This time of year is so hard on my son. School is ending and his routine is changing. Everyday in school something is different. Tomorrow is field days and he is so excited. I am not looking forward to him coming home. The day is unstructured and he will be wound up when he comes home.
The sun is out longer and he wants to play outside, he doesn't have homework everyday anymore so when it is time for homework he has free time. But he gets so excited that he forgets the rules. I have to be big bad mommy and enforce them. He ran outside tonight to play but didn't ask nor did he tell me where he was going. I can't allow him to do that so I have to be the bad guy and make him come back in.
To hear him it was the end of the world, he just forgot, why was I being so mean. But that is my role. I am the parent who enforces the rules, I am the parent they don't dare say no to. I am the one who makes them cry. I hate it. I remember being a child and I remember how I felt when my father enforced the rules. The difference was back then he had assistance from my mother.
In this house it is just me. Their father has almost no authority with them and he doesn't understand why. He tells the kids to do something they ignore him or defy him and he walks away and tells me how he told the kids to do something and they didn't and he gives up. So then I have to tell the kids the exact same thing but with authority and they do it.
I have been put in the position of being the law in the house and I am never off duty. Not that any parent ever is but usually they can get support from the other parent. I don't even like leaving the house with him in charge because I know it will be a disaster when I come back and if I comeback after bedtime I know they will be awake.
Tonight and the next few weeks will be Aspie Days. My son's emotions will be like a roller coaster and we all will just want to get off the ride. His father will be snapping, because even three years after the asperger's diagnosis he doesn't understand it. He know what I have told him, but never has done his own research. I say he knows what I told him, I should rephrase that, he remembers some of the things I told him. He just really doesn't understand it. He thinks it is something that a child should be able to control.
His favorite analogy to use is when Fonzie on Happy Days was blind Ritchie made him put his motorcycle together with no help. First that is not real life!. Second blindness is not the same thing as Asperger's. Every year at the end of the school year we go through so many changes and adjustments that I feel like I will go crazy. The worst one is that Daddy sleeps all day because he works all night. He does not adjust well to children playing during the day. The children do not adjust well to trying to stay quiet while they play because Daddy is sleeping.
How long until September? I hope I can get through this summer!
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