just when i think....

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I swear to god, when he was about 3 , my son told the people in the bus (every bus) that he was in mummy's vagina yesterday.
No sense of time: yesterday = "anything in the past"
he was NOT in my vagina, but in my belly and then came out through there when I gave birth to him.
No filter+language weirdness made me a horrific child abuser in the eyes of hundreds of french citizens.
Then he forgot all my explanations about how babies are born and I had to do it again at 6 (he asked random old women if they had a mother, if they made the mistake of answering yes, he then announced publicly that they , too had come out of their mother's vaginas, and that it was pretty gross .
When I explained again at 8, I told the drawings story somewhere already: he showed my drawings to his step father and a collegue returning from work and told them I had drawn naked ladies for him.
There was the incident of the "mom said you're crazy", the incident of "mum said you're not very bright", and the incident of "grandma, is it true that you're a drunk?" "huh..." "cause mommy said so"
there were thousands actually. THOUSANDS.

I suggest reading between the lines.

He is sad because he trusted people, felt they were his family, relied on them, got comfortable in a situation, and then was removed from that situation for reasons he most likely does not understand. At a VERY young age. He's feeling lost and disrupted over it, and not understanding his feelings. There is also a good chance that he some off-the-wall interpretation of the events that he isn't sharing with you; very young kids don't understand these types of large disruptions very well, and often misinterpret all the well meaning information they are getting from adults. I have seen that so often with my son, over things big and small.

Seeing the former foster parent can help your step son connect to that past and make sense of it but, unfortunately, some of those memories and connections may not end up being positive.

I would suggest inviting "papa" to your home, or meeting "papa" at a favorite location from that life years ago. Don't just send the child to visit "papa," but make the visits a merger of past and present, so that the child can start connecting the two and sensing flow in his life. Plus, this will make the encounters less threatening for "papa," who is still dealing with his own sense of loss, and may not know what to do with the child on his own.

AS (autistic spectrum, which includes PDD-NOS) children often have a strong need for consistency, and a lot of difficulty with transitions. This was a BIG one, so of course he will have lingering feelings and issues about it.

hahahahaha
Thank you!
In the moment, it can really suck, but it's nice to have others that can understand and sit back and laugh about it later.

Too funny.... but it makes me wonder what he says at school that I have no knowledge of!! !!

What it does to me is that I can't have him sit alone in a room with a psychologist while I wait outside without mentally preparing my defense for court. Not to mention the damage they do to him when they misunderstand him and that I spend months to repair...

ediself..... I do understand that.. We had an incident when Ben was in the 1st grade. Apparently, he freaked out in the restroom and started screaming bloody murder while exposing himself to another child, completely freaking that child out. I got called into the school where they looked at me like "explain what this is all about." And I had nothing. He had never done anything like that before. My first thought is, "OMG, they're going to think he's being abused." Which I have never suspected, and my son totally understands that secrets are bad and bad people are liars and you tell mom EVERYTHING, no matter what they say.... (to the point that he'll come to me and say, "Mom, grandma told me not to tell you what your Christmas present is..... but is that an ok secret to keep?")

I still don't have an explanation for that situation. He could not tell me why he did it, just "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."And I'm lucky that the school did not push the issue, but I was terrified. It seems the only time my kid gets into trouble at school is in the restroom, and I have no idea why.

You're right, not everything can be laughed at later, but it's nice to forget that fact on occasion.

i get that it must have been confusing for him and he probably doesn't know what to think of it. it seems like forever since he's been here i'm surprised he even remembers them especially since he was in a different home in between but he doesn't remember that lady. of course, she left him with sitters all the time and didn't tell him she was his aunt or anything like that. next time we go up to where we are from i will get in contact with 'papa' and see if he wants to go to the park or something. probably won't be until summer though. we are 3 hours away from there and i don't drive so it's a big ordeal going there and last time we got kicked out of my parents place because Dom was well....being himself.. lol.. he likes gramma so much that when we are there he follows her around everywhere arguing with everything she says and he won't let her sleep at night, follows her to the bathroom and sits outside the door, ect. we were there for 2 days and my mom told my dad to get our stuff and take us home she couldn't handle it anymore. it kind of bothers me that they were even allowed to tell him that they were his grandparents. apparently that is pretty common place? all the kids they've had have been told that. i will try and find out what he thinks happened. he did ask me once about a year ago why they never came back to pick him up but i didn't think it was a big deal, i just told him he lives with us now and we're his family so he'd be with us from now on and papa has his own family and different kids to look after now. it's taken a whole year for him to bring it back up and i had thought he'd forgot about it because he hasn't said anything.

as for the other stuff i've been working on, i bought a small pantry today that has handles on it so i can lock it to put in the bathroom. that way i can put all the shampoo and makeup and tp in there and it won't get destroyed on me. i have yet to go down to the spider infested basement and turn the hot water down though. i know it should be easy but i'm afraid of messing with stuff like that when the house is a rental because if i mess it up i'll be in trouble with the owners. i think i will send the other half down to do it when the storage stuff gets here.

