In Over My Head

"I can't do this," I thought to myself as I followed the distant figure of my 5 year-old son across the sand dunes. "God, please give me the words to say to him. I have no idea what to say to him."

He looks back over his shoulder...and picks up his pace. The distance between us is increasing, but I don't run after him. I steadily trudge through the thick, tall grass, up and down, up and down the dunes. He is nearing the houses now, a good distance from the actual beach where we started. I call to him, asking him to slow down and wait for me. I don't tell him to come back, as I know that will only make him move faster. Stubbornly, he keeps walking. "Fine," I yell at him in my mind, "I'll follow you all the way to town if I have to, but you can't get rid of me!"

"I can't do this," I tell God in defeat, as my little boy stands on the balcony above his occupational therapist, myself, and the packed waiting room spitting down on us. Moments before, when we briefly had him pinned to the ground, he was screaming hateful words, kicking and punching. Then he took off again, tearing around the therapy center, laughing and calling out gibberish. "What do you usually do when he acts this way?" his therapist asks. Crying, I shrug and mumble, "We don't know what to do."

"I can't do this," I think again, as I stand surrounded by parents of "normal" children at kindergarten registration. I feign confidence as I hand my packet to the secretary and deliver the message my son's special ed teacher had given me. ("He is enrolled in a full-day special ed program right now. The district has arranged for him to have a spot in the full-day kindergarten program. You can talk to CM at Special Services.") "I can't do this!" I declare, as I walk away, red-faced, after the secretary simply tells me 'no' like I'm crazy, cutting off my explanation, tossing my son's packet with the others, and moving on to the next parent.

"Really, Lord, I can't do this!" I tell Him again, only two hours later, hurrying across the busy store with beeping pager in hand. "I only dropped him off in the kid's room 10 minutes ago, so I know this can't be good news. What am I going to do?" I apologize to the attendant, explaining lamely that the reason he didn't give her eye contact when she tried to tell him that no, he can't throw things at the other children is because he has autism blah, blah, blah and whisk him away.

Such has been our life lately.

For some reason that nobody has figured out, he has become increasing difficult in the last two months or so. While he still continues to do well academically at school, he has become more and more of a behavior problem there. Perhaps he is becoming bored? It frustrates me that I am not more on top of his issues to be able to determine why he seems to be progressing in some areas and regressing in others. Shouldn't I have this figured out by now?

Each day is such a battle to fight, I don't have the brain power to break each moment down and deduce, for example, why he felt he needed to destroy all my tulips. And that is part of the reason why I have concluded that I simply cannot do it. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to figure out what to do. I'm not a brave enough person to argue with a rude secretary. I'm not strong enough to fight for his rights when I don't even know what he needs.

I don't know where to go from here. I feel so inadequate to parent this child that God has given me. The Lord has carried us up this mountain the last 9 months since his diagnosis, but now we've tumbled into the valley once again. I'm in over my head, waiting once again for Him to pull me out. Psalm 121....

** If you have stuck around long enough to notice that I seem to have a bazillion pictures of him standing alone in the surf, its because I DO have a bazillion pictures of him standing alone in the surf. And they are all different. And they all make me weep. It seems to be the place where he is happiest. I think he would rather be there than pretty much anywhere else in the world. Hey, at least I've figured that much out. **