Explaining the unexplainable, living with aspergers

Having a child with aspergers lends itself to many, many, funny situations.

I always find myself wanting to share these situations with others, but more often then not, I honestly wouldn’t know how!

How do you explain the unexplainable?

Most of the time it’s a real, “You had to be there…” kind of moment.

But they are always, ALWAYS, priceless, and memorable.

Anyone who knows me really well, knows I am VERY big on communication. To me, communication is so very important because without it, there is, and always will be, misunderstanding. With misunderstanding comes not only mistakes and such, but also hurt. I don’t want my children growing up with needless hurt in their minds and hearts. There’s enough “real” hurt in the world, I feel there’s no need to be feeling hurts that were simply miscommunication, and not really ‘real’ at all.

So, I try to teach them how to communicate.

Believe me, I’m no expert myself. Ha!

Trying to teach a child with asperger’s to communicate can be the ‘funniest’ and at the same time, the most ‘exasperating’ thing I’ve ever tried to do!

First off, to truly understand someone, you need to try and ‘think’ like them. Trying to think like Elsa is very, very, difficult, to say the least! Every time I think maybe I’ve got some aspect of ‘her’ figured out, she proves me wrong yet again.

She thinks literally. LITERALLY literal. Literal, in a way I am just incapable of thinking. It’s “deep” literal.

When she was younger, a toddler, we were on our way home from some where. She happened to ask, shortly after we were on our way, where we were going. My husband replied jokingly, “We’re going crazy.”

A short time later, she fell asleep.

She awoke when we pulled into our drive way.

She immediately started to cry and said, “You said we going to crazy!”

We should have realized right then and there that we just witnessed her first real expression of just how literal she would be for the rest of her life.

This morning, Elsa came to me and said, “Patches peed on the hard wood floor.”

Patches is our indoor cat. She’s 12 years old and recently, I can’t figure out if I hate to love her or love to hate her.

She’s becoming senile. It’s driving me crazy.
If she decides her litter box is over capacity by just one ‘squirt’, she finds some other place to ‘go’.

Elsa witnessed her ‘going’ this morning.

So Elsa comes to me and tells me that Patches peed on the hardwood floor.

So I asked if she cleaned it up (she’s almost 13).

She replies with, “I put a bunch of toilet paper on it.”

ACK!

That’s my initial response! She says nothing else, I asked if she just left it or what? No real response other then re-iterating again that she put toilet paper on it.

I get somewhat upset, rush out of the room, imagining a mound of sopping wet, with cat urine, toilet paper drenching our beautiful hardwood floor downstairs.

I get downstairs, and there’s nothing there. No toilet paper. No cat pee. Everything has been moved aside and cleaned up.

Elsa didn’t mention all that. She only said that she had put toilet paper on the cat pee.

I had even asked her if she had left it there, or cleaned it up. Yet, her communication was that she put toilet paper on the cat pee. lol

Ahhh…

Now, this next part is where her true self really shows through though.

I tried to explain to her that she almost got in trouble for not doing something properly, when all along she had done exactly what she should have done.

I tried to explain to her that she should have communicated better.

I said to her (and this is exactly what I said to her), “You should have said; “I put toilet paper on the cat pee and wiped it up.” ”

She replies, clearly exasperated, with,

“Mommmm-meeeeeee, YOU didn’t clean up the cat pee! I did!”

Literal.

TOTALLY, 110% LITERAL.

LITERAL to such a degree that I can not, and probably will not ever, be able to foresee how Elsa will see, or hear, a situation.

When I told her she should have said, “I put toilet paper on the cat pee and wiped it up.”

She took it as me saying that I cleaned up the cat pee.

When I was a teenager, you know, before I got older, and wiser, and realized I don’t know it all…

I worked in two classrooms with children. One class was for disabled children, a kindergarten class. These children were handicapped physically, as well as mentally.

The other class was for grade 3 or 5 students (no clue why I can’t remember WHAT grade exactly, my memory is bad…) who had struggles in learning.

During the time I worked with these children I remember telling God that if there was ever a person He could count on to raise a child with disabilities, it was me. I remember pondering about what a patient person I was with those children, and how great I’d be with a disabled child. I remember giving myself an imaginary pat on the back for how well I got along with these children, and how much they adored me.

Wow, I sure was stupid back then.
(stupid; characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish;senseless)

Having a child who struggles with asperger’s, has given me a glimpse into how difficult it is to help someone who doesn’t really have the capacity at all times, to help themselves.

It can be the utmost in frustrating.

Homeschooling a child with asperger’s has been the biggest challenge I have probably ever faced. And my life hasn’t been all ‘peaches and cream’, but, everything else that’s ever been difficult in my life has always been something, that as long as I could ‘manage’ myself, my own emotions, how I dealt with the situation, during and after, it was manageable, at least in time.

Elsa, is not so easily managed.

However, Elsa has taught me more about myself then any other situation in life that I’ve been through.

Elsa has taught me more about myself, then I ever have.

Elsa does NOT allow me to ‘hide’ from my real self, my faulty self, my emotional self, my very, very, weak self.

Elsa causes my WHOLE self to be bare, truly naked… for myself, and anyone else within proximity when I almost ‘loose it‘, to see me for who I really am.

A person, who is human, weak, and does NOT know it all.

This whole experience, raising Elsa, has had the ability to knock me down many levels of humility and humbleness.

And the scariest part?

I know I’m not at bottom yet.

I look forward to the trip to getting to know myself even better.

Most days.

Heck, who am I kidding, some days.

The other days, I remind myself over and over and over and over and over… that I can do this.