Resolving on its own?!

As the doctor arrived to do the new assessment on Captain Adventure, I realized with something of a jolt that it was almost exactly one year ago that I ripped up my paycheck and came home so that I could focus on the family’s needs without the constant whining from the peanut gallery – I (and a few others in the organization with two working parents) had been reprimanded several times for ‘excessive’ and ‘abrupt’ sick days.

With four kids going to school and/or daycare, combined with the worst flu season we’d seen in a long, long time (one of our daycares actually closed down for a day to have their toddler room professionally sanitized!), well.

There were a lot of sick days. And with both of us working from home, that meant both of us had to deal with trying to talk on the phone while children screamed and cried and begged for medicine, popsicles, ponies and trips to Europe in the background.

But I’m not going to pick at that old scab. Or the one where we’d committed to Certain Things (the remodeling, mostly) based on two incomes and then had to figure out what to do about them on just one.

I’ve got a new scab to pick.

After I had done the final rapid-fire ‘yes, no, sometimes’ response section of the assessment, the doctor sat back and said, “OK. Right. So. Why, exactly, did you feel he might need treatment?”

As I was explaining all the things that had so alarmed me, he kept nodding and occasionally scribbling something down. I told him how things were last year, how they were as recently as Thanksgiving. I explained about the tantrums, the stiff body language, the head-banging and the fixated behaviors, endlessly running around and around a table until someone intervened, distracted him into something else. The utter lack of communication, the lack of empathy he had shown toward his siblings.

How far he’s come in a short year.

“If he had been like this a year ago,” I concluded. “I probably wouldn’t have worried enough to jump into all this.”

“That’s how these kinds of isolated speech delays often are,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Just when you get good and worried, they resolve on their own.”

Have you ever found yourself suddenly and completely enraged by what is actually a fairly innocuous comment?

Oh…I got well and truly pissed.

This isn’t resolving ‘on its own’. It is resolving because his teachers and I are working our brains out on it. It is resolving because there is a team of specialists coming to him every single weekday, speech therapists and occupational therapists and of course his patient and wonderful teacher. It is resolving because his sisters, day in and day out, put up with him, work with him on communicating clearly, wait patiently for their mother to have a second for their wants and needs, and otherwise behave like really, really good sports.

I am humbled by my daughters, sometimes. They have ten times the patience I do, and dear God, they are only children.

I am spending hours each week with flash cards, playing the Color Game, taking him out in the car and asking him to identify things. I go through the supermarket with him asking him to find the oranges, the apples, the bananas, the bagels. And I’m going to admit something horrible to you right here: Sometimes, I really hate it.

I hate the way he’ll yell his mangled attempts at ‘banana’ at the top of his lungs. I hate the way people sometimes look at us when he garbles out something completely incomprehensible – he’s almost four, and he looks every minute of his age, and he often sounds (oh, brutal reality) retarded. I hate it when he gets frustrated and kicks up into a tantrum in public.

I hate sometimes overhearing things. “Mommy, what’s wrong with that little boy?” “Don’t stare, honey, he’s got…he’s…well, he’s special…”

Sometimes, I’d really just rather leave him at home with daddy and go shopping alone. Sometimes I do. And then I feel guilty because I’ve just let another ‘learning opportunity’ slip away. So the next time, I load him up and take him along and we play the Shopping Game, and people sometimes stare and sometimes they offer Helpful Hints and sometimes they want to tell me about their {nephew, cousin, grandson, neighbor’s kid} who has {Downs syndrome, autism, Pokeman Toe, Presbyterianism} and the miracle cure was {gluten-free, sugar-free, organic t-shirts, reading to them in French}.

My personal favorite was the old lady who chastised me for carrying him in the parking lot. He’s a great big boy he ought to walk you’re spoiling him he’s going to grow up a monster!

A few moments later as he cheerfully screamed, “GAH-BAH-BOO! EEEEEEEN GAH-BAH-BOO!!” (uh…would you believe, ‘shampoo, green shampoo’?), she tapped me on the shoulder and said, humbly, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he was retarded. You poor dear, it must be so hard for you.”

Lord forgive me, I wanted to punch her right in her wizened old kisser. Mostly because I felt like I was going to Cry In Public (gah!), and the only thing I loathe more than crying in the first place is Crying In Public (gah!!).

There is a whole team of concerned people working with him, every single day, to get him where he is right now. A lot of sacrifices being made, a lot of work being done, a lot of care and concern and love focused on helping this little guy learn how to swim with the rest of us fish.

‘Resolve on their own’ my arse.

“Actually, it isn’t resolving on its own,” I said briskly, trying to keep my tone chipper while inside I was baring my fangs and snarling. “He’s going to the special needs preschool, and of course we’re working on it here at home too – in fact, I quit my job so that I could make all this happen for him.”

The man had sense enough to agree with me that no, it wasn’t “just going away” and that yes, all our hard work was definitely, absolutely, positively the reason he was enjoying such a tremendous improvement.

And then he ran for his car.

Sigh. Sometimes, it really is the little crap that sets you off, you know? The bigger things, well, you understand why they set your hair on fire. But I’m always surprised when some tiny little thing gets my fur all standing up and sets steam coming out of my ears.

We’ll have his formal report in a few weeks. We also have a major psychological evaluation at the end of May, for which I have to trek all the way to Sacramento.

The bad news is, I have to go all the way to Sacramento.

The good news is, due to the (ahem) FOUR HOUR roundtrip drive plus the two hours of assessment, Daddy will be in charge of the other three Denizens and their school pickups / dropoffs.

I’ll only have Captain Adventure with me.

He is, you may recall, a Yarn Monster.

He will not mind checking out the Sacramento yarn stores while we are there. Purely for research purposes, you understand. Because Rams asked about the Sacramento yarn stores and frankly the only one I knew of has closed (not, uh, that I had any time for yarn stores because obviously I rushed right home when my train arrived in Sacramento a little early and did NOT spend any time at all driving by the yarn store I remembered downtown…).

So, as an act of purest nobility and only for the sake of the common good, I shall drag myself into every a few one or two at the most yarn stores in Sacramento after his early-morning assessment.

...there goes MY allowance for the last three months...