A tender moment while snuggling with Eddie (4) at bedtime . . .

Eddie – You didn’t feed me dinner.

Erin – You totally had dinner when we went through the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way to pick the big kids up.

Eddie – It doesn’t count if we don’t sit around the table and I get to share my stories.

Thank you for reading this edition of When Your Own Words Come Back and Bite You In Your Butt.

 

Thank you and did you remember to Supersize my side of guilt?

Finding the Funny

One day in our orthodontist’s office, we were saying a not-so-silent prayer that Biddie’s $400 retainer could be replaced for the low, low cost of the Happy Meal it followed into the trash. My neighbor Elsa and her daughter, who we hadn’t seen much lately, were there too. Apparently, orthodontia unites us all.

We caught up on the headlines of each other’s lives, and I casually mentioned that Ace was running spring track.

“Do you drive him every day? Danny ran cross-country in the fall, but my schedule changed, and I can’t give him rides home from practice. Could he catch a ride with you?”

“Do you think he would go with me?”

“I’ll work everything out.”

“Ok.”

And just like that, I started a carpool with my 16 year old neighbor. Nothing out of the ordinary for us as carpools are just part of the five kid equation—like laundry and astronomical food bills. But Danny has autism, and that makes the equation slightly more complicated.

You know the saying about being a little pregnant? Well, Danny does not have just a little autism.  I was concerned that Danny didn’t really know me. I was concerned that he didn’t really know Ace. I was concerned that perhaps I had gotten not just me, but Ace, in over our heads.

But there was no need for concern. My neighbor, like most moms of kids with autism, hides her superhero cape well.  At 12pm, we were chatting it up in the orthodontist’s office. By 3pm THAT DAY, Ace and Danny had met with each other, the track coach, the special ed teacher, and my neighbor.

Unaware of all this mountain moving that had transpired since our conversation, I was still a little nervous.  So I sent her a text.

Me: How will he know to find me? Should I go to the coach?

Neighbor: Ace is taking charge of him. It’s cute.

Me: He can be a sweetie. And then his head spins. : )

Neighbor: Spits pea soup and everything? Cool.

It was all so. . . ordinary, and, for the most part, it has continued to be.

It was a little bumpy in the beginning. Ace was not particularly happy with the arrangement. Elsa and I had worked everything out before I even had a chance to talk to Ace—a rookie mistake. My crown was definitely looking a little tarnished.

In our old routine, Ace would walk with his track buddies to the front of school after practice and hang out until I arrived. With the dawn of the new carpool, Ace waited for Danny to come off the track, and I picked them up right there . Ace didn’t mind hanging with Danny, but he didn’t want to lose this social time, crucial to the ultra-social Freshman that he is. With a little time and talking, Ace created new routines with his friends that included Danny. A couple of the moms even started picking their boys up where I picked up Danny and Ace.

We had some smoothing to do with the rest of our crew too.  On the first day of our carpool, Eddie (4) shouted from the back seat, “Hey, who are you?” to Danny in the front seat. Eddie’s attempts at first contact fell flat, so Eddie said, “Hey, why won’t he talk to me?” I turned to Danny and said, “That is Eddie. If you say hi, he will probably stop screaming at you.” Notice my use of the word probably, we never REALLY know what Eddie is going to do. So, Danny turned his head towards me and said, “Hi, Eddie.” Every time that Eddie is in the car, Danny says “Hi, Eddie” right away. That’s a suave move for any kid.

Now, our carpool is our new normal. We drive Danny home almost every day. We make sure he has a ride covered on the days we can’t drive him. We cheer him on with Ace’s other friends at the meets. In many ways, it’s just like every other carpool we have.

In other ways, it isn’t. Danny definitely has autism. He doesn’t always respond to us when we talk to him, and he never looks us in the eye (although I have seen him scan the track like a searchlight for Ace).  He has the language and social challenges you might expect from someone with his diagnosis. But he is surprisingly flexible and accommodating too. When we have had to make another stop before heading home, he may have been a little concerned, but he rolled with it—a big bonus when you are hanging with us. Overall, he tolerates our noisy, silly, chatty crew beautifully, which is a high compliment.

In the end, I marvel at Danny.  In my life BC (before children), I taught preschoolers with autism. In my work, I didn’t see ANY Dannys—kids dealing so beautifully with the noise and havoc that autism can wreak in the life of the mind. But those kids were just starting out after that initial diagnosis, and their families were still nursing broken hearts. Danny has had years of great teachers (and even not-so-great teachers), some fine support from his schools, and don’t forget that SuperMomma I mentioned before. I have no idea how he is doing in school, but in life he seems to be managing really well. This, in the end, is what driving Danny has given me—a chance to reimagine a future for those first students—and  I am careful to appreciate the moment.

