Boys are boys.

God made boys to be different from girls and I’m pleased about this.  This is not a sexist post, just a post of some observations I have made in the past 35 years of studying young people and the raising thereof.

Boys make weapons.  You can “ban guns” from the playroom, but the average boy will make them anyway. Even if it’s with the Wonder Bread you let them have.  They will squish it into the basic shape of a revolver and use it to shoot their table mates. Sometimes with tiny bread pellets.  Girls make guns too, but they usually require incentive.

Boys have a pre-puberty thing I call Turning Into an Alien.  (Girls turn into drama queens around age ten and may stay there for a decade.)  This usually begins, in the average boy, around the age of eight.  The sweet little guy his parents know and love can morph into an alien seemingly over night.  All of a sudden, they’re acting belligerent, defiant, fiercely opinionated and sometimes just mean.  This phase in young masculinity generally lasts until the boy is fifteen or sixteen.  It probably has to do with a gradual build up of testosterone or something, but I’m not a doctor so cannot tell you the cause. Only the observed behavior.

When my brother was eight, he morphed. When my elder son, Cyclone, was about eight, he morphed for a time.  (He’s getting better now.)  And Builder is now eight and he’s doing this standard thing that boys often just DO at his age.

But he’s autistic. So while he’s doing this, he’s also still thinking we’re lying to him because he thinks we are all part of the Borg Brain.  He’s thinking that he needs to tear down the world and start over.  He is not really able to translate the communication systems of the world to his own and vice versa.

And while he’s doing this, he’s telling his teacher that he worries when bad days happen. He thinks they’ll never end. This stuff is prompted by something so mundane and routine as Dad leaving for work or Mom going to the movies.  We do our best to alleviate his distress, but we aren’t always successful.

And sometimes…he just WANTS to be angry.  We still haven’t found out what need of his is served by this, but we see the psychiatrist again next month and we’ll try to talk about it then.

Honestly, I’m tired.  Tired from the exhausting demands on my psyche every day.  Trying to filter out what is “autism” and what is “belligerent boy who needs to get a grip.” Some things, I make allowances for. Other things need to be corrected.  Five months, he’s been home.  Every day I am on duty, often from half past four in the morning on.  I am up and on duty and answering questions, handling issues, juggling therapists’ appointments and medical tests and domestic concerns.

There are two other guys in my house, after all, who deserve a wife and mom who has time for THEM, too.  So I pore over Cyclone’s yearbook and check his papers for Honors English.  I discuss his books with him when I can.  I listen to his enthusiasms…when I can.  I remember his favorite meals and make sure he gets them at least twice a week.  I allow him the luxury of privacy when he requires it.  It is the best I can do, sometimes.

For my husband, I handle talking to the Air Conditioner Guy and the Electrical Guy and make sure he has his lunch every morning and his laundry ready for work and his home cared for so that he doesn’t have to think about it.  I see to the yard work so he isn’t responsible for mowing the yards on top of the work he does on a daily basis without complaint.

These are just the basics and I do love my life.

I am thankful that God in his Heaven gave me tools with which to manage all of this while operating on five interrupted hours of sleep a night.  He has given me grace to allow people in my house all the time when I really get stressed over that. I mean… REALLY.  My Lord and God gives me oomph when I need it, a way to laugh when I’m so far flatlined that I can’t even smile on my own. He uses his people to send me things in the mail that make my day.  He gives me children with sense of humor and a husband who enjoys me no matter who I happen to be on any given day.

So though I AM tired and I DO wish I could send Builder back to school so I could have my time to myself to focus on my novels again…

I figure I have what I need. And I’m thankful.  Someday, maybe I’ll get what I want, too.

Tags: Autism, Parenting, schooling, whining