Growing up as a child I remember my mom always saying to me, "What do you think I am a broken record?" I am slowly starting to feel more of her pain and everyday with Noah. Before Noah was diagnosed with Aspergers I did recongize some strong difference between and his brother whom is 18 months younger than him. Morgan always seemed to understand what I was saying to him and would follow through with directions. He understood consequences for not doing the things that I asked of him and he understood my warnings of not to do things or he would get hurt.
Noah on the other hand, no matter how many times I talked, yelled, cried he would still persist on following through with what his mind was set on, even if it mean running into the middle of the street with a car barrelling down it. He has sent my heart into my throat and back down to my gut so many times I have lost count. Trying to control my frustration and anger over him not listening to me to clean his room, put something away, stay seated at dinner is very difficult. For the longest time I thought oh, its his age, he'll grow out of it right? or he'll learn and he wont do it again right? Maybe I should have sensed more of his syptoms after taking him to the ER three months in a row, almost do the day of each other for stiches in his head after falling onto our coffee table (which has since been sent to charity), or maybe the time he had to get stitches in his thumb for slicing it open after telling him 200 times not to play with knives!
However, its not just the immediate consequential actions that he has not learned a lesson from that tire me (and my wallet) out. Its the emotional exhaustion of reminding myself to not raise my voice, be calm, dont overreact. . . then it hits me, he asks me the same question for the fourth time after I answered him. And I assure you it was not a half-witty answer I really gave him an anwer to his question. I feel like my role as a mother to him is constantly is replay. Almost worst than what a broken record may feel like going round and round on the turntable. In fact sometimes I wish I was that broken record hitting its pieces on the needle over and over again, it would certainly save me a lot of brain cells from being damaged!
All week long he has been asking me to take him back to that "lego building place." It was a one time event that a city next to us had going on at their local childrens playhouse. He did have a lot of fun as I thought he would due to his obsession over legos. So we took him, his brother, and his cousin to go build legos for literally four hours! They all had fun. After reminding him it was only going on on that special day he tends not to remember that it was just for one day. Instead he has asked me everyday since then to go back to that place so he can build legos again. Now I am still confused and trying to disseminate what is just being childlike and what is Aspergers. I still feel that he does not have a strong case for Aspergers but there are days that I just use it as an excuse to his behavior.
If it were not for us having other children in the house and around him I probably would not have sensed the differences between Noah and the other kids. For now I will remain a broken record but hopefully a record that has settled down onto the turntable a little more that can face just a bit less resistance everytime I hit that needle on the record player.
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