I should NOT still be cleaning up sh*t with no babies in the house!!!!

Major, huge .. no fucking ENORMOUS vent about to happen here ... avert your eyes if you are offended by the word POOH.

Nathan has ADHD and Aspergers. Although I've mentioned it here before, I've not really blogged a huge amount about his diagnosis and what it means to "us" as a family group.

ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - it basically means that he is like a constant live wire with energy free flowing 24 hours a day. He cannot sit still without fidgeting or bouncing and nothing (except the computer, Nintendo DS or playstation) will hold his interest for more than a few minutes. He can run off without warning in a busy street or supermarket, talks incessantly … and basically is constantly exhausting. It’s easier to say he has basically no concept of self preservation!

The signs were there when he was about 2 years old that there was something not quite right about him. I’d already had Megan and although she was a girl and girls are different … there was just something I knew as a parent wasn’t quite right. I had real trouble toilet training him at 18 months … decided to wait till he was 2½ … then decided to wait till he was nearly 3 … and when he started pre-school at 3 and still wasn’t properly toilet trained we were pretty much told to either put him back in nappies or remove him because they didn’t have the staff to deal with it! He was also then held back for a term from starting school because he STILL wasn’t fully toilet trained and still having a lot of accidents. The GP was useless and said he’d “grow out of it” and that it was a typical toddler! I was told that they wouldn’t do anything about the toileting until he was 4 and I literally had him down there the day after his 4th birthday!

It took a LOT of pushing on my part to get an appointment through the child services department to get him seen by someone … ANYONE that would take me seriously and at that point it was a 9-12 month waiting list! It was literally by phoning at LEAST once a week to see if there was a cancellation and making myself known to the receptionist that we FINALLY got an appointment after about 3 months wait.

Ugh there were so many forms to fill in. We had to answer these pages and pages of questions about Nathan’s behaviour, and similar forms were sent to the school. To get a diagnosis for ADHD both the school and parents / caregivers have to respond similarly to the questionnaires (they are tailored differently for each of us)

We met with so many different doctors and people … and then the diagnosis was made, it was like the world made sense! When the doctor first mentioned autism I was really scared because my only “experience” of autism was watching the movie Rain Man and that is SO FAR from Nathan!

Aspergers (AS) is different though. Autism is a huge umbrella that Aspergers is only a small part of! Aspergers is generally classified as a delay in language and cognitive development, motor ‘clumsiness’ and “atypical” use of language. That’s the technical description anyway. AS is different though … people with autism don’t generally like people invading their personal space, but Nathan LOVES being cuddled, held and we always have our “snuggles” before he goes to bed at night. He is very affectionate and loves nothing more than personal contact.

Here’s the Wikipedia description of Aspergers ….
“Unlike those with autism, people with AS are not usually withdrawn around others; they approach others, even if awkwardly, for example by engaging in a one-sided, long-winded speech about a favorite topic while being oblivious to the listener's feelings or reactions, such as signs of boredom or haste to leave.”

See, I read that and thought OMG that is SOOOOO Nathan!!! When he plays his fave Pokemon game on his Nintendo DS, he’ll literally narrate everything he’s doing and tell you all about which Pokemon is which, what their skill levels are, who they can beat and everything that is going on in his game at the time! You sit here and say “oh really, uhuh ….. yeah they can do that? Cool!” whilst really not listening to a word that he is saying! He'll contine talking well past the fourth or fifth time you have told him NATHAN SHUT THE FUCK UP! OMG how awful do I feel saying that? Especially knowing that he could read this at any time in the future!

Nathan, if you are reading this … sweetie I KNOW it isn’t your fault. I love you SO much, and I will ALWAYS love you no matter how much sh*t you smear all over my walls, but PLEASE you really have to understand that it pisses me off to STILL be cleaning up your sh*t at nearly 8 years old!

Even NOW he is 7 years old (8 in May) and although the accidents are fewer and far between, he still shits himself.

This evening I found my stairway walls and carpet smeared literally in Nathan’s cr*p. I smelled it before I saw it and the maddening thing is … when I called for him to get his butt there right now … and I said to him “I’ve just found something on the stairs Nathan … what could I have found?” He looked at me, then looked at the floor and very quietly (and I KNEW he was ashamed and embarrassed!) he said “pooh.”

Yeah umm you could say that. Smeared all over the walls AND the carpet up the stairs.

He got yelled at, told no computer tomorrow and was sent to bed early.

At the time of writing this (10.40pm) he is asleep in the hallway in a pile under his duvet. I made an executive decision to just leave him there and I’ll put him to bed after I take him to the toilet in half an hour or so.

*sigh*

I REALLY don’t know how to handle this sometimes. It’s NOT his fault and I KNOW that. Christ, life since prescription medication for Nathan has been bloody fantastic compared to what he is like without the drugs, but I hate that he could turn around to me in the future and be angry with me for medicating him. He’s 7½ years old and is on 30mg equasym XL a day which is a fair dose considering his age / build.

Still, what are you supposed to do when your son smears excrement all over the walls and carpet? He still has to be punished no matter what….

So why do I feel so guilty?