Don’t Underestimate the Small Moments with your Special Needs Child

Two years ago, May of 2017, I came home and gave my oldest son a big hug and thanked him for all the years of Sponge Bob viewing he put me through. I literally have a ton of episodes in my brain at my disposal to dish out and it came in so handy, and where? At the museum! 

 

Me and Incognito, 2003 by Isaac Julien

I was given the opportunity to be an artist in residence to a particular class at an elementary school.That day, we concentrated on sculpture. I showed  my fourth/fifth grade group three sculptures, one of them being, Icognito by multidisciplinary artist, Isaac Julien, 2003. I offered clay and sculpting tools for the studio activity and this little artist (seen below) immediately went to work on his Sponge Bob sculpture. He was passionate about it, recounting episode after episode with the other kids while he worked,  and I was right there with the best of them rehashing my favorites too! They were so impressed and surprised, I think my stock rose rapidly in their eyes. And all because I sat down and watched TV with my son and asked him questions about the episodes. Who knew that Sponge Bob would fuel my museum career? 

Afterwards, I noticed that another child made a sculpture of a basketball and I was able to chime in and ask him what he thought of the NBA draft picks from the night before (again, because I was watching TV with my big boy). His eyes grew huge, “you saw it too Miss Nellie? Don’t underestimate them. I need to put MOM on my resume! Actually, this was a special needs classroom and many of the kids were obsessed with their interests,  as mine are, so in fact, I should add AUTISM MOM to my resume.

The small moments with your (special-needs) child can truly make you big in the world.

How has being a mother to a child with or without a disability made you big in the world or  aided in your career? 

 

Advertisement

You Are Allowed to Turn the Special-Needs Talk Off

I know it’s probably kind of weird that I posted this right in the middle of Autism Awareness Month when we want to get people talking about autism but…sometimes I have the need to turn the special -needs talk off. Does that happen to you too? Maybe it’s time we, as autism moms, also bring awareness to that part of our lives.

There have been times when – at a banquet, at church, some fashion function,  a gallery opening,  an informal get together  –  I have been approached by people wanting to talk to me about a movie they saw about autism, or about a friend of a friend whose child just got diagnosed. They give me books about autism, movie recommendations, information about doctors promising a new cure,…it can sometimes get a bit overwhelming when all I want to do is be Nellie and have a good time. Like an actor who gets type-cast because we are used to them playing a certain part, I imagine it’s the same for special-needs mom bloggers who talk about their children all the time in hopes to bring awareness. We want awareness but sometimes we need a break.

What people don’t realize is that, with two kids on the autism spectrum, my life is consumed with special needs talk. From the slew of professionals at my finger tips who are/were coming to my house every day, to my own online research, to discussions I have with my husband, and finally from my kids themselves. At times, it can be a 24-hour station.

But how do you turn off the special needs talk? First of all, you have to realize that people mean well. They love you and they want to help, or show that they can relate. So, when I really don’t feel like talking about autism,  I try to be cordial, and in a very nice way, tell anyone who wants to broach the subject,  that today I will not be talking about special needs anything, plain and simple. Give them your number/ e-mail and tell them to contact you later.

It does help if you have something planned to say ahead of time if the special needs talk gets out of hand. That way, you don’t come off as defensive or rude. I politely interrupt and tell them, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I had a crazy day with my kids and I would like to talk about other things besides them.” The people who love you will not get offended and will understand. Those are the people that matter.

How do you handle the special need chatter? Do you feel comfortable shutting it down? Are there other ways to go about it? Always eager to learn.

 

If you can’t Find a Solution, Change the Rules

My Dan has sleep issues. It has gotten better, but he still occasionally wakes at 3 AM craving food, sensory play or just wanting to be next to me.

At one point in time I was EXTREMELY sleep deprived. Not just one night, not a couple of months, but two years worth or more of sleep deprivation. I am never going to get those years back and my wrinkled, saggy eyes are paying big time for it. So, at that time,  I got to do things that might seem unconventional to some. Let me explain…

It was hard to find a solution to Daniel’s sleep issues. He didn’t respond to anything for a long time. Young mothers are always taught this rule: when the baby sleeps, you sleep. However, when Dan’s waking hours consumed me, his sleeping hours had to feed my soul. I was/am an artist mom and I need to create! So what this meant for me was that while he napped, I wrote, sewed, or screen-printed. This got hard to sustain long term, though, and I eventually crashed with him during his nap, but you know what I mean. I had to change the sleeping rule to fit who I was.

