Brenden. You just can't knock this kid down.

I thought I knew how to deal with change. I've gone to college, moved to another country, got married, had a couple of kids, and moved cross country for a minimum of three years.
This next change has thrown me through a loop that hurts. The other changes had some bits that I knew would be exciting to ease the scary or hard parts.
My little boy wasn't early to crawl or walk. But his speech was significantly delayed. I was just hoping that it was a singular problem. Not related to anything else. Now I find out that it plays into something else going on inside that brain that just isn't making the connections like other kids' brains.
In plain language-you name the area of development, he's delayed.

Motor skills-he can't kick the ball that is rolling to him. He'll stop it and then position himself and then kick it. Meanwhile, to his side, Kyleigh is running toward the rolling ball and can figure out how to time her kick to connect with the ball.

Cognitive-he spoke only a small handful of words when he went into Preschool 2 years ago. He's made phenomenal progress, but he still meets with a speech therapist every week for help to get all the way to where the other kids are at.
We read a book on the letter G. It has the letter on one page, and a word on the other page with a picture depicting the word. We go through the same method every time. I tell him what letter it is, take his finger to point to it, have him repeat it, turn the page and point to the same letter he just saw and he can't remember what letter it is. Then he tells me what the picture is, I point to the same letter we repeated at the front of that word, and ask him what it is, he can't say. Sometimes he'll name another letter. Connections just aren't being made.
Memorizing small songs-he can't pull out an entire ABC, twinkle little star, I am a Child of God, or any other little nursery rhyme. But I've recorded Kyleigh singing any one of those to her baby dolls.

Social skills-he won't join in the class reading circle. The teacher tells me he's always about 5 paces back or sometimes hides behind the table. He won't eat lunch in the cafeteria with all the other kids. At first he would just turn and leave, going into the halls until someone asked him what he was doing and where he was going. They brought him to the principal's office to figure out where he belongs, but he wouldn't go back into the cafeteria. Now he eats either in the principal's office or with his teacher. I have met with the principal and Trent has gone in to meet with her to find out what we can do at home to help. Her background happens to be in Special Education and has given me a book on Asperger's disorder. I meet with a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic in October to discuss what Brenden does and how to help. It's been a hard pill to swallow when you realize that your kid is different and doesn't/can't quite fit in with everyone else.
He speaks in a low voice...almost like a breathy whisper...when he plays and the neighbor kids make fun of him for it and laugh that they can't understand him.

Sooner or later, he'll start to make the connection that the laughing isn't with him, but at his expense. I can try to help him with his academic stuff....which gets sent home almost every day because he doesn't finish in time before the class has to move onto the next activity...but I'm afraid he won't be able to understand the simple social skills and that will bring him the harder heartbreak. (*update: started this post a couple months ago. and now he is starting to understand the social situation...which is giving him some heartache).


You start to question everything you did in bringing him up. Everything. From whether I should have pulled him from his last Preschool (which I worry that we didn't do even though we were worried about the quality of the environment and instruction. I have vowed to never let another decision about the benefit to my children be determined by money situation) so that I could have had more specific and appropriate feedback on his academic skills to whether I should have scheduled a full hour starting at 3 years old (on top of the Preschool that he was already attending) to go over ABCs and 123s. There is so much guilt in thinking that I failed as a Mother to prepare him. My one major, important job...and with the first kid, I didn't measure up. He isn't my last and I have several others to try to take care of and maybe he gets a little lost in the mix...no, he was the sole focus of my attention and I didn't give him what he wanted. That's what hurts the most. That his suffering is caused by my ineptitude. My inattention or lack of knowledge to ask specifics from his Preschool teachers...because up to this very night in meeting with his Kindergarten teacher at the Parent meeting, I had no idea he was so far behind. I knew he had trouble learning, but not like this. He can do his work when it's a one on one setting, but that's not what it's like for school, and when the teacher is not right next to him, he doesn't do his work. He pours almost the entire contents of the glue bottle on his paper, scribbles all over the assignment. The teacher cannot be expected to sit next to him on every assignment, and unless he gets that attention, he fails to thrive academically.


It's been a few weeks since I wrote the above stuff. It's now 10/18/12. On Monday I met with Dr. Manos of the Cleveland Clinic. I took his reports from his teacher, his IEP and explained all his symptoms. He said it sounds like Brenden has a cluster of things under the Asperger's umbrella and a cluster under ADHD. So technically it's called PDD, Pervasive Development Disorder.
For Brenden, academics are extremely hard for him. Some kids in his class know 1-100 and can read small books. On a good day I can get him to repeat 1-10. But place them and mix them up on a table, and it'll probably take awhile to get some of them. Letters are even harder. There are just so many of them for him. The lunch room and recess are hard for him. At first he did fine, but he must have developed enough to realize that he is different and the other kids don't like playing with him, make fun of him to his face, or just ignore him. There are a couple who play with him, but since his socialization is off a bit, he doesn't always react normally, so sometimes he gives off the wrong impression and even the nice kids sometimes give up on him. As a mother, I can deal with the academics. But hearing a kid tell Brenden to "stay away from my friends" is not an easy pill to swallow. My only options are to either try to teach him enough how to act properly or bolster him up enough at home that the insults don't hurt him.
Mentally, I took down the trophy shelves of all the sports that he would play. Trent and I both played high school sports, so I was extremely excited to have a boy and give him a head start because his Mom would practice with him at home alot as well as his Dad. I have now removed the college degree from a major university. The principal told me that he won't receive D's and F's because he won't be graded with the other kids....because he can't learn as well as they. He will be graded according to his IEP and his abilities. That is somewhat of a comfort. But only somewhat. I'm glad that he won't be 'officially' failing his grade, but kinda sad that he also won't be 'officially' passing it either.

