the Bitch in the house

The summer is over. The kids are back in school. And as I parent specialneeds children, school is not a break to look forward at each harvest moon. I am anxiety-ridden about what new and twisted nonsense is in store for my children that I will have to learn about, advocate around, and otherwise problemsolve or bitchfest about.

Therefore it is with great anxiety and personal consternation that I realize I am not one of the parents of a special needs kids who feels so blessed to have a child that forces me to look at the world through their eyes and see a better place.  I am definitely not that great of a mama.  Autistic kids are called “doubly gifted” in the special needs community because they fall in the high and low range of learning, yet nowhere in between.  That’s the ePrince, highly functioning.

Obviously I adore the ePrince, but I am at my wits end with his specialness! He was a tough buggar as a little kid, but those problems seem like a cakewalk compared to the difficulties we have trying to manage – or, rather help him manage – his classes, teachers, and assignments. That doesn’t even begin to take into account his actual learning of the material at school.

At every turn, there is another frustrating hurdle to jump and he is never gonna be like the other kids – and he wants to be – and I want him to have the opportunities his friends have so I fight like hell for him, and with him, and right now I feel freaked out and weary.

The ePrince is trying so hard to do well and it just isn’t working.  We are trying so hard to get through to him and we just can’t seem to reach him to help him understand how to do things better.  I am so sick of struggling with his teachers whose concern centers on the kids they think deserve a better chance over mine who isn’t social and struggles to be recognized.  And it’s a night like this, after a day like today, that I don’t feel very generous about the double gifting of the ePrince’s special needs.  I feel angry and sad.

The ePrince’s little brother, the lilEinstein,  has a photographic memory and doesn’t need hardly any direction in learning how to learn.  While there are some things that are difficult for the lilEinstein to do, schooling ain’t one of ’em.  The discrepancies in the their styles and abilities are exposed when we arrive at yet another hurdle so everyone can see how much the ePrince struggles and how much the lilEinstein doesn’t.  And I really wish I could’ve evened the score on this learning-curve for each of my boys so that the ePrince would have it a little easier and the lilEinstein would have it a little harder.

I don’t love this short bus life.  I want more for the ePrince. Is that too much to ask?