Let's be friends...

How many of you are friends with your parents? How about with your kids?

For the past 5 years, I've been completely wrapped up in raising a little champion with special needs. Spending relentless hours a day teaching him basic skills that come naturally to 'Nero-typical' kids. He's always in "survival mode", and anything beyond that is basically out of the question, if not impossible. He's always exhausted. I'm always exhausted. 

Along the way, 2 1/2 years ago I had another beautiful angel. Though my husband and I always had fears lingering in the back of our minds, by 18 months of age we knew she did not have special needs. 

As she continues to develop into an autonomous little person, she demonstrates more and more every day that she needs me to parent her like that of any "typical" kid. But over the past year I've realized I don't know how to do that. So for the past 6 months or so I've been on a new journey: trying to figure out how to be a parent of a child without special needs, starting from scratch all over again. 

My quest led me to the book If I Have to Tell You One More Time... The Revolutionary Program That Gets Kids To Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, Or Yelling by Amy Mccreedy. It reiterated a suggestion my friend gave me 2 years ago: spend 10-15 minutes of one-on-one time with each individual child every day. The book takes it a few steps further, calling it "Mind, Body, and Soul Time" (I call it "special time" with my kids). She says to spend the time distraction-free in a child-like ego state focusing your entire mind, body, and soul into playing with your kid, doing whatever they want to do for 10-15 minutes. 

I've found this time each day with Belle is super easy and really fun! She just tells me what she wants to do, and we do it. 😊 It flows naturally. We color, play with blocks and 'build the tallest tower in the world', jump on the mini trampoline, or just run around the living room chasing each other and giggling. 

I've found that my special time with Philippe has been much more challenging. Truth be told, some days I don't even want to do it. Why endure 10 minutes of torture for both of us? Most days we don't even make it to 10 minutes because the time ends abruptly with a tantrum where he's either biting me, head-butting me, kicking, screaming, or crying. In her book, Amy discusses how the time should be led by the child- it's pointless if the parent spends the time teaching, parenting, or directing (meaning during the designated special time, any therapy with Philippe is out). I try to let him dictate how we spend our special time. One day for 15 minutes we opened, closed, opened again, and closed again, 3 suitcases nestled inside each other like Russian dolls. Another day we stacked, unstacked, and re-stacked the trays from my vegetable steamer. Another day we sat on the floor and pushed the same button on a toy over and over and over again. If I try to change the activity or even adjust it a little bit Philippe gets irate, resulting in a tantrum and terminating our special time. Some days I just sit quietly in the corner of his room and watch him do... whatever he's doing at the time, just sitting there in silence spending time with him. My 21st century preoccupied, technology-driven, perpetually-distracted brain usually gets board after 3 minutes and I move on to cleaning something or scrolling through Facebook on my phone, instead of spending time with my son. 

Today was different. Today was a miracle. Today was FUN! Philippe and I were sitting on the kitchen floor, just staring blankly at each other. I said a few unimportant words just to fill up space in the empty air. Philippe grabbed my knee and pushed it. He grabbed my other knee and pushed it too, studying the way my legs bent and moved. I became his puppet. He kept grabbing my knees, moving each leg from side to side, bending and straightening my legs. I was perfectly obedient for a few minutes, moving just how he wanted me to. Then, just to test his reaction, I bent my leg instead of moving to the side when he pushed it. Instead of getting furious, he smiled. I was his obedient puppet for another minute, then I straightened my leg instead of moving it to the side like he wanted me to. This time he laughed! Could it be... we were actually playing?! This continued for another few minutes. I think we actually made it past 10 minutes! These few precious moments will forever be a special memory to me. I feel like I actually connected with my son. We both laughed. We both smiled. For a few minutes we were friends.