My Big Helper

I just love this boy! He is my sweet and sensitive Mitchell who puts up with so much! I feel incredibly blessed to have him in my life (as I do about each of my children).

Mitchell is homeschooled and is a very smart boy, who likes to pretend he can't do schoolwork! But he does it anyway. We have always believed that Mitchell will be an engineer someday, and the older he gets, the more he seems to prove it. He is always inventing something, and figuring out how to make something work.

But where I really appreciate Mitchell is in his patience with me. Some days are really hard at home, between Sam and the baby and just life in general, and he puts up with the brunt of things. If I'm having a bad day, he doesn't get to escape to school and hang out with friends! But he is so patient and works so hard to please me.

Today was a pretty rough day, but we made some progress too. We have the two assessments scheduled for Sam to be evaluated for autism. One is in 2 weeks and the other is at the end of March. I hate waiting, but at least we are on a path. Meanwhile, we will wait and see what the school says, as they complete their own evaluation.

I'm also trying to organize things better at home. We have a three story house and the basement is finished with 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a family room. We find that the more time Sam spends down there, the easier things are. He isn't drawn to the kitchen, any of the outside doors or the kids bedrooms. So, overall, we are able to contain the craziness a bit more! We tried it this afternoon, with each of the kids taking a shift, playing with him, one-on-one and it went really well. It allowed me to make dinner, help the older kids with homework and feel like a normal person again, instead of so stressed. It was also nice to keep the two younger ones away and give them a break. Sam doesn't really know how to play with them, so he just hurts them or takes things away from them. It can get very tiring. And I've started to notice that Olivia is beginning to do things she wouldn't normally do, especially try to hurt the baby, like she has seen Sam do. So, as mean as it probably sounds, I feel like I need to limit their time around him so that she and Noah can develop and not be pulled into this whirlpool. Because that is what it feels like most days. It's just a huge, swirling, confusing mess that leaves me completely spent.

We'll see how it goes over time or if he will begin to resent being separated from the others (he's never left alone, just so that no one thinks I'm chaining him down in the basement!) When I started to explain this new plan with my older kids, Mitchell said, "we're not going to do what they did in Goonies, are we?" Too sweet and sad, at the same time. It's difficult the strain that everyone in the family feels when one of the children has special needs. But, before this turns into a complete pity party, the benefit is that my children are learning compassion. They are the first, at school or in life, to reach out to someone who is different or struggling. On several occasions, they have said, "I just thought about Sam and how he would feel if people were treating him like that." So, as difficult as some days are and as much as I would love to have this challenge taken away, I am grateful for the growth, for the strength I am finding within and for the sweet, sweet boy Sam can be, on a good day!