But as Keith and I have learned, life on the spectrum doesn't always go as planned. For those of you that don't know, our oldest son, Sam, has Asperger's Syndrome. I wrote about it all the time on my original blog, which thanks to Google's iron-clad security policies, I can no longer access. There was a changed email address and then I forgot my password...long story short--- your secret is safe with Blogger. But if you want the backstory on the early days of our journey on the autistic spectrum, you can find it here.
Kids with Asperger's are creatures of habit. When Sam was little, his therapists encouraged us to keep a pretty consistent schedule to minimize frustration and teach him what to expect. And let me tell you friends, it worked! We started putting our boys to bed at 8:30 when Sam was 3. To this day, well over 6 years later, he will ask to go to bed at 8:30 on the dot, much to the chagrin of his little brother.
Bedtime inflexibility proved a bit of a challenge tonight. Sam-man was not the least bit interested in staying up. We tried to explain New Year's Eve traditions and assure him that it would be fun. Despite our best efforts to get him pumped about the experience, distraction seemed to work better. As bedtime came and went, the boys played games for awhile and then retired upstairs to watch Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons on Netflix. We called them downstairs so that they could watch the last few minutes from Times Square, and Sam was just miserable. He wanted no part of it and we all ended up frustrated. He was in bed asleep by 11:05.
Sometimes I think I have a Clark Griswold complex about the holidays. I want my kids to have these experiences and make memories, but not if I make them miserable in the process. Maybe it's prideful that I want them to look back on their childhood and remember how much fun they had with Mom and Dad when they were little. And even though I know it is a sinful attitude, sometimes I just want things with our kids to be easy...to not always have to think about who's going to wait in the hall at the movie theater until we get past the previews that scare him, or whether or not there will be bees at an outdoor wedding....sometimes I just want to hang with my kiddos and be, for lack of a better word, thoughtless.
But then I remember that God doesn't call me to be thoughtless. He calls me to recognize my children as "fearfully and wonderfully made" just as they are. He calls me to esteem others as higher than myself. He calls me to trust that His ways are higher than mine. Even if that means that I ring in the New Year sans kiddos.
My reluctant party animals faking smiles because they love me-- I'll take it.
