Showing posts with label peers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peers. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

A Bear of Very Little Brain

We've been reading The House at Pooh Corner.  I can't help but ponder this quote from chapter 6:
...when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it...."

I just see that as expressing what I am assuming my son must feel quite often. I am making that assumption based on his apparent lack of social skills and how often he is awkward or says or does awkward things.

I often wonder if in his mind these Things are not awkward; they make perfect sense to him inside his brain. But when he acts or speaks upon those very Things all of the sudden he appears quite foolish. Like at school where it is most obvious that he is different from the other children when placed in social settings.

My heart catches in my throat each time I watch it play itself out. This boy of mine truly is like Pooh bear in many ways and I, his Christopher Robin, loving him always and helping him make sense of his nonsense. My child often acts like a Bear of Very Little Brain: my son, like Pooh, is always friendly and never thinks anyone is a stranger; he wanders happily & innocently in a world of his own making; he never thinks ill of anyone; he loves hugs; he loves sweet honey; he is rumbly tumbly; he hums little tunes and makes up songs of Very Little Sense.

I write this in the most kind manner when I say he is of Very Little Brain, because, truly, that is what Fetal Alcohol does to a persons brain. It destroys it forever. Permanently.

And I say it with compassion and sorrow that it has to be so because FASD is 100% preventable. Yet I know, even with his FASD,  he is an amazing, loveable Pooh Bear boy. And I know God has a hope and a future for him.

I sure do love this child!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

So simple, yet so complicated

Its such a dilemma: I struggle with this decision to allow our child with FASD to play next door without me hovering. It really doesn’t have much to do with the neighbors because I allow his sibling to go over there freely.  It’s just him...the FASD.

I see in his eyes the longing to go over and be with the kids, and it breaks my heart as I want so much to let him go free. I do not want to be a helicopter parent, always hovering. Yet, Fetal Alcohol has deemed it otherwise.

As a rule, I say "No, I’m sorry, I can’t trust you and here’s why...you broke this... you dumped this out when daddy wasn’t looking...you sprayed this when I answered the phone...you broke this toy...you threw this at your brother.  When you do all those things at home the minute I go to the bathroom or get a drink in the house, then how can I trust you next door.  I’m sorry. I can’t allow it."

For whatever reason, today when he asked, I said “ok”.  And his whole face lit up. "Really!?! This is the luckiest night of my life. Oh Thank you! Thank You!"  Which only pierced my heart all the more as I heard the excitement squealing from his whole being.

Yet the minute I allow him across the fence, he can’t control himself. Within a minute - that is no exaggeration - within a minute, he has picked up a watergun and squirted a toddler in the face who is yelling "stop! stop!" while he laughs at them. 

And here I am calling him back to our house. While all the kids are enjoying themselves to the fullest on the front lawn next door. 

I wish I could set him free. I wish I didn't have to hover.  I wish he could handle it.

I hate FASD.