When I get to practice early, unlike the other moms with their heads buried in their books, I watch the boys as they arc around the track. With their arms pumping and legs pounding, they move freely, easily, and gracefully.  Danny is a natural runner, so he is a joy to watch.  This moment touches me—beautiful in the moment and the metaphor. This is what I wished for those students way back when.  Back then, we talked a lot about what it would mean to have an “exceptional” child with “extraordinary” needs.  There was a lot of talk about all the “wouldn’ts”, “couldn’ts”, and “wont’s”.  This is what I wanted for them always, even if you couldn’t always tell with the book-length IEPs, even if my imagination didn’t see quite this far into the future.  I always hoped they would have  a moment like this one—a chance to be, like Danny, extraordinarily ordinary.

By Erin

 April is Autism Awareness Month.  The prevalence of autism has risen to 1 in 110 births, 1 in 70 for boys. Many of us have an autism story to share. This is mine.

Write on Edge‘ s prompt this week was:

“We’d like you to explore friendship. You can talk about a current friendship or one from your past, a friend you met over kindergarten snacks or happy hour at your first job. Examine your emotional interest in the friendship and the role it plays, or played, in your life.

The word limit for this prompt is 400 words. While that may not seem like many words to devote to a friend you’ve known for thirty years, try to provide us with a snapshot that encompasses your feelings about the friendship.”

Two-For-One

We are including two prompt responses under one post because, well, there are two of us. We blog with a shared voice and focus as Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms. It can be challenging, but what might be even more challenging, is explaining to people how we do it without killing each other. We decided to take this prompt as a blind challenge to explore this question. Ellen is going to write about Erin and vice versa. Erin’s husband is going to load both essays and then we are going to see where the chips fall. Does anyone have Judge Judy’s phone number?

Erin: One Analogy Is Not Enough

Erin is the self-described Labrador Retriever of Women. With her being the wordsmith that she is, I’m going to take the easy road and continue with this analogy. She has all the very best qualities of a Lab – loyal, fun, outgoing, intelligent, and adorable – without the shedding, slobber, and muddy paws. Well, occasionally she has muddy paws, but she does always clean up after herself.

But a woman this fabulous cannot be pegged by just one analogy. She is also THE safe harbor of friendship. She draws friends of all personalities and shelters them with her compassionate and accepting nature. I am prone to bitterness, because I tend to tamp down my feelings so as not to offend anyone. This is never an issue with Erin, because while she will hold you accountable, she will never turn you away for sharing who you are. She just has this supernatural ability to reflect and magnify all that is good in you.

She is also like a poorly maintained roller coaster: if you are not buckled in and paying attention, she will have you off on a tangent in the blink of an eye. While this can make planning a trip with her challenging, it is in these tangents where the heartstrings of friendship are woven tighter.

If I just made you throw up a little in your mouth with the word “heartstrings,” let me redeem myself. She can also get on your nerves like a stonewalling teenager. If she goes “radio-silent” on me one more time, immediately after blog-posting, texting, emailing, Facebooking,  or tweeting, I’m going to pee in her Pollyanna Kool-Aid. Love you.

XOXOX – Ellen

Ellen

“You can write me, but you will never capture me.” Thus speaketh Ellen, and like she has so many other times, reveals the absolute truth of the matter. Ellen defies the pigeonholing that sums most people up. She is just so Ellen.

A force of nature, she is so the chick you want in your get-away car. Ellen is a do-it-yourselfer extraordinaire harboring Macgyver-esque fantasies. She can also help you find what ails you, bake a cake that makes you want to live in her kitchen, and guide some pretty great kids through life.  She manages all this with a flair and fashion sense that I admire.

Over the years, Ellen has blown me away with the many shades and depths of her character, but the thing that binds us, the thing that makes US work is our ability to make each other laugh. Even if nobody else agrees, we think we are funny as hell.

I am grateful to Ellen on many levels, but I owe her truly for being the one who kicked me out of my Erinness and made me do what I have always wanted to do—write.  She wrote me an email once in response to a piece I had written that said “I can go in and do some editing like an overachieving 4th grade mom who wants her kid to get the A.” She can, and she has, more times than I can count. She pushes, I pull. She demands, I rise to the challenge. She laughs, I dissolve in giggles. She is the right partner for me in this blog, because she sees me and what we are trying to do so clearly.

“You can thank me later for your first sentence.” Yes, Ellen, and then some.

We are linking up again to Yeah Write—suffice it say that the community of writers there and the writing itself has us hooked. We are officially addicts!

