to him being able to create his own screen savers, install, download and eventually corrupt and dismantle part of the operating system on his own computer.



The disappearance of the main operating system happened yesterday, and the new computer that Joe and I purchased around Xmas (instead of swapping gifts) became worth every cent that I still owe on it. For if he was using my computer without my knowledge, all of my work, my book, and everything that matters that is would be gone. I do have most of my stuff backed up, but that is beside the point. The time it would take, to replace and put the material back in, if it would ever work properly would have been horrible. And some of it would have not been replaceable, because there are new things in my computer that I have not backed up yet. So thanks to the people of Dell helping us finance this computer, life goes on.



Noah’s talent with technology is one of those things that amaze me about him, and also causes us to need tons of money in the bank. For he takes apart and destroys things with his curiosity, one day though I hope if I have been encouraging him properly and his self-esteem stays high he will do something with this talent. Maybe he will be an engineer or an inventor and he can repay us for all of the many things big and small that I have had to replace over the years. And most importantly, I hope that he does some good with his talent, and does not become an evil genius. His self talking about bombs does not really concern me, because that would be silly, but I do hope he doesn’t’ play with his imaginary bombs at school. Schools tend to not be so understanding about these types of things in this day and age.



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