With the good....you must sign up for some bad.

I haven't been writing. I am sure you noticed. There is a big loss in your reading material....totally my fault. I was told that the blog is best when it is funny. I haven't found autism all that funny lately. We started back at school, which I thought was going to be a good thing after all because, without even so much as one tear being shed we were granted a full time aide! Ben would have one on one help from the time he arrives until the time he goes home. Victory! Well......it baffles me how we could hand him all the tools he needs to succeed and he still manages to fail. Perhaps fail is a strong word....he is attempting to try. That is about all I will give him. He has gotten upset almost every day and tried to come home from school more than once. The problems he has are never that big, to the neurotypical person that is. To him they are mountains surrounded by razor wire. The first thing that set him off was a simple misunderstanding about what was going to happen next in class. He thought one thing, the teacher did another. This is where that ridged thinking becomes a problem. There is no such word as flexible in my son's world. The black and white world he lives in does not allow for quick shifts or changes in the rules. See, none of this is very funny. It is however our life. During the day while he is at school, I am home dreading the phone call from him. I am worrying he will never get past fifth grade, and he will live with us until he is 50 years old. My fears and worries somehow take over my day. I feel like I have been through a war. Then I pick him up from school and he is laughing and being silly and life is okay. He does bounce back, he does manage to somehow have an amazing sense of humor throughout all of this. I need to take a lesson from that. I need to let him be. Let him be a mess, a nervous wreck, a frustrated student, a boy who cries every day in class. That is so hard. At some point he is going to have to make it. I am sure it will be his sense of humor that will pull him to the top. (Or at very least pull him out of the deep end)
    We were at the store the other day and he saw a greeting card. He informed me that when he moves out he will be giving me and Dad a sympathy card. He said he knows how sad we will be. I laughed. He is right....we will be sad, but not if he is moving out at 50.
I don't really understand how things will go from here. He is in a new territory learning how to be without all the medications. He must learn to deal with impulses, frustrations and anger all without Big Pharma's "help". I hoped for a miracle cure. I hoped I was Jenny McCarthy.
So as not to end on a biter angry note.... I must say that slowly we are getting back to the funny side of Ben. Inappropriate humor seems to be his new thing. He is enjoying the shock and awe factor of being suddenly naked. This new trend has not appeared outside the home......yet. I hope that it stays here and I do not get a phone call about my son streaking across the playground at school. This totally falls into the category of no filter. As I am writing this I am remembering where he heard on the radio about these friends who, in order to shock each other, would randomly get as naked as possible with out the other person noticing. My daughter and I came home from running an errand today and Ben was cleaning the bathroom.....naked. Ahhhh yes......slowly but surely my life will be funny again.