Precocious...and obnoxious!!!

This morning our sweet little M. was playing with a Pokemon superball that I am sure was stolen from some hapless child on the playground. I watch her like a hawk when she is with the ball, because small rubber balls are right below balloons on the list of things that will get you placed on the Bad Mother Hall of Fame.

She starts putting it near her lips, which causes me to immediately warn her not to put it in her mouth. Of course she hesitates like a nanosecond before putting it into her mouth. I warn her that if she does it again, the ball is going away for good. She smiles sweetly and shoves it into her mouth. I yell, pry it out of her little mouth and throw it in the trash. Adios, Pokemon! She starts sobbing that she wants the ball. Sorry, I say. She stamps her little foot, looks up at me with a venomous expression and says, "I hate you!"

Wow, pretty impressive for a two and a half year old! As I put her in the Naughty Chair (yes, we have seen Supernanny) she was saying, "It's not fair!!!" over and over. What the hell are we going to do when she is a teenager?

Crikey, that's sad news...

I was so upset to get up this morning and find out that Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray in a freak diving accident. I really liked him a lot, and it was so sad to think of his wife and two young kids. What are they going through right now? It made me think of trying to explain something like that to our daughter. I am sure she would ask every single day where so and so was. It would kill me to hear that.

Because he spent so much time doing daring and risky things, I am sure gave all of those close to him a sense of invincibility. Surely a man who can wrestle crocodiles can handle anything! What a horrible surprise to find out that he was human after all.

Who needs therapy?

After a brief period of feeling better, I have sunk down into the dumps again. I am not really sure what sets things off, what makes me convinced that things are not okay and that they never will be. But I look at my beautiful baby and this little gnawing feeling starts in my stomach. It makes me want to wring my hands just to have some physical release of the overwhelming despair. I honestly thought that I have been depressed or anxious before. Now I know that the real thing is much more sinister and difficult to snap out of.

On Thursday I felt so terrible that I had to call my father sobbing once again about Graham and his behavior. He is so calming with his "doctor" voice honed through 30 some-odd years of practice. His message, however, does not really calm me. He knows that I could be right, that our lovely son may never interact with us normally. So he has to hedge his bets rather than tell me that of course everything will be okay. He asks me if I have talked to the therapist lately, what the neurologist found during his exam and slowly I start to be able to function. I feel better momentarily, if even because I have released all kinds of chemicals through my flood of tears, but soon the gnawing begins again.

Part of the despair is actually stress. Stress that I will not be the kind of mother that drags her child kicking and screaming out of the throes of autism. That my boy who loves windows will always love them, that he will not end up in a mainstream school ahead of grade level as Patricia Stacey's son did. Stress that something I did while pregnant or even before caused our son to develop more slowly. Stress that we will wait and wait and wait for treatment while our son slowly slips into his own world.

I am hoping and praying that Floortime will be our salvation, but I am worried that I will simply be too lazy to do as many hours as they say you need to do. Can I really do 6 hours a day of handing toys to Graham? Will I slowly lose my mind? Will I sacrifice his eventual recovery to read a book or go to a movie?

I can hear my husband's voice in my head right now that all of this is premature, that no one has diagnosed our son with anything. He even scores okay on the Denver II! But a mother knows... I never really understood that trite saying until now. I just wish I didn't.