A few weeks ago, I asked for those who are interested in writing “guest posts” for Our Out-of-Sync Life. LaToya wants to bless us by sharing her life. Thank you for being transparent, LaToya. I know several of you will be able to relate to this.
I’m going to tell you a story about a little boy and his Mommy:
His day starts around 6:30am, when the first light of the day shines in through the blinds. He is still feeling tired and groggy but can’t get his body relaxed enough to go back to sleep. So he gets up and heads to the bathroom. The next stop is to Mommy to let her know that he is hungry. When he goes to wake her she seems grumpy. He isn’t able to get out exactly what he wants because Mommy cuts him off and sends him to the table to wait for her.
Mommy is exhausted. She has only slept around 4 hours that night. She spent two hours the night before trying to get her son to sleep. She doesn’t understand why he can’t just lay down and sleep like everyone else’s children seem to do. Why does she have to spend hours every night trying to get him to sleep? It’s clear that he’s tired. He gets in the bed and lays down but five minutes after she leaves he’s jumping on the bed, or shouting to himself, or he’s on the floor doing a puzzle. This is after a day spent trying to keep him quiet and still while she tried to run her errands. He didn’t behave at the bank while she tried to withdraw some money. He was loud, and running through the building. He even knocked a lady over. He just ran into her like he had no idea that she was there or like he had no brakes. She tried to get him under control the best she could but she could hear everyone talking about her and her son. They were all saying how if she just disciplined him that he wouldn’t act like that. Well, she tried that and it doesn’t work. It just seems to make things worse. When her son walks into her room that morning she is worn out and a little cranky.
On the verge of tears he walks through the kitchen and to the table. He takes his seat and waits. But Mommy takes too long. First he starts to swing his legs, then he starts singing to himself, and before he knows it he’s up from the table running around the living room performing a song that he’ just made up himself. Just when he is about to get to the good part Mommy comes in the room and starts yelling for him to sit down, be quiet and be still!
Mommy just can’t understand why is has to be so loud in the morning. Surely he can hear that he is way too loud for inside the house. It’s not so much to ask that he sit and wait patiently for her to get up and get breakfast on the table. Why can’t he just listen to her!
He returns to his seat in tears and eats his bowl of cereal. When he’s done he puts the bowl in the sink and starts to run around the house. Mommy comes back and yells again to go in the bathroom and wash up. While brushing his teeth Mommy tells him that he’s not doing it right. She takes over, but she brushes too hard. He starts to feel something that he can’t control and starting wiggly around, which only makes Mommy more upset. He tries to sit still while she finishes but he just isn’t able to.
Then he goes to his room to get dressed. He puts on his underwear but starts to cry because the tag in the back really bothers him. Mommy yells to put them on anyway! He obeys but is so uncomfortable that he starts to cry as he puts the rest of his clothes on. Then his shirt has a tag that starts bothering him as well. It hurts and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want Mommy to be mad but he just can’t stand the tag rubbing on his skin. He starts to cry and sob and scream until Mommy comes in to check on him. She asks him what’s wrong but he isn’t really sure and can’t tell her what she wants to hear. He just stands there crying and screaming. Mommy gets frustrated and tells him to sit in his room until he can get himself together. It takes him another 20 minutes to calm down.
Every morning it’s the same thing for Mommy. He can’t brush he teeth right. These clothes hurt me. How can clothes hurt? She just doesn’t understand. He cries every time she brushes his teeth. But she has to; he doesn’t do a good job. The last thing she needs is for him to get a cavity. People already thought she couldn’t control him, and then they’d know for sure that she was a bad mom if all his teeth rotted out. And what was with all the crying all the time. He just stands there and screams and cries and there’s nothing wrong with him. I just don’t know what to do. I don’t mean to yell all the time but I’m just exhausted and at the end of my rope. No one understands what I’m dealing with, there’s no one here to help me, and no one cares.
The little boy in this story is my oldest son Bubba and I am the Mommy. This is what most mornings were like for me before he was diagnosed with SPD. I didn’t know what was wrong with my son so I couldn’t help him. And I was so exhausted from trying to figure him out that I was often mean and short with him. When a child has SPD they often relate to the world differently than other children. For my son he is not able to sleep or rest unless the room was completely dark. He often runs into things and people because he’s just unaware that he is in their space. Different textures in his clothes are just extremely difficult for him to handle. He has no sense of volume control. He cannot sit still unless he has been really active and gotten some energy out. And sometimes his body and system are so overwhelmed that the only thing he can do is cry.
He is not a discipline problem. I just have to make sure that he hears me. I have to be at his eye level and touching him to have his full attention. Have to take a few extra minutes to get rid of the tags that bother him. I have to make sure that he can get outside to run and play before bedtime. I need to make sure that I have blackout curtains when the sun is still out at bedtime. Most importantly I have to remember that my son is dealing with a world that his body has some trouble dealing with. That he needs my love not harsh words and criticism. And I need for other people not to judge me and my son.
We are both doing the best that we can by the grace of God.
LaToya is a 20 something, single mom of two boys (one with SPD). She formerly wrote about life as a single mom at Christian Momma and about schooling her boys at Homeschooling Momma.
LaToya, thank you for sharing and being so transparent!!