Yesterday, was Mother’s Day.  Of course, mothers deserve more than one day so I’m making my post today.

OK, it’s also because I don’t post on Sundays, but mother’s do deserve more than one day.

B, in particular, deserves at least 6 months. I’m not sure how the family would function without her. She drops the kids off at school, does the laundry, remembers which medications each child is taking and when their next dose is, picks the kids up from school, takes them to doctor’s appointments, runs errands, and more. Somehow, she also fits being a fantastic blogger/freelance writer/social media maven in there as well.

I’m in awe of all that she does for our boys and for me.  She’s the most amazing woman I know and every day  I find myself loving her more and more.

Unfortunately, with the hectic stresses of day-to-day life, "thank you’s" are often forgotten.  So I’m going to pause here and say Happy Mother’s Day, B, and thank you for all that you do.

To all the other mothers out there, I hope your Mother’s Day was a fantastic one!

NHL has asked me many times if I’m proud of him.  Usually, it’s over a trivial matter such as being chosen at random in Hebrew School and winning some chocolate.  Where my pride in my son really shines through is when he sees his limitations… and then exceeds them.

NHL recently had a band and chorus concert.  As we approached the school, we could tell he was nervous.  He kept insisting that we were going to be late and got angry when we wouldn’t let him storm into the building and instead insisted he remain calm.  (For the record, we were about fifteen minutes early and it was going to take us only one minute to get in the building.)

As B went to drop NHL off in the area that he’d wait until it was his turn, JSL and I procured some seats.  B took a long time coming back because, apparently, NHL’s anxiety was getting worse, not better.  I definitely sympathized with him.  I clearly remember the anxiety I felt before my grade school orchestra and chorus concerts.

As NHL’s group’s turn neared, we could see him by the door with the rest of the kids who were ready to perform.  He was having trouble standing still and we could tell he was talking non-stop.  Two classic signs of NHL-anxiety-overload.

The doors opened and NHL came in.  He was in the back and the band performed their songs.  NHL seemed to do well (though, to be honest, I couldn’t see him that well from where we were.)  Then they left.  NHL wasn’t finished, though.  It was chorus time.

This time, NHL was situated right in front.  The first two songs went well, but then NHL ran into a roadblock.  He began to cough.  His allergies have been bothering him and although he’s taking medicine, he’s still prone to coughing fits.  We could see his face go red as he struggled to breathe, stay calm, and keep from coughing enough to sing.  At times, it looked like he might lose it entirely and begin to cry.

He didn’t, though.  He powered through and sang louder.  He even began to dance a little while he rocked out to the songs.  Yes, his coughing fits came back every so often, but he didn’t let them slow him down.  He just coughed into his arm and then returned to his singing.

I was in the stands videoing the whole thing with a big smile on my face.  THAT is why I’m proud of NHL.  He’s a talented kid and when he doesn’t give up he’s able to rise above what holds him back.

I’m a fraud… a total fraud.

Ok, not really.  However, there are times when I feel this way.

I’ll be at work planning out a web application and suddenly I’ll feel a wave of anxiety.  A voice inside my head will start telling me that I’m not really good at this stuff.  After all, the voice says, there are people much better at web development than I am.  Therefore, the voice concludes, I must be a total fraud who will be found out and fired soon.

The truth of the matter is that the voice is right in a small way.  There are people whose web development skill dwarfs my own.  However, that’s true of any pursuit.  No matter what you choose to do, there will be someone better at it than you are.  Very few people can point at an accomplishment and say "Nobody is better at this than I am."

The voice takes this grain of truth and skews it… spins it until it is proof positive that my web development skill is zero because others surpass me.  All of the websites I’ve coded, the applications I’ve written?  They’re dismissed by the voice as no proof whatsoever.  It must have been luck that enabled me to do all that but one day my luck will run out and I’ll crash and burn.

The voice isn’t just limited to my vocation, but to my parenting skills.  It will tell me that I’m not good enough to parent my boys.  I lose my temper too much.  I don’t know how to handle certain circumstances well enough.  I rely on my wife for things that I should know how to do myself.

Again, there’s a grain of truth in this.  I do lose my temper more than I’d like to.  This mainly takes the form of my Asperger’s butting heads with my NHL’s Asperger’s.  Working on controlling this is one of my biggest parenting challenges.  I also can be clueless when it comes to handling some circumstances such as navigating school politics.  Finally, I do rely on my wife for a lot, but this is true of any marriage.  Marriage should be a partnership.  Show me a marriage where one spouse does everything and the other does nothing and I’ll show you a marriage that is doomed.  Besides, my wife has some strengths in areas where I am weaker and vice versa.  Each of us supports the other so that together we are stronger than we would be individually.

