and The Light Bulb comes on...

Yesterday I picked Greyson up from school and Suzy let me know he had had a bad afternoon. Being the bull in a china shop that he tends to be sometimes, he had gotten up and plowed through his classmates not paying any attention to his surroundings. This resulted in him accidentally hitting a little girl in the nose with his knee. He doesn't do these things on purpose he just gets focused onto one thing and all else is gone from his world. Including things and people around him. He is in Greyson's world and nothing or no one else exists. This of course can result in things getting bumped into, knocked over...etc...etc... or in the case yesterday, a sweet little girl with a bloody nose. Once it happened he freaked out to see what his actions had caused and was upset all night. He would not talk about it at all. Just last night the light bulb went on for me...I think I know why....you see he spent his entire year last year at a school that whenever he did anything, whether by accident or not, he was reprimanded by his teachers and classmates. He spent most of his days in the office and things, as far as I am concerned, were never handled as well as they could have been. Not to rehash it all but he once knocked over a plant only to be ridiculed by his teacher and classmates who claimed he had done it on purpose. This resulted in him freaking out, crying and screaming at them..."You are all liars"...which resulted in him being sent to the office. Well...things like that happened more than I would like to say...now I have a child who whenever he has an accident like yesterday..withdraws to some extent and claims..."Why am I bad?" "I don't want to be a mean boy." Michele and I try our best to convince him that he made a mistake and it was an accident. All people make mistakes and have accidents sometimes. We talk to him about making sure we pay attention to our surroundings and watch out for others etc...But he still has this image of himself being bad. It breaks my heart and makes me crazy. For some reason I could not for the life of me figure out why he thought he was soo bad. Now after all this time the light bulb clicks on? He has basically been conditioned into thinking everything he does (accidents resulting in something not so good happening) was malicious on his part. The other school always thought his acts were intentional even though we tried fruitlessly to tell them he was not like that. How ludicrous! Now again we are not only dealing with what we know is challenging him but we have to deal with undoing the damage that was done by the people who we entrusted last year to take care of him and protect him. While they waited on us to do all the things we had to do to find out what was going on with him their answer was to handle him this way? To us...it was a blessing and a nightmare rolled into one. Now we know what he has going on and we have a beautiful group of people who assist him on a regular basis...I am still ill at the damage that was added by the other school though. It seems to crop up time and again and I will be thankful for the day he is fully himself again. Self confidence back intact and fully knowing that he is only human and he IS NOT a bad boy. It doesn't help that with Aspergers a child's motor coordination is really not where it should be...age appropriate...making them quite clumsy and not good at being aware of themselves in time and space. He at least is getting work on that once a week at OT but it still is lacking. Does he make mistakes?...yes he does...Are his decisions always the best?...no they aren't...but he by no means is a hateful or malicious child and him thinking that way wrecks me. Buckle up for safety Mr Mike....we need your help on this for sure! Well enough of my bantering for now...Thanks for stopping by our blog and until next time, :) Keep laughing and smiling. Laughter after all is the best medicine. I could use a good laugh about now.