YAY PANTRY!! ! **clapclapclapclap**

Trust me.. This will save your sanity!

Everything in me said that Ben should be able to learn that no, means no... I mean, he's such a stickler for other rules.. but in the end, I had to eliminate the battle. I did the same thing, got a pantry, though for the kitchen, and had to lock up the good stuff. The reality is, he seems thankful that the situation is over. Even though he knows what's in there, there's something to stop him long enough to say, "Not supposed go in there", despite the fact he could easily cut the zip-ties.

Now if only I could get him to lift the seat in the bathroom and clean up when he miss-aims. THAT is our current daily..... several times daily struggle.

I settled for clean up when he mis-aims, realizing that two things was too much to ask.

mine doesn't have many miss-aims because he can't figure out how to pee standing up so he sits. when he does try to pee standing up he falls over everytime and pees all over himself. he tried once to pee in the urinal at school and ended falling in....lol. poor guy just sat on the bathroom floor crying until a big kid came in and went and got his teacher.(which leads to the question where was his EA but that's a whole can of worms of it's own) i'm looking forward to not having to drop what ever i'm doing whenever someone needs to pee.

Often mine will pee sitting as well, but somehow still manages to shoot between the seat and the toilet.

The part that drives me the most insane is that HE KNOWS... Every morning when I get up and stumble sleepily into the bathroom, the moment I sit, he's at the door, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

He knows he peed on it. He knows he should have cleaned it. He knows I'm not going to be happy. And he seems aware of the VERY MOMENT I sit in it.

I have tried making him clean the whole toilet and floor around every time I find it... I have left wipes right next to the toilet. I have tried training myself to leave the seat UP, but he just goes behind me and puts it down. I have tried a reward system, but if he doesn't get the reward he says, "I don't mind". I have tried taking away privileges.. But with my son, it really has to relate to the "crime" or it doesn't work... If we didn't live in an apartment I'd ground him from the toilet...

i live with not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 boys, altho the youngest is just barely working on peeing on the big potty. i would love to say they get better as they get older, but that would unfortunately not be the complete truth! i have learned to do two things. 1) keep a tub of baby wipes in the bathroom for cleaning up "spills", and 2) look before i sit. oh, and i am always the FIRST in the bathroom in the morning =)

the worst case by far in my house is the oldest one. 39 years and he still sometimes leaves the seat down and pees all over it. he also tends to get uhhh other stuff on the seat and not notice. he does have sensory dysfunctions that still, at 39, cause some toileting issues due to lack of recognition of body signals which result in emergency rushes to the bathroom and/or diarrhea from holding it in too long. he is very similiar physically in this regard to my youngest, so i havent been that upset that K isnt ready to potty train, since i know its going to be a nightmare when we do it.

self-care skills like toileting are an issue for a large amount of autistics. altho the diagnostic criteria for AS require no deficit in that area, its still common for AS as well. in my house this is compounded by the "item-not-of-interest" issue, where once they are done with an item, it is discarded on the nearest surface (table, desk, floor, etc) and completely forgotten about. in the case of the toilet, once they are off it, they dont look at it again until they need it again, so they dont see any mess they made.

my kids are actually really good with the toilet, at least the two that are not still using diapers. my teen is the cleanest of them all, you can never tell when hes been in the bathroom (except for the pile of dirty laundry he leaves behind). my 7 yr old is working on remembering to flush and only occassionally pees on the floor/seat. i never really appreciated how clean they were until this past fall when we started watching a 9 yr old neighbor a few times a week after school. the child pees EVERYWHERE, there are literally puddles in my bathroom when he comes over. and the only thing more aggravating and disgusting than sitting on a toilet your child/spouse peed on is sitting on a toilet someone ELSE'S child peed on.

i got my laminator out the other day, one of the signs i am making is for the bathroom. its a visual checklist of required items, flushing, washing, turning off light, etc. i may put an eyeball on there to remind them ALL to check and make sure they cleaned up any mess they made =)

I have REALLY thought about doing this... I don't have a laminator though... My son does do well with checklists... Screw it.. I'm going to try it. I have clear packing tape.. I'll just cover it in that!

I have REALLY thought about doing this... I don't have a laminator though... My son does do well with checklists... Screw it.. I'm going to try it. I have clear packing tape.. I'll just cover it in that!