Author Archives: Crystal

A Day of Trains and Torrential Rains

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Call us crazy, but this year we decided to drive to Saskatoon to visit the relatives. The original plan was just to see Calgary and Drumheller, but we quickly realized that if we were going that far we might as well drive the extra five hours to get free room and board — er, to spend time with loved ones. We’ve been to Toon Town many times, of course, but we generally fly (in fact, Brayden has never done that drive, and everyone should be subjected to it at least once). So we loaded up the van.

Our first stop was at the Revelstoke Railway Museum. We climbed through a couple of vintage rail cars, drove the locomotive simulator, and marvelled at the detailed theming of the exhibits. There was probably two hours worth of information, but the kids ran past most of the plaques, so we were done in about 45 minutes. Then we were stuck in the parking lot for 15 minutes because an actual train was going by — the irony.

It was shortly after leaving Revelstoke that the rain started. And I’m not talking about a gentle sprinkle. It was coming down so hard that it was difficult to keep the van on the road. We passed half a dozen cars that just gave up and pulled over. The downpour continued off and on the whole rest of the way. As we approached Calgary, the clouds to the north were so black that it was like a scene from Twister. We seriously felt like we were driving into a tornado. We made it to the hotel about two minutes before the skies opened up (!) so we hunkered down, had dinner in the hotel and hit the indoor waterpark.

To Drumheller tomorrow…

Life After Summer Camp

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You never really know how Justin is going to react when it’s time to go home after being away at camp for a week. It can’t be easy going from camp (where he can stay up late, eat buffet meals and do whatever he wants) back to home (where he has to follow a curfew, make his own breakfast and listen to his mother.) The first year he went, when he was seven, he burst into tears and ran off to hide in the dorm when I arrived to pick him up. Feel the love.

But this year, pickup went exceptionally well: his bag was all packed, he smiled when he saw me, and he managed to wait almost a full 10 minutes before bickering with his brother.  He even broke with tradition and brought his towel home for the first time in five years. Miracles do happen.

One of the reasons he loves that particular camp so much is because they hand out awards for just about everything. Seriously, everything. They’re all about making the kids feel like superstars.

Justin, for instance, was totally stoked about a pile of Styrofoam balls he’d colored and brought home. This seemed odd for a kid who rates doing arts and crafts somewhere below going to the dentist, so I asked him about them. He told me they were Pokeballs. I should’ve known.

“And guess what? I broke the camp record by making 27 of them,” he said proudly.

Then he paused. “Actually, I think the previous camp record was zero, so…” he shrugged.

Hey, everyone likes to be the best at something.

After the Final Bell

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There are generally two types of parents that come through the drive-thru drop-off service at the school. The first type pulls up, kisses their child, hands them their backpack and lovingly assures them that Mommy/Daddy will see them after school. They wave to their child and hold up traffic because they can’t bear to leave until their little one is out of sight.

The second type barely slows down long enough to open the door, boot their child out and toss a water bottle out the window as they speed away. Sometimes they are in such a rush to flee that their child ends up running after the vehicle trying to get Mommy to stop and give them their backpack. Seriously.

I am the second type. I get it. It’s not that I don’t love my children. It’s just that I spend plenty of time with them as it is, and I cherish the hours when they’re in class so I can write my articles, cut the grass, buy the groceries and finish the laundry in peace.

I am especially militant about “my” time as the school year draws to a close, because I know what 10 weeks of summer with two boys can be like. Not my first rodeo.

On the eve of my fifth grader’s field trip to the waterslides this week, another mom asked if I was going along as a chaperone. She asked it perfectly innocently, but I had to stifle an urge to laugh. Not on your life. Not with a mere two days left of school. There will be plenty of time this summer to deal with hordes of screaming children.

So on this, the final day of classes, I will treat my children by giving them a ride home from school. I will offer them ice cream and help them celebrate the end of math tests, book reports and science experiments.

And we’ll see how long we all stay friends.

Confronting the Facts of Life

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It’s the subject you most need your child to understand but you least want to talk about. When I was in school, the class was called “lifestyles.” At Justin’s school, they call it “family life.” And all the fifth graders are being introduced to it in the last few weeks before the summer break.

The school gave parents the option of exempting their child from the lessons if they had any moral or religious objections. There may be some people who prefer to teach these things to their kids in their own way, but I am not one of them. If a professional educator is willing to explain the birds and the bees to my child, leaving me to cover my ears and chant “blah blah blah” in blissful ignorance, I’m good with that.