Same thing happened with his birthday a couple years ago. Dan had been waking up everyday two weeks prior to his birthday that year. I had previously told the teacher that I would come and celebrate in the classroom like I have been doing years past. The night before his birthday, Daniel finally gave me a full nights sleep. It was his birthday but I got the gift! It was the first time that I had felt alert and ready to work on my blog, my website, my sewing projects. I was still planning on going to the classroom but with much hesitation. I didn’t want to give up this valuable time! I felt I was giving up my day of productivity to go into the classroom for 45 minutes all because it is something I do every single year. The teacher ended up e-mailing me and said that she was not going in that day because she did not feel well. This gave me permission to call out too! So I called the school and told them I wasn’t going to celebrate Dan’s birthday in school, but at home instead. I did feel guilty and thought “how horrible everyone will think that I am for not bringing in a cake to school.” I went on beating myself up when I thought; what people don’t see is that I have been patiently up with my child for two weeks straight, loving him, singing to him, rocking him, hugging him, hoping that any minute now, he will dose off to lala land. During this time I did not beat him nor yell at him. God sees that, I see that, my family sees that. I deserve a productive day to myself where I am alert and ready to work. This has to be enough for a rule change.

So sometimes there are rules that simply do not apply to you and who you are. Now, I don’t mean rules concerning moral behavior or that you are exempt from the law. By all means, follow those rules! But sometimes the rules typically given to moms (of neuro-typical or special-needs children alike) do not make sense to your particular situation.

This is a lesson I continue to learn.

*Much of this post was written six years ago and modified recently.

Remember Who You Were On This Special-Needs Motherhood Journey

I am currently working on a book on self-care, a series of lessons I have learned (and continue to learn) on my special-needs motherhood journey. I’ll be offering some of them here, on this blog. Feel free to let me know your thoughts here, or on my Facebook/Instagram pages.   Here’s the first one…

Remember Who you Were

Any type of motherhood, special needs or typical, causes women to feel like they’re losing themselves. It’s the perennial question of balance that women face between identity (work) and family. The constant work of caring, and ultimately being responsible for another human being, leads us to question, and then adjust our identity to this new life. This takes on a whole different meaning when you have special needs children. The care can be daunting. I feel like I am still adjusting, my GPS constantly on recalculating … I once wondered if I even wanted children at all and what I got was children that required more care than I would ever imagine.

What helped me in daunting and overwhelming moments was to remember who I was. My circumstances had changed drastically but I was still me at the core and I needed to reaffirm that. In the midst of such drastic change, I needed consistency.

I went to things that reminded me of myself, pre-kids. I got out my old cassettes of Sting, my all time favorite musician, and started listening again. I also started reading his autobiography and it really helped me to reconnect with Nellie pre-kids. It also reminded me of the time I went to see him in concert with my friend Maxine back in the 90s.

After my oldest was diagnosed, I went back to museum work. I needed a semblance of normal life again. I was coming to terms with the diagnosis and needed to tap into the part of me that was untouched by it. My life before the diagnosis… museum work. Other opportunities that fed into the pre-kids Nellie also began to surge. I taught a class on Puerto Rican art and lectured on Latin American art in various libraries in the New York Public Library system. All of this helped me reconnect with what I still continue to love: art and art history. I felt like my old self again and this fed my soul and helped me be a better mother to my oldest.

After Dan was diagnosed, I went further back and started screen printing and sewing again, passions from high school and college. I even opened my own shop online and started selling my screen-printed and reconstructed clothing. This further solidified my identity and in turn helped me be a better, more at peace, happy mom. I was drawing from my past and taking inventory of the things that made me really happy.

In the midst of the loss I was feeling, this reconnection to my old self, offered me joy.

What can you tap into from your “old self”, your “pre-kids self”, that can positively ignite you as you live in your present circumstances?