Tuesday, August 14, 2007

A Very Stimmy Two Days.....

UGH! This is sometimes the worst part of dealing with Nick. Dealing with his stims. The past two days have really frazzled my brain. The constant sounds of the remotes being twirled against the walls, clicking his tongue endlessly, constantly wanting to turn the light on the ceiling fan on/off/and on again, twirling toys, spinning them on the coffee table, twirling his hands in front of his face, toe-walking, lining things up vertically. I think I said all the things he has been doing in earnest the past two days. I know why he has been this way. Michael has had soccer camp the past two days and Nick has been around more people than I am sure he cares to. It is a disruption in his schedule, and we pay the price with his constant stimming. Yesterday was awful. He was trying to stand up part of the portable A/C vertically on the bunk bed. It was not working right and he was screaming. I went into the room thinking something surely awful had happened to him(that's how loud his screaming was) only to find him getting irate and waving the part around(the long piece that goes in the window-hard plastic) and I immediately knew where this was going! Sure enough, he had that wild look in his eyes(the I'M OUT OF CONTROL look) and before I knew it, that object was ejected into the air-and landed right on my foot! Holy SH*T that hurt!! I managed to keep my composure and for that I am thankful. I grabbed it, and put it up someplace very high where little man cannot reach. Needless to say, the top of my foot has a decent size bruise. Today has been physically less painful,but mentally exhausting as I keep removing things from the house(the baby gate is outside-one day of standing it up and knocking it down 500 times will do that!)or Nick's reach.

Sunday we went out to eat at a place called Shari's. Nick was having a good day and was happily munching on some french fries. I was amazed he was eating these because they were bigger fries and they had the skins still on. He was quite verbal, and happily jumping on the seat. We were happy to have this smidgeon of time where Nick is doing what every other kid his age does. So maybe we were not totally ready to tell him to "Stop it!". Well, the man in the booth next to ours was seemingly annoyed with Nick's jumping and peering over the makeshift wall. He stood up and said to us "Can you PLEASE make him STOP that until after I eat??!" My mouth said "Yes Sir. We will try." But my head was screaming "Are you kidding me??!! This is the most NORMAL thing he has done ALL DAY...I am not ready for him to STOP. You have no idea what it takes for him to do things like this!!" Regular people will just never understand. We need places just for autie kids and their parents. A place where they won't be judged or told to "STOP IT!"