Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

All stories have their battles. Some involve weapons, others words.

“NO, MOM, DON’T THROW IT AWAY!”

I hold up the black tshirt featuring the ghost Boo from Super Mario. There’s a giant hole in Boo’s mouth from Biff tumbling over a toy metal tractor at a dairy farm years ago. Now the shirt barely passes his belly button, and the shirt sleeves squeeze his shoulders. “Dude, this shirt is way too small for you. We’ll get you another one.”

“NO, I want that one. I NEED that one!”

He holds his stuffed Boo in front of his face to catch his tears.

In this, his twin is a mirror copy.

“NO, MOM, DON’T THROW IT AWAY!”

I hold up a poster Bash made years ago for a church event I ran. Each kid made some signs for me, and somehow this poster of Bash’s evaded