A Sunday in the life of a SPED parent: January, 11, 2015

I wrote this as the conclusion to Never Argue 2014. Please enjoy.

Stacie, Kalen, and Brad

For new readers, Brad, 14, had Autism and ADHD. Kalen, 3, had Autism; Global Developmental Delays; Sensory Processing Disorder, and Static Encephalopathy.

I knew the book had to come to an end, so I can start on Never Argue 2015. Yesterday was a horrible day. I was up all night watching Parenthood. I had taken a nap during the day because of a massive headache. My kids also woke up at various times during the night and finally stayed up for a few hours until the alarm for church went off.

I got up. Got them ready for church but with a lot of problems. Brad wanted to take his bath, immediately after Kalen and I got out. This is a problem because I wait until I get Kalen dressed before I get Brad in the tub. I also wait until I at least have some underwear on and maybe a t-shirt. Bathing Brad will get me soaking wet sometimes. No point in putting on all my clothes, if I still have to bathe him.

I had to quickly dress Kalen and rush into the bathroom to soap Brad down before he got out the tub.

Brad also wanted his tablet. The Samsung was dead. I didn’t have time to deal with charging his device, while trying to get dressed and finish packing their bags. I threw the device on my bed and continued to move around.

Brad had a fit over the tablet. Mama is the bitch but this was Sunday and we are going to church. I gave Brad his pants. He put them on backwards. He gave me a fit when I asked him to change them around. He also didn’t like Kalen being on the Nabi. The Nabi is now Kalen’s and Kalen was dressed.

I passed Brad his shirt, I picked out the night before. He put it on and I noticed some of the buttons was missing. I grabbed another button down shirt and Brad had ripped it in the middle. Nice shirts. Brad destroyed them both. I did not notice any of the defects when I put his clothes out on Saturday.

Then, the drama really started.  I gave Brad his slip on shoes. Brad did not want to put them on. He was having problems with them. Wasted time. He put his jacket on backwards. The church called and said they were a few minutes away. I grabbed my purse. I fixed Brad’s jacket. I told the kids to grab their backpacks, so we can start walking downstairs. Brad went downstairs, while Kalen refused to move. The migraine, I had from the day before, was coming back with a toothache, plus sinuses. I picked up Kalen to move downstairs, when I saw the church van pull off. We got left. I can’t blame the bus driver. I don’t know how many minutes he waited. I blame myself. If I had been better prepared. If I had finished packing their bags; If I had hid the tablets; If I picked Kalen up in the first place, and placed Brad’s favorite laced, tennis shoes, near him. If I had picked out shirts, which wasn’t ripped or torn or had buttons missing. Today was a mommy failure. I broke down. My head hurt. My tooth hurt. The van left us. I crawled back into bed and popped 3 pain pills. Yesterday was not my day. Yesterday was not perfect chaos.

And this ends Never Argue with an Autistic Child and Other Special Tales, 2015 edition. Hopefully 2015 will be better and a lot longer.