Why I do it....

You want to know why I volunteer at the school.  Why I am the room mom, the art room helper, the PTA president, the "volunteer of the year" (sorry ladies but if you thought you were winning, I already have the crown)?  You want to know why I walk my child in, eat lunch often and walk my child home?  You want to know why I smile and rarely complain about the hours I put into the place that I send my beautiful little boy 5 days a week for 7 hours a day?

Because my son tells me absolutely nothing about his day.  I can creatively ask in hundreds of ways things he learned, did, or saw.  I can inquire in equally numerous ways about friends, lunch, recess, specials.  He tells me NOTHING.  This year, the teacher has the students color the day based on where the behavior stick landed.  If there were issues, she lets parents know what they were.  This is generally all I know about his day.  Because let me be very clear.... HE TELLS ME NOTHING.  

I can see what he is learning from his homework that we struggle through each night.  Not because he can't do it, but because he doesn't want to.  I make him read to me every night so I know he is learning to read.  He loves notepads so I can see he is writing and he painstakingly will write me notes on rare occasions.  

I do not hear about the small or large things.  I do not hear about the funny or sad.  I do not hear about experiments, activities or books the teacher reads.  I do not hear about the art project or the assembly.  I don't hear about the thing he cut up or drew or wrote. I do not hear about the playground or the naughty trouble or the kind gesture.  I do not hear about your child or the silly things they do.  I hear NOTHING.  Nada.  Zip.  nothing.  

And I will venture a guess that you hear plenty about what your little one did as well as what mine did!  

I volunteer an exhausting number of hours at the school because I can peek in, I can be part of and I can know what he is doing.  I do not do this to hover or to be overbearing.  I do my best to be non-obtrusive.  The theory that he doesn't tell me because he knows I am there is hogwash.... I started going because we were not hearing from him and we needed to know.  

I am there so that we have some place to begin conversations.  I am there so I know names and can ask the specific questions with specific names.  I am there because it is the reality of our home. Espen just does not tell us one single thing about his day.  

Certainly a we may hear something on occasion but it is generally out of context and we have no knowledge to base the information on.  It is just generally very random and at very random times.  He has no back story and once that snippet is said, he moves on and is done.  

It is as if he spends the whole day and then can remember only the last moment.  It is
troubling in many ways but we just know it is who and how he is.  I spend my time catching pieces of his day. Because at the end of his day, I do my best to help him remember some part of it... what he had for lunch, where he played, what word he wrote for a spelling word.  One small detail of recall.  It is important. 

He lives totally in the moment he is in.  He lives fully and completely and then quickly moves past and beyond it.  And yet, he has an incredible memory and with clarity and extreme detail, he can recall the strangest things from the past.  Moments that are not worth remembering he will recall and share completely out of context to what is happening.  But this day... this moment... he has just moved on to the next.  As is his day at school... by the time I see him in the afternoon, he has moved on to that moment with me.  This is our reality.  

And so I volunteer and peep in.  I get a video or photo text on occasion.  I cherish that.  Because as parents, don't we want to know what our children are doing all day, who their peers are, what fun thing that made an impression on them... we want that!

To know.  To know about my child's day.  This is why I do it.  Because it matters.  

Shopping

As odd as it is, I have not taken Espen to the store for quite some time.  Shopping is rough with him. Has always been.  No matter the store.  No matter the reward for good behavior of the consequence for bad behavior. 

Last week, because of bad timing, I have had to take him to Sam's, Whole Foods & Walmart Market. And it was not good.  Before we went in... he was perfect (as perfect as Espen can be). As soon as we stepped foot inside any of the stores, it was if he were possessed by wild spirits. Jumping, spinning, crashing onto the floor, wiggling, wandering off.  What should have been painless and quick turned into stressful long excursions.

It frustrates and infuriates me.  Because I think "we should be able to handle this".  And we get home, exhausted and frazzled.  We both do something that is calming and when I have a moment to think I always go back to Sensory Processing Disorder.

SPD affects the way a child processes messages sent to his brain from any of the five main senses -- sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. He might have mild sensory intolerances or he might find it extremely difficult to handle sensory stimulation (such as when he's at a busy grocery store or a loud sports event). Normally, if a child is tapped on the shoulder, his nervous system informs his brain that he received a light touch. For a child with SPD, the message can get misinterpreted and the child may feel that he was hit hard. Or the message may get completely lost, leaving him unaware that he's been touched at all, explains Lucy Jane Miller, Ph.D., founder of STAR Center, an SPD therapy and research facility in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Most kids with SPD are a mixture of both over- and under-sensitive, which explains why inconsistent behavior is a hallmark of the disorder, adds Lindsey Biel, an occupational therapist (OT) in New York City and coauthor of Raising a Sensory Smart Child.

Two lesser-known senses that can be affected by SPD are the vestibular and proprioceptive systems. They detect incoming sensory information, which is then delivered to the brain. Vestibular refers to movement sensations such as swinging or going down a slide. The proprioceptive system provides information to the muscles and joints, like telling the legs to apply more pressure when walking up stairs than when walking on flat ground, for example. If messages from the proprioceptive system get confused in the brain, a child might appear to be excessively clumsy or aggressive because he's not aware of how much force he's applying.

Continuously receiving jumbled messages can be frustrating for a child, and his inexplicable reactions to everyday happenings can be confusing to his parents. His behavior can become even more unpredictable when he's asked to transition from one activity to another, as was the case with Charlie. When a child's nervous system is working so poorly, it can take him a long time to focus and settle into what he's doing, explains Biel. Asking him to turn his attention to something new could be just too much for him. ~ excerpt from Parents because honestly it is a good description.  

And thus I am grossly reminded of all the stimulation and sensory interactions that take place in a crowed supermarket.  Things I don't notice.  People, smells, sounds, actual items on shelves and so much more.  These very things are what cause Espen to struggle.  They are the reasons he can be "perfect" just prior and just after.  Once inside the store, he is just manically overwhelmed.

It seems natural in that regard to NEVER shop with him!  Yet that is just not practical nor is it helpful to him in the future when he will navigate the world with less help from me.  It is my job to try to help him figure out how to maneuver situations that are challenging and just really hard.  So in a few weeks I will be brave and try taking him with me to the store.  And I will try to be prepared!