My Quirky Boy

It seems that we have a never ending supply of Fin stories.  When people ask about him, I try tell a story to decribe him, and his presence in our lives.  How he talks like no other 4 year old I have ever heard, using words correctly like:

 appropriate

How he is learning the mastery of negotiation, sometimes forgetting that means he needs to give in, just a little. Often you can hear him say when he wants something on his terms after we have already said no,

“Ok, listen,” he will say, “here is the deal…..”

As if what he is going to offer us is BETTER than the senario we have already turned down.  We hear our own language verbatum, returned used in perfect context.  He hates the limitations of childhood, and not being able to make his own choices, and decisions.  How do you explain that he is living the best time of life? That being a kid, and not working, sleeping in, and TV is the greatest.

Because he would tell me that it isn’t.  That he knows the foods he likes, and the clothes that feel good to wear, going out on days that are too sunny, too cold, or too windy are just brutal to his senses. School is TOO LOUD, and why can’t we just let him be?

I can’t explain how funny he is, and smart.  Or how hard it is that it seems nothing is ever just right, his behavior tells us, yet his language is incabable.  Even though he can explain they way his body works, can figure out the TV, has mastered a remote control truck in 2 days, and can color inside the lines better than most adults.  That he comes home at the end of the school day and tells us who was in the classroom, who was abscent, what the other kids had for lunch, or what they wore, who fell in the school yard.

We often speak to him, and there is no response as if he was totally stone cold deaf. When we are not at home, and he needs/or wants something he will come up to me and whisper, “I need to use the bathroom”, never using a “big boy voice”.  His clear blue eyes that so often are clouded with tears of frustration that can soften us, as often as they frustrate us.

When he is a total mess, as he was the other night and was given a “calm out” after hitting me, I reflect afterwards.  I never feel like we are doing enough, that if he is SO frustrated and anxious, we are not doing enough.  Will I ever feel like we are? That we are meeting his needs at home? I know with certainity at school they are not. Will I ever have the confidence that I have walked over the mountian for him? I don’t know. 

Maybe it is a good thing I don’t ever feel like we have.  I need to keep reaching, keep pushing, keep being angry.  It makes me tired, and sometimes I feel like I just don’t have it in me. Then he does something, and usually it is something totally miniscule.  That one action fuels me up to get back on the horse.  It’s just I want the world to change, to be more of what Fin needs, more open to people like him.  There’s a lot of them out there, and more coming, I hope that we all can stand up long enough to see change happen.  Not today, but someday I would really like to see it.