4.21.2004

Brutal

Today was not an easy day to be Leelo's mom. Or dad.

The boy is in gibbering mode again. He'll chat and chat and chat and chat, but it's not intelligible and he won't acknowledge us unless we make heroic efforts to break through. He laughs maniacally. He runs around in pointless circles. He only wants to play with two blocks. His pronunciation of what language he has is starting to get muddy.

All these behaviors were peaking today. Seymour is worried about it, too. He says that this is not behavior he's ever seen described in autism literature, and that to him it seems more deranged than autistic. To me it seems like another form of remoteness, another form of stimming.

This specific behavior set seems to come in waves, but there are no explicable patterns, even with our maniacal tracking of changes in his supplements and diet. The only thing I can possibly think of is that he's getting too much magnesium (as that powder goes in his toast, so he always gets a full dose), without Vitamin B6 to balance it (he's been refusing his supplement cocktails outright for the past few days).

He is also becoming increasingly difficult to "handle." I was holding him in my lap as Iz and her friends played on the lawn after school. He got irritated about being restrained, and, instead of saying "Let me go" or "All done," bucked back and smashed the bridge of my nose with his skull. That was enough to bring tears of pain, but then once those got going, the sobs I'd been holding in all day broke through, too. Being his mom is hard. It's just fucking hard.

Anyhow, I don't blame him for wanting to go run around with the other kids, but I just can't let him unless I shadow him completely. He has no sense and tends to make a beeline for the adjacent busy parking lot. Plus my shadowing of him disrupts the other kids' playing. But this is one of Iz's favorite times of the week. Sigh. No easy solution.

From there it was on to his Bio5et appointment (accupressure for food sensitivities, etc.). Leelo was so difficult, so very non-compliant--hitting himself, howling, hitting me, pulling my hair, scratching my face, bucking, squirming--that I almost started wailing in there, too. If Iz hadn't been sitting next to me the whole time, I just might have.

Thankfully Seymour, saint that he is, agreed to take on the kids for the evening so I could go out. Which I did. To a wonderful local Mexican joint (Nikkko's) where they make your horchata fresh when you order it. And then I saw a silly movie. And then I came home and saw Angel, which totally rocked. So now I'm in a better mood. Sort of.

It's not as though everything that happened today was horrible. Iz kept me amused by telling me about the "floating elbows" and "floating feet" she was making (same technique as making a floating finger). She also showed me how to make regular and square knots, which she of course learned from Badger's How To Do Everything book.

There was good Leelo news, too. Therapist L keeps telling me how excellent his spontaneous play is during his breaks--actual pushing of cars and making car noises, etc. And he ate carrots today! Not that he knows--they were grated into his pancakes--but still. Carrots. That's bonafide vegetable material.

Also, his spontaneous greetings can be excellent, for some reason especially with cafe owners Minna and Rob--they always get the full "Hi + name" that we have to cajole out of him otherwise. But, Minna and Rob have powers beyond those of mere mortals. Minna could tell just by looking at me that I was completely whacked out today--she said she could see my aura arcing crazily over my head.

I am hoping for a happy tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Respectful disagreement encouraged.