It’s my birthday. What do I want, you ask? A little peace and quiet. That’s all. I want the fighting to stop, and the doors to stop slamming, and the dogs to stop barking, and the hollering for “can you bring me up a whatever” to just cease for a blasted minute, because kids are loud, and ours are louder. They are a next-level kind of loud. The loud of special needs and mental illness that … [Read more...]
Love in the Age of Worry
Love in the Age of Worry “He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.” – Psalm 91:4 NLT I’d planned to write about Jesse this week. I'd planned a piece about theoretical fear. Jesse is my youngest child, and has autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and ADHD. As He is wont to do, God changed the plan. On a Tuesday … [Read more...]
Wounded and Doubting: How to Respond to Your Child’s Crisis of Faith
The words that Christian parents dread hearing just passed by my teenage daughter’s lips. “I don’t know if I even believe in God … and I’m not going to church,” she said, with a frightening (to me) confidence in her voice. My heart sunk. I feared this could happen because Katie faced emotionally painful challenges during childhood that were never fully resolved. God had not answered her prayers … [Read more...]
Different Just Like Me
It was a Thursday night, and I was sitting on the couch after dinner, watching the news. Noah slipped in from the kitchen and sat down next to me. A few times daily, Noah sidles in to check on me. While his ninja-level lurking usually scares me out of my skin (because, as he says, “Screaming makes my brain all fluttery”), Noah likes to periodically sense my mood and see what I’m doing. Noah … [Read more...]
The Goodbye Salute: Noah Transitions to Middle School
In the gymnasium at North Bend Elementary, a smallish school in a mostly agrarian county in northeast Maryland, we parents sat packed together in tight rows. We were prepping for a transition. In the front of the gym, on the floor, were rows of children from kindergarten through fourth grade. They were present as witnesses to this celebration of the fifth graders. Today, the school would laud … [Read more...]
Plagues of People, Safety in Numbers
Children on the autism spectrum usually fall in one of two camps when it comes to their feelings about crowds: crowds are either an audience or a plague. For Jesse, crowds are an audience. He loves to mug, and show off, and recite what he knows about things of no interest to the listener. For Noah, crowds are a plague. This makes it a challenge to plan a wedding when both boys are also a part … [Read more...]