I've been thinking lately that maybe I don't belong here. Things have been so good for so long with Taz that I'm hardly able to remember when they were difficult. I don't know if he is growing out of his issues, or if not eating eggs and dairy for so long has had a profound effect on his nervous system, but he just seems so normal lately.

Today I brought him with me to a meeting I had to go to because his dad had other plans. I expected we would not be able to stay without disrupting the meeting, but I figured I'd give it a shot. To my extreme surprise, he sat quietly beside me doing mazes and connecting the dots in a workbook. He even whispered when he needed to ask me questions (this is a kid who has not known the meaning of the word quiet before now). He sat in one place without causing a big scene for probably 45 minutes (!) while the adults had a discussion. It was absolutely astounding. I felt like I had lost my child somewhere and ended up with a stray - a stray with amazing self-control.

Yesterday I watched a movie called Mozart and the Whale. Have you seen it? It's not really a very good movie, but it does provide a sort of tutorial on Asperger's. It reaffirmed my belief that I am probably an Aspie, and so is Taz. But since I don't plan to put Taz in a traditional school environment I just can't see how Asperger's is a disability, exactly. Maybe that's because I don't necessarily recognize when Taz's (or my own) behavior is causing difficulty in social situations.

But maybe we can just play that by ear. Maybe it's okay for now that we don't really know how to make friends. Maybe, like the main characters in Mozart and the Whale, we can just be our quirky selves together and not worry too much about the rest of the world. Maybe that's okay. Maybe we're okay.

It’s when we’re at home that my son, Taz, has problems. If he is not continually and directly engaged by an adult (or a television if we’re too exhausted), he starts bumping into walls, crashing into and climbing on furniture, doing headstands on the couch, running, tripping, yelling, and throwing things.

 

On the other hand, if we go on a three hour hike in the wilderness, he is calm and focused the whole time. He can balance on stepping stones to cross a stream without getting wet. He thinks of games to play in the dirt, and can play them for multiple minutes.

 

It’s when we’re at home that I have problems, too. If there’s a child who is bumping, crashing, climbing, headstanding, running, tripping, yelling, and throwing - I lose it. I need a certain sense of order, at least a little bit. I need the people around me to not be continually injuring themselves. I need occasional moments of peace and quiet.

 

Sometimes I fantasize about living in the wilderness, like where we hike, or maybe on a ranch. I could open the back door and nudge Taz outside anytime he started bouncing off the walls. He could wander and explore, and I could watch him from the kitchen window. All his needs (and mine) would easily be met if we lived on a ranch.

 

In the real world, parenting Taz is extremely hard, but I don’t know if he really has special needs. From the time he was born I suspected something was different about him. He was absolutely active alert (as described by Linda S. Budd) - he did the commando crawl after we brought him home from the NICU when he was only a week old. He was most definitely high need (as described by Dr. Sears) – he wouldn’t (and still doesn’t) tolerate being left alone even briefly. He was extremely needy, yes, but he was not... disabled. Sure, he almost never slept and was constantly injuring himself, but according to the milestone charts and the pediatrician’s evaluation he was developmentally on track.

 

So why was it so amazingly difficult to parent him? Why was he so unhappy? Why was I feeling like such a failure?

 

I tried every method in every parenting book for creating stability in our family, and yet, nothing was working. Our lives continued to feel upside-down, as they had since the moment of Taz’s birth.

 

I began to look inward. The other moms I knew did not seem to be struggling the way I was, and no one else seemed to think anything was unusual about my son, or if they did, they didn’t say so. Maybe it was me who had the special needs. Maybe I was the one who was disabled. Maybe I did not have the skills to be a parent at all.

 

I researched obsessively. I alternated between trying to find other children who sounded like my son and trying to find other parents who shared my feelings of incompetence. I considered my history. I thought about my own difficulties growing up.

 

One day as I was researching I stumbled upon some information about Asperger’s Syndrome. I considered the possibility that Taz had Asperger’s only briefly because, well, he was three. I figured that three year olds are generally pretty weird when compared to people with fully formed brains, and how could I really know how much was abnormal and how much was just three?

 

I decided not to pursue a diagnosis for him, but realized that the Asperger’s criteria applied to me. I tried it on - I proclaimed myself “a mom with Asperger’s.” It seemed to really fit and I finally had an explanation for the difficulties I had been having. It also allowed me to accept and embrace my parenting problems as my own.

 

I still don’t know, though. Sometimes I think maybe this is all in my head. I really don’t know what’s normal and what’s not, and even if Taz really is atypical I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to pursue a diagnosis for him. I don’t want the experts to tell me what he should be like because even though parenting him is really hard, a part of me still believes he is perfect just the way he is. He certainly would be... if we lived on a ranch.