My Atlas

My son is a challenging kid. He is strong willed, opinionated, anxious, sensitive, and at the moment, very angry and very confused. It is too easy to turn this all on myself, to flog myself for the failings that have led us here. I am frayed, I cannot fight with another person that I love like this. Everything sets him off, and I can't figure out how to get my boy back.

If you were to ask me when I had my most grown up moment, I would tell you without hesistation, that it was the day we finally found a doctor who looked us square in the eye and said "He is definitely apraxic". The relief that washed up and over me, that this thing has a name, and now we can DO something about it, was cleansing. I had walked around for a year sure that something was not right, and I knew he wasn't autistic, no matter how many times that was suggested, I knew that wasn't my son. So to have someone look me in the eye and say "This is rare, but it is true," well suffice to say she is still my beacon in the fog.

My son has to work ten times harder then your kid just to tell me what he wants for a snack, my kid has to remember how to pedal a bike everytime he sits on one, and my kid knows that he sounds different from the other kids when he talks, but he keeps trying. He is tenacious, he is brave, he pushes the same damn boulder up that fucking hill everyday and I am endlessly enraptured by his progress, and how he fights for every inch that he gains. I am profoundly grateful that I have a son who is so easy to respect.

But, he fights for those inches, and more often then not, I am the one who gets all his frustration. It is hard to remember and stay calm when he is lashing out at me. All I want is for him to understand that I am walking beside him, helping when I can, but ultimately, it is his hard work that will get us to the top of this mountain. He is the toughest, smartest person I know and sometimes I can't show him that, because I can't fight through his defenses. He is almost 5 years old, and sometimes I am scared that he will always hate me because I refuse to underestimate him, I refuse to let him get away with less then he is, and I refuse to let the exhaustion win. (OK, well... sometimes the exhaustion defintely wins, we are both only human after all.)

Today, and a lot of other days I feel like I lost. I hope that tomorrow cna be better, and I hope I can forgive myself for all the times I've lost my temper and been less than the mother I always wanted to be.