Patience

One thing that kids teach you is patience.  When they are babies and cry, you have to try and figure out why they are crying.  Since babies can't tell you why they are crying, you have to try and guess. Are they wet, need a hug, want a bottle, to be nursed?  A lot of times you can tell by the type of cry what they want.  As they get older and learn to walk, you have to be patient as they toddle, then fall, toddle then fall, until one day they walk or run right towards you.  As they get even older (tweens and teens), if you ask them how their day went and they say, "fine" you have to be patient and hopefully they will REALLY tell you what happened in their day.  When you are a parent of a special needs child, you really learn the meaning of the word "patient."  Milestones are much, much harder to achieve and sometimes they never are. Right now, we are dealing with an issue with Dominic that is really testing our patience. After months of really hard work, we finally had him fully potty trained.  He was doing great!  Then, he got the worst migraine he has ever had in his life and has regressed back almost to square one.  When Dominic gets a migraine, he gets very sick and it usually takes a few days for his tummy to get back to eating "full strength." When he started feeling better, we tried to encourage him to start using the potty again and the more we pushed, the more he resisted. Potty training is all about the control.  This is when Dominic having Autism really stinks.  We have asked him many times why he doesn't want to do it and he can't answer us.  It is frustrating with a capital "F."  We know he can do it because he was before he got the migraine.  When my husband comes home from work, it's almost the first thing out of his mouth that he's asking me about.  It's become pretty much the main topic of conversation.  We are trying really hard to not let Dominic know we are really frustrated with him, but he is very in tune to us and I know he thinks we are. Everyone at his school are being really patient with him too, but I'm sure it's tough for them because they worked so hard to get him fully trained.  I keep trying to tell the hubby that using the bathroom is a lifelong social skill and that we can't create so much anxiety for him.  We are confident that Dominic will get back to being fully trained, we just have to be patient!