Except I don’t think I’ll really get a free pass. I am somewhat saved by the fact that I have boys — their father will be on the hook for the nitty gritty details. (A friend of mine once mentioned that while her mother had explained about menstruation, she was given to understand that it was a one-time thing. I don’t want to be responsible for such misinformation.)

Brayden got an early introduction to the whole concept of reproduction when his grade 2 class raised baby chicks last year. The eggs stayed in an incubator for a few weeks, eventually the chicks hatched (the odd one died, which was a lesson in itself) and the kids got a hands-on study of the cycle of life. I wish I knew exactly how the teacher explained it all, cause Brayden somehow accepted that the hen got a seed from the rooster without ever being curious about how. (He recently commented that “you kiss someone and they have a baby,” so there’s still some work to be done.)

So anyway, after Justin’s class had their introduction to family life, I happened to overhear some parents talking. One of them said that at one point, the teacher mentioned the word “vulva,” and one kid blurted out, “Hey, my dad drives one of those!”

You wonder how we got this far as a species.

 

Take Me Out (at) the Ball Game…

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Don’t get me wrong: I’m thrilled that my boys play team sports. Way back when he was first diagnosed, I would not have imagined that Justin would ever be capable of interacting with a team and following the ebb and flow of a game. But he grew to love sports, and both he and his brother played soccer, and our springs were filled with practices and games and fun with friends and teammates.

But this year, Justin decided to switch from soccer to baseball. This was actually more in line with my own childhood – I grew up playing softball, along with my brothers and cousins and every other member of my family. But that just meant I knew what we were in for.

The thing is, baseball is boring. It can be fun to play, but it’s deadly dull to watch, especially at this level. The kids are still learning how to pitch, so virtually everyone walks, and the innings just go on and on. Last night it took them 2.5 hours to play four innings, and they only got that far because of run limits. At one point we went 60 straight minutes without anyone swinging at a single pitch. Kill me now.

But Justin is loving it, so I’m trying to suck it up and cheer him on. Chris is in charge of keeping score for the next game, which means we really have to pay attention. It might be time for some Red Bull.

Three games down, nine to go (sigh)…

The Force Was Strong at This Party

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The Force awoke with a roar at Brayden’s Star Wars laser tag party. I’m fairly sure we could be heard from anywhere in the galaxy. If you give a bunch of nine-year-old boys a laser weapon and set them loose in the dark, then add copious amounts of sugar…well, you know what you’re going to get.

For the first hour, all I had to do was wait in the party room while the boys played a couple rounds of laser tag. That was easy. It was when they came into the room for snacks and cake that the decibel level exploded. After having some Jedi Juice, Chewbacca Chips, Wookiee Cookies and Galactic Goodies (and after we got them to stop crawling under the table, dismantling the chairs and tearing up the plastic tablecloth), I led them in a few rounds of Star Wars trivia. That brought the noise level down a bit, but boy, they were wild.

Happy ninth, Brayden!

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Autism Awareness With a Twist

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At bedtime the other night, Justin had a question: “Mom, how did you know I have Asperger’s?”

Caught off-guard, I mumbled something about how he’d always been a little different from other kids, and how eventually we talked to some doctors who helped us figure it out. Then I wondered why he was asking.

“Like, how do I prove that I have it?” he wanted to know.

It turned out that the topic came up at lunchtime one day because one of Justin’s classmates has a more severe form of autism and requires special attention at recess. When Justin mentioned that he also has autism, the kids didn’t believe him.

Justin does not have the classic kind of autism that comes with severe language delays and a withdrawal into an inner world. And he doesn’t have the Rain Man kind that comes with genius-level abilities in certain areas. He has the invisible kind.

Asperger’s is called an invisible disability because most of the time, you wouldn’t know it was there. Yes, Justin takes language very literally. And yes, he tends to miss obvious social cues. But on the surface, the gap between him and his peers is narrow enough that he doesn’t really stand out. Much to his chagrin, apparently.

Rather than hiding from his diagnosis and trying to blend in with his classmates, my son was actively looking for a way to demonstrate that he was different.

How cool is that?

