Bad Metaphors

Not to show off my scientific genius, but in my opinion not all crap makes good fertilizer. Some crap just stinks up the world, draws flies. And other crap makes the buttercups bloom.

We faced a tough call when we considered whether to accept our neighbor's generous invitation to share floor time again this Friday. The rooster had the worst week of his life, and for a guy born difficult, that means we truly almost needed a police escort home yesterday. In my mind, this crisis had to relate to last Friday's floor time. Yet floor time had also seemed to my husband to provide important tools for working with our boy. So he got the number of the floor time therapist and asked what to make of the rooster's rage. Basically what I gathered from her answer is that this shit we're in now is the good kind. It means floor time is probably helping the rooster to work out some difficult personal and interpersonal issues, like sharing, cooperating, and expressing his anger. But not to expect buttercups overnight. So we'll suck it up and tackle floor time again Friday, after The Appointment.

Here is the other thing I got today, really seemed to get. Friday's doctor appointment will confirm for us that our rooster is autistic. While we're still kind of in shock about it, the initiated seem to have no doubt. The appointment needs to be about asking, "So how do we help him?" The rooster's autism does not come out in words or actions a heck of a lot like anyone else's we know of yet, but it isn't different, either. So the real spectrum I need to examine are the 31 flavors of possible supports to offer him. After all, there are only so many hours in a day, and I want to make sure there is room to just be, amid the PT, OT, speech, floor time, or whatever else it is that the expert can suggest. I know whatever we choose will have its struggles, I just want to know how to choose the best fit and how to find balance. I just want someone to help me know how to tell when something is right for my boy, even if afterward he seems more inclined to yank his sister across the back seat by her hair while she's still tightly buckled.
And here is the other aha I'm getting: All the people who write to tell me it will get worse before it gets better make more sense to me now; I had read those more as warnings, but now I understand with an "aha!" that instead they were encouragement of a sort. You all meant that it CAN'T get better without getting worse first, that "worse" is the first step to better. The buttercups requires some crap -- it's part of their process.