Sunday, February 3, 2013

Super Bummer

I feel like balling my eyes out.  I thought I prepared my son for the super bowl.  We weren't doing anything special but it would be a change of routine with the TV. I let my kids know ahead of time (with reminders) that we would be watching the Super Bowl.  Mommy wants to hear the National Anthem and watch the half-time show.  That's all mommy wanted.  Is this what mommy got?  I got half.  Maybe it's too much to expect that one or both of my kids would allow me to watch what I want to watch once in a blue moon.  By the time the half-time show started, my son with autism was screaming and crying and begging to go to bed.  Here's the kicker - my son can't sleep without me in the room with him.  So, he's begging to go to bed right when the Beyonce starts singing.  I say to him "Just 10 mins hun and we can go to bed".  He starts screaming more.  I give him options like - play your game for 10 mins, lay in mommy's bed for 10 mins, daddy can lay with you.  The more I suggested, the more he screamed and cried and it started to grate on my nerves.  I'm not a perfect person and I know that it's not his fault.  But my voice rose a bit and got more stern.  "Honey, just a few more minutes!"  He didn't like that - so his voice got louder and more grating.  Then right when I was getting up to take him to bed, my husband yells "Shut. Up!".  Oh FUCK!  Let's just say that did NOT go over well with me or my son.  It took a while for my son to calm down. He ended up sleeping in my bed and every time I made a move he opened his eyes to be sure I was still there.  Autism is hard.  Autism can suck sometimes.  Parenting is hard and it really sucks sometimes.  My husband and I both caused my son to have an accelerated meltdown; we took him past his limits and I'm so sorry for that.  I swear I only wanted to watch the half-time show but instead I had to de-escalate my son.