Spring Break: Day 13 and Counting

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In a moment of wild optimism, I chose to make no advance plans for the 17 days of spring break: no trips, no sports camps, no special outings. I was frankly curious to see if the kids and I could spend two-plus weeks together without getting on each other’s nerves (SPOILER ALERT: No.) I told anyone who asked that our only plan was to enjoy each other’s company…and may the Force be with us.

I quickly discovered, however, that we enjoyed each other’s company much more when there were other people around. We needed a buffer. Left on our own, the sniping and arguing and complaining would escalate until somebody screamed, something got slammed and we all wished we could be somewhere (anywhere!) else.

But having other people around made us all behave better, so I actively set out to arrange play dates and get us out in public. By a stroke of luck, the boys started spending untold hours playing football/soccer/random games in the yard with the kids from next door, during which nobody argued, cried or complained about anything. It was like magic.

I realize it’s kind of sad that we have to be saved from ourselves, but I’m fairly sure we’re not the only ones.

(Are we?)

A Super Super Mario Party

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When I asked Justin if he just wanted to have a few guys over to play video games for his birthday (on the theory that 11-year-olds are too cool to have birthday parties), he looked at me like I was crazy. “Can’t I have a theme?” he pleaded. As someone who built a 10-foot pirate ship in her living room for her last birthday (see Murder Among the Mateys), I could hardly say no. So we decided on a Mario theme.

I didn’t really want to let the boys play video games for two solid hours, so I came up with a few Mario-themed party games we could do first. We started with block hopping: I split them into teams of three and gave each team four floor tiles that kind of looked like the blocks from the games. Each team member lined up standing on a tile and passed the extra tile to the guy in front; then they all stepped forward caterpillar-like and repeated the process until they made it to the finish line. We were hoping to do this outside, but the weather didn’t cooperate, so we had to snake a line through the living room, down the hall and into Justin’s room. It was still pretty fun.

We also did the Yoshi egg race (your basic relay race with plastic eggs on wooden spoons), and I was kind of surprised at how many times they dropped the eggs when all they had to do was walk slow. It seems boys are all about speed.

The biggest hit was the scavenger hunt. The premise here was that Bowser had stolen all of Mario’s gold coins. Each clue was a word search grid: the boys were supposed to cross off all the letters that are found in a certain word (say S-T-A-R), then unscramble the letters that were left to figure out where the next clue was. They all got a bit stumped with F-O-F-C-E-I (office), but eventually they got it. The last clue led them to a question mark block filled with chocolate gold coins, all of which quickly got devoured.

After snacks and cake, I set them loose playing video games. In addition to all the Mario games we have for the Wii, we borrowed my brother’s original Nintendo system so the kids could play the original Super Mario Bros from 30 years ago. Way cool.

A successful party!

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The Wardrobe War

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We have frequent fashion fights in our household. Justin will generally insist on wearing whatever happens to be on top when he opens his dresser drawers. He will insist on wearing that outfit even if the pants are black and green, the shirt is orange and the socks are blue. When I suggest that he try to find clothes that match, he claims it doesn’t matter.

“You’re the only one who cares, Mom,” he’ll tell me.

Mismatched colors aren’t even the worst of it. My boys frequently end up with their shirt and/or pants on backwards and don’t even notice. (I can see getting a shirt turned around, but pants? Seriously?) After swimming lessons the other day, Justin came out of the change room with his track pants on inside out. Somehow he didn’t notice that the pockets were flapping around on the outside. Huh.

I realize that the total lack of fashion sense is a hallmark of Asperger’s. To Aspies, clothes are literally just fabric on a hanger. Their purpose is to keep us warm and keep our private parts covered. That’s it.

If he’s just hanging around the house all day, I let it go. But if he’s going out in public, I tell him he has to change. I try to explain that while he doesn’t care, other people will judge him based on how he looks. Even while I’m saying the words I know it’s ridiculous–why can’t he wear whatever he likes, fashion be damned?–but I also know I have a responsibility to help him adapt to societal norms. He won’t figure this out on his own; I have to show him how it works.

Which is hilarious, because I’m hardly one to follow fashion trends. I’ve been known to keep the same clothes for 20 consecutive years. I despise shoe shopping and never notice what people have on their feet. I own no makeup and wear no jewellery. I am the last person who should be giving fashion advice.

But even I have standards, and those standards include not wearing striped shirts with plaid pants. Or anything inside out. Or backwards.

Set the bar low…