I kept starting a blog post, writing a few words, and then deleting everything a few days later. We've been so busy lately. I did a Mother's Day project where I made cards for most of my friends who are moms, which means I handmade close to thirty cards. Then I have been preparing for an arts project at the elementary school for the End of the Year Party, so I had to prep everything, which included cutting sheets of colored tissue paper into thousands of tiny squares. Not hard work, but time consuming. Since it's the end of the school year (only four days left!) I decided the kids would have a Beach Party. They will make stained glass jellyfish for arts and crafts, eat pineapple, watermelon, and goldfish for snack, drink fruit punch, and listen to luau music. After tomorrow, I can put that project under my belt, and then my focus will return to ensuring that everything is in alignment for our big trip to Disney World!
Summer brings other changes, including Autism Support Group being over until the start of the next school year in August. I will honestly miss it, and I know J will miss going to his club. The structure of the support group is wonderful; the ASD kids go to a class with other ASD kids and they're able to talk and learn about the struggles that having ASD can bring, the siblings can go to a childcare classroom, and the parents all gather for the support group. It's wonderful. It was nice to be surrounded by people who know. Even the days I didn't speak much, it was comforting being around parents who were still talking about things I could relate to. The parents of middle school and high school aged kids still had things to offer me as a parent of a third-grader: their experiences when their children were J's age and their experiences now that I may need to prepare myself for.
One of the issues that was brought up during our very last meeting was one we had experienced in our own house just last week. I was shocked that other parents had gone through the exact same thing. Our two older boys are getting older and beginning to be mildly curious about bodies, about girl bodies, about boy bodies, about bodies older than they are. We found out one of them had Googled about bodies on his Nintendo DS, back before I had set any parental controls on it because I hadn't realized that Googling things was on it possible. The other, we caught stark naked in the bathroom examining himself in the mirror.
None of this really bothered us as parents. We know our boys are growing older and are going to be curious about these things. Stormy took one kid and I took the other, and we've explained that curiosity is normal, the feelings about girls (or hey, boys, we don't discriminate) is normal, but they can't Google what they're curious about because they're too young to understand how to filter through the results - and let's face it, Google can be a very dangerous place for a child who is curious about growing up. We can go to the library and check out age-appropriate books if they're too embarrassed to ask us. Anything that we need to do to keep them safe but informed.
Little Iron Man is neuro-typical, so he took the conversation well and just said okay and moved on. J, on the other hand, is definitely going to be a more on-going process to make sure he understands. I asked his therapist about it, because we didn't want to offer him information that he wasn't ready for, but it's obviously become something we need to start discussing. She was very adamant that sex, puberty, and changes were something that we needed to talk about with J - with any child, but especially J.
Since J doesn't understand social constructs or the implications of his words and actions, it's especially important he understand the things he can/cannot do or say in social situations. We've heard of other ASD kids getting in trouble for things that were innocent in nature for them, but other parents did not see it that way. Quick examples are, a girl was curious about what boys looked like under their clothes, and asked the boy next door. She was twelve, he was ten, and afterwards, all hell broke lose from the boy's parents. Would it have happened if she had been a typical child? I don't know. I know that oftentimes parents of typical children are scared of what they don't know, uncomfortable about the differences between their child and one with ASD. The other example is a sixteen-year-old boy was curious about this "sex thing" everyone was talking about, so he looked to the internet to find someone who would "show him" and he took the family car and drove fifty miles to meet-up with that person. He didn't understand the implications of what he was doing, nor did he understand what would be happening when he did finally meet up with them. He just wanted to know what "sex" meant. (He was fine in the end, nothing bad happened to him, but it could have, very easily.) Kids who are more neuro-typical understand why they're getting in trouble, why they can't do what they did. Those two kids still haven't fully realized what their actions meant. Nothing bad happened when I drove fifty miles, so why can't I do it again? There's always this underlying logic with ASD kids; if it's logical to them, they cannot see anyone else's point. The girl in the first example had never had a conversation about bodies, changes, or sex, so her actions were fueled entirely by curiosity and seeking to understand. The boy had been talked to about those things, he wasn't a stranger to it, but again, he sought a greater understanding. Which isn't by itself unnatural or bad, however it's the way he went about trying to quell that curiosity that was the problem.
The therapist said we have to talk to the kids in an age-appropriate way and slowly escalate the conversation as they get older. We shouldn't over-talk the subject or they'll stop listening. If we over-talk it they'll either get embarrassed because they're not ready for the conversation, or they'll tune us out, as kids often do if they feel lectured. But it's important for them to know we are here, we're not scared of the subject, and we want them to be safe and happy.
It's been interesting figuring out the right verbiage to use, the right way to say it. We never want our kids to feel ashamed of their bodies, of the private parts that make them distinctly male, which I think ends up being what happens to a lot of kids. They get embarrassed or feel shame over their bodies, their curiosity, their feelings - both emotional and physical. We all experience it in one way or another, some earlier than others, but it happens. We can't be scared of our kids experiencing it as well. If we want them to grow up into healthy adults with healthy relationships and/or marriages, then we have to help prepare them for that now. If we get embarrassed about the subject or make them feel badly about it, then they may grow up associating shame and embarrassment regarding sex and their bodies. That doesn't lead to healthy adults who have healthy relationships.
When we realized the boys were curious enough to Google certain things, albeit somewhat innocently, we weren't mad. We didn't want them to associate anger with their curiosity. We didn't want to scare them away from what they were feeling. As parents, we want them to be healthy and safe - both of which can be hindered by Googling the wrong thing or finding something scary or illegal on the internet.
Little Iron Man will be more ready for the changes to come than J will; J is so immature because of his ASD in so many aspects that I can imagine that puberty will be far more confusing for him. Or maybe they'll shock us and both will be equally lost or equally ready. All I know is that I hope they both grow up to be well-adjusted and healthy adults, without shame or embarrassment. I think that Iron Man will understand the implications of his words or actions more than J will. I hope to get J to a place where he understands what is appropriate and inappropriate, even if he doesn't understand why, so that we can feel safe that even if he doesn't agree or understand something is inappropriate, he won't do it because he will know not to.
I should probably start getting some books to help facilitate the coming conversations that are going to happen over the next several years. At least when I Google these things, I know how to filter through the results.