Oh, the B-word, how the thought of you does things to me!  I had seen garden variety bullying up close and personal when I taught middle school. The jibes and sneers, the petty grievances and snotty snubs, even the cold shoulders, were ugly but ever-present parts of the landscape. Now, as a mom to tweens and teens, I am helping sidestep those land mines daily.

But something really terrible happened. A sixth-grader with autism was bullied at the bus-stop in our town. This was a horse of a different color. The incident was so heart-breaking and outrageous that it made national news.

There are a lot of conversations right now in my ‘hood about what the schools can do, what the parents should have done, and what kids can do to prevent bullying. I know our community is still reeling, but coulda-woulda-shoulda is the least helpful sort of conversation.

With little control over school policy and no control over other parents’ households, I am still powerful. I can control the conversations that I have with my kids and their friends about the B-word and what I expect and what they can do.

So, here is what we talk about when we talk about bullying. We keep talking and talking.  You should too.

 

Click on this badge to go to our Pinterest board and repin it for yourself to spread this positive message against bullying.

 Ways to Banish the B Word:

1. You don’t have to be friends WITH everybody, but you have to be A Friend TO everybody.   Let this sink in. This is the Big Kahuna. If this is the only concept we impress on our kids, then we have all won: treat ALL kids kindly and with respect. As Robert Fulghum famously wrote, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Even Kindergarteners know that friends play fair, talk nice, share, and take turns.  Your child is a long way from eating paste and writing with crayons. Encourage them to act like it. They may have great arguments for why you just don’t get it (or maybe that’s just my kids—the great future litigators). That is why there is point #2.

2. Somebody might not be your flavor, but there is nothing wrong with Mint Chocolate Chip. Here’s the thing your kids need to know right now and remember always. They are not going to like everybody (and vice versa).  Some people may grate on their last nerve and drive them crazy, but who cares? You may hate mint chocolate chip ice cream. It may make your nose wrinkle, your stomach curl, and make you say unkind things to the person who just served it to you. You know what? I love it. It’s my favorite. People are just like that.  Some are just the right flavor for you. Some aren’t. It doesn’t matter. Your job is to teach your kids to recognize that Baskins Robbins has over 1000 flavors because there is beauty in diversity and choice and differences. And that they too are still lovable and worthwhile—even if they always choose vanilla.

3. Size Matters. We all want our kids to be exceptional and special, and they are. These differences among them mean that kids come in all shapes, sizes, and personality types. We need to teach our kids that if they are bigger, stronger, more athletic, smarter, anything -er than the kids around them, they have a great responsibility to be gentler, sweeter, more patient, and more kind.  The Lord of the Rings said it best, “With great gifts comes great responsibility.” They need to own who they are and what they are bringing to the table. Exceptionally kind is just as important and noteworthy as exceptionally smart or athletic. There might not be a medal for it, but make sure they know you think there should be.

4. Momma was right. It isn’t what you say it’s how you say it.  If size matters, then words really do. As bombs or  salves, words charge the atmosphere of the classroom and the playground.  “Nice shoes” is a perfectly fine thing to say to someone unless you don’t mean it. Sarcasm is nastiness’  sneaky friend. If they invite Sarcasm to play, they are being mean. Period. Teach them to be sincere or be quiet.

5. Saying nothing says something.   This is hard to teach, but this is the most important thing for most kids.  Most kids aren’t doing the picking, but they aren’t stopping it either. As the mom, you need to acknowledge this in your discussion: “I know that you didn’t call him names or push him down or hurt his feelings. But you were there. And you were silent.” Great men have said great things about this. Consider Edmund Burke who said that “Evil prevails when good men are silent.” That’s a little deep for recess, but you get my point. Teach your kids: Speak up, Be simple, and Be clear. “This is uncool. I am not standing for it.”

6. Choose the Best Version of Yourself.  Every day we see our kids making important decisions about how to wear their hair, what clothes to put on, what shows to watch, what apps to download. They are trying on different hats to see which fits the real them. They will have opportunities EVERY SINGLE DAY to wear a white hat or a black hat. Teach your kids to Be the Hero or at least the person who can sleep with a worry-free conscience at night. Say out loud to them if necessary, “This is isn’t my favorite  version of you. You can do better.” They want desperately to get it right.  Let them know in no uncertain terms when they are getting it all wrong.

We Moms are powerful creatures in this universe called home. Bullying at its deep ugly heart is just another word for cruelty, and we won’t have that in our schools, on our computers, in our homes, or on our playgrounds. This is the way we Moms take a stand. This is what we do. This is the way we banish the B Word. One Conversation At  A Time.

–Erin