Thanks to a pair of humorous tweets by @muskrat_john (of Apples To Apples and Munchkins fame), I now know that this feeling has a name: Imposter Syndrome.

Most days, I’ll push the voice out of my head easily, but other days it is tougher.  I’m pretty used to it by now.  I’ve battled this for decades and it likely won’t stop anytime soon.  I’ve just got to keep my accomplishments in mind and know that I didn’t stumble upon where I am today.  I worked hard, made mistakes, learned from them, and gained much knowledge along the way. 

Have you ever had to battle feeling like an impostor in your own life?

Technically speaking, we should have begun our Seders much later than we did.  We really should have begun at about 7pm instead of our 5:30 start time.  I had a very important reason for starting early, though:  My boys.

To me, the most important part of the Seder is passing on our religious, cultural, and family traditions to the next generation.  Unfortunately, "the next generation" tends to get tired and cranky if they stay up too late or if their dinner is delayed too much.  So while we COULD have begun the Seder late and eaten even later, it would have meant that the kids wouldn’t have been a part of it.

Instead, we bent the rules.  Thanks to this, the boys got to follow along, participate, and even have a bit of fun.  NHL got to read.  JSL got to sing (with NHL singing the words first since he’s the better reader).  We even got a little silly.  In short, we made some wonderful memories and perhaps even formed some new traditions.

How do you form new family traditions this time of year?

There are many blog posts, books, and articles written about parenting a child with Asperger’s Syndrome.  There isn’t much written, however, about parenting a child while HAVING Asperger’s.  Children can be a challenge all by themselves. When you add in a parent who gets overstimulated, fixated on things, and thinks literally, the challenges are vastly multiplied.

One of the things that a parent of a child with Asperger’s will quickly notice is that their child can focus in on the way they think things should be.  The other day, while dropping NHL off in Hebrew School, he walked over to another child’s desk.  He wouldn’t listen to me to stay away.  The reason for this?  All of the chairs were turned upside down on the desks in a certain way (backs of the chairs pointing down on the side kids normally sit on).  All of the desks, that is, except for this one desk.  This desk had its chair’s back pointed down on the opposite side.  NHL had immediately spotted the problem and sought to fix it.

Similarly, a parent with Asperger’s might fixate on the way things should be.  This can lead to stress when the fixation involves the child and the child doesn’t immediately conform.  All too often, I fixate on one thing and NHL fixates on a different thing.  Our fixations clash which leads to a battle of wills with B caught in the middle trying to calm us down and resolve the situation.

Just like NHL fixated on the one desk being out of order, my fixation-of-choice seems to be order.  I need things done a certain way and I expect my kids to act a certain way.  Some of these things are understandable restrictions, such as when I tell NHL not to put his arms to his side and spin around uncontrollably in the frozen aisle of the supermarket.  Some, however, are less understandable and more the product of my own past.

Over the years, I’ve learned how to "fit in" in social situations even if I’m unsure of how to act.  Typically, my strategy is to blend in and not call attention to myself.  This means not answering questions (even if I know the answers), not volunteering, and not taking the lead.

NHL, meanwhile, takes a different tact.  He tries to answer all the questions, volunteer for all of the jobs, and take the lead in everything.  This can be very good (as he is very bright and is likely capable of much of this), but this can also put him in situations where his "differentness" has a spotlight shone on it.

As someone who was bullied quite a bit, this spotlight produces a feeling of sheer anxiety in me.  I begin to fear that kids will make fun of him and I try to protect him the only way I know how: Trying to force him to follow my "blend in" strategy.  Now, I know that this is wrong – I should let him shine and not try to force my ways on him.  However, in the heat of the moment, I fixate on how things "should be" (NHL staying quiet and not doing things that might get him picked on) to the exclusion of all else.  (Including ways of explaining this to NHL in words other than "do this because I told you to.")

This is going to be a constant challenge with me.  I need to keep in mind that my own actions, no matter how right I might think they are, could be causing more harm than good.  I need to avoid fixating on one path, no matter how much that fixation is a part of me.  In short, I have to parent while taking into account both my son’s Asperger’s as well as my own.

This is going to be tough, but I’m going to do my best.  After all, this is for my son and he deserves nothing less.

NOTE: The Autism Awareness ribbon icon above was created by Melesse and comes from Wikimedia Commons.