Last night I yelled at my autistic five year old son. I cannot remember the last time I lost my patience and yelled at him. I am normally the most patient person with him. I’m not perfect by any means. There are days when I can repeat the phrases he wants me to repeat ALL DAY LONG (like: no ducks, green truck is at work, don’t touch Mr. Salgado’s computer, etc.) And then there is that rare day when I have said “I’m sorry Kyle said good morning to you” for the millionth time and I just can’t do It again. I say instead “I’m sorry Kyle opened his big mouth” and guess what, my son latches on and now we have a new phrase in the arsenal.
I know how sensitive my son is to raised voices and loud noises. He is very aware of tone of voice and needs assurances what emotion it is you are trying to convey. I know how moments can stick with him and become part of a repetitive loop as he tries to process. But there I was after a very long, but perfect day getting into bed with him to go to sleep and I yelled.
He was trying to poke me with his finger. It was a common game we played. It almost always went the same way: he would try to poke me in the face with his index finger and I would laugh and say “No poke”! And he would try again and we would repeat, sometimes with him saying “No Poke” back to me. But tonight, he kept at it. Also, this time he was actively trying to put his finger in my mouth. He almost always pulls back his finger but tonight, he wanted to put his finger in my mouth.
I don’t know if it was because I was very tired. Or because it triggered past trauma. Or if it’s because the most important concept for me as a mom is to teach my son that when someone says no, you listen. Maybe it was all of those things. But after saying no several times and very sternly looking at him, he tried again and I yelled loudly, “No! Just stop it!”
He said “mommy, mommy, mommy” very frantically like he was trying to snap me out of it. Wake me up. I looked at him. His bottom lip was quivering. His eyes welled up and then he just started to cry. I started to tear up and apologize and my reaction made his worse. He gets very upset seeing me cry.
He ended up telling me to leave. He wanted his daddy to sleep with him. Mommy was told to sleep on the couch. Keep in mind every word he says carries more weight than other five year olds. Because when he was diagnosed autistic at 3 ½ , he was non-verbal and I was told, he may never talk. So here he is talking and those are words I get to hear.
I went out and got my husband, who was trying to hide his excitement at finally being the chosen one, and hubby graciously told me he had this, and I curled up on the couch alone. Thirty minutes later my husband came out to say the Intern was asleep and we would trade places. I carefully crawled in beside him and tried to fall asleep. The guilt kept me up most of the night along with the fear my son would wake, see it was me and get all upset again.
The absolute worst part was yet to come. Because part of how my son processes things is this repetitive scripting. So when we woke up, the script started. He says, “I’m sorry I lost my patience” (I have to repeat that back to him). After I do he says, “did that scare you?” (Again I have to repeat that) and he says, “I’m sorry I scared you. I’ll do better.” (And I repeat that trying not to cry)
And we do that over and over and over again all morning until he has to go to school.
He will most likely say it again when I pick him up. In fact it will come up again several times throughout the week and he will talk about it as if it just happened. The best part will come when he says it to his grandparents or his speech therapist and I have to explain to them how I, mom, totally messed up.
In my mind I will reset the counter in my head. The imaginary sign that says X amount of days since I last f**ked up.
As a 911 dispatcher, I absolutely hated hearing my own voice. I had this one coworker who was always getting copies of pursuits I had worked on the radio or any kind of Code 3 traffic. He wanted copies because he would share it with trainees (and he loved that ‘black cloud’ traffic, which is a whole other story). But he would ask me if I wanted to hear it. Same answer every time: nope. My friend went to work where I did after I left and she would say, ‘I heard a clip of you today,’ and I would be so embarrassed. I didn’t even go to the debrief after a shots fired incident simply because I was not going to listen to my own voice on the radio. I didn’t care how it looked to people or how badly anyone wanted to meet me, or praise me, thank me, etc. The sound of my own voice would make me cringe uncomfortably.
Now as a mom to an autistic boy who needs to repeat phrases to process, I have my own mini tape recorder playing back my mistakes. All I can do is just be grateful I get to hear his voice. And try my best to NEVER EVER make a mistake again.
Very moving words. I hope I can do the same and reset the timer. In effect he is teaching us to be better humans with his words. PS- I hated to hear my voice also.