It's a hard place to know how much to push him so that I don't let go of all expectations and thus 'help' him to fail to reach some kind of accomplishment. But also knowing when to stop pushing him is terribly hard to know. I hope he knows that we won't compare him to Kyleigh or any of his other siblings in academics, sports or popularity. I desperately hope that he'll know that we love him just as much...just as much. That he doesn't have to pass all the normal milestones that the others will probably be reaching, but I do want him to try. He won't get the right answer all the time, but he must try. Put some effort into it. It's infinitely harder for him to do the simple things that others can pick up on the first try, but just not trying will never be put up with. With Kyleigh, she will be expected to get high grades. She's capable of that. With Brenden, the reality is altered. It took me a whole day of crying as I went through my mind all the things that would be different for him. He might not date alot, he might not have alot of friends who are patient enough and understanding enough to stick around while he slowly learns the social cues of friendship. He will most likely not be on any varsity sports team. And on and on...



The hardest parts of this whole ordeal are when things like this happen:
It's Monday, I just picked him up from his teacher at the door next to the playground. We are at the end of November and knowing that it is going to be a long time before fairer weather arrives, I say yes to letting Brenden playing on the playground before we go home. I chat with another Mom who has two kids attending the school. It's not too long before I see a bunch of Kindergarteners crowded underneath the playground bridge. I see my buddy in there. He is holding a red bag. Two boys on either side of him simultaneously push him down hard, one on each shoulder. He hits the ground and is still holding onto the red bag. Someone yells at him to give it to him and by that time, I have crossed the playground and am right behind the boys who shoved him to the ground. The minute Brenden looks up and sees my face, a look of embarrassment crosses his and he tears up and runs to a far corner and hides. I ask the boys what happened and they said Brenden touched the bag and it wasn't his. I was so mad at them, but also conscious of the other Moms around me and not wanting to publicly discipline someone else's kid, I just told them that they should ASK Brenden to give them the red bag and never push anyone. There's a whole lot more I wanted to say to them, but I wanted to get to my buddy. I took off to find Brenden. He was bawling. Two other girls who looked to be in 4th or 5th grade had come over and asked him what was wrong. He didn't answer them. When I came to him and put my arms around him, he looked up at me with those blue eyes and tears streaming down his face and said, "Mom, I just want a friend".
There was nothing I could think of to say at that moment. I just held him. Eventually I got around to words and told him I love him and he's a good boy. And it is never right to push someone down. What those boys did was wrong and he doesn't have to play with them. There are other boys that are nice and he should just play with those boys.

This isn't the first time, and it's not going to be the last. Just from what I've actually witnessed or been told, he's been hit/punched in the nose to make it bleed for an hour, thrown off a fence that cut his shirt and cheek up, told to stay away from someone's friends, and shoved down by two boys with the rest of the group just standing there watching. If this is what I do see, what is happening that I don't see? I have no idea all that Brenden is dealing with. And there is no physical way for me to be there at every turn in his growing up years. What is it doing to his confidence? His ego? His self-esteem? His outlook on social interactions?
The problem is that I know some of this is caused by him...unintentionally...but from things he says and does that isn't matching up to what the other kids do so he gets made fun of, told to back off or just shoved down. Like when other kids come up to him to bring him to the circle group for reading, he gets right into their face. He doesn't do or say anything, it's some kind of game inside his mind, but it's not normal and the other kids are weirded out by it. When a good friend asks him to play on the playground, he just stands there and doesn't respond...he is too busy looking all around him and taking it all in. He wanders around. He watches the older girls hold each other up to hook the tetherball up. He stares at the younger kids running all over the playground. He watches the boys his age try to throw the ball into the giant hoop. Never participating, just observing. But when he comes home, he tells me...in staggered segments that are sometimes hard to put together to form the meaning of what he's trying to say...he tells me what everyone in his class did, who broke their arm, who is sick, what he played with in class. He is so aware.

He is in a hard place-he is 'with it' enough to know that he wants friends but none play with him, yet he isn't 'with it' enough to figure out how to hang with the other boys his age.

My buddy has a hard path to trod. At age 5 he's dealt with more than I ever did-no one ever physically or verbally bullied me. And he's too sweet to fight back. When we decided to put up stockings this year and had everyone choose a color they wanted, Brenden choose red, Kyleigh choose gold, I choose green and Trent was left with the silver one. Brenden knew that Trent's favorite color was also red, and feeling like he got stuck with the last one and not being able to choose, Brenden took up his red stocking and shoved it into Trent's stomach and said, "Dad, here. We'll share the red one. You like red, I like red, we can share".
Maybe this is how to best help Brenden. His strength is recognizing others' struggles or needs. If we can help him to forget his own problems and look around him to see someone else he can lift up, smile at, share with or give a toy to, then he might come out of the schooling system feeling like it was an enjoyable experience.
That would make this Mother's heart happy. Like 4th of July, Birthday, Christmas and Anniversary all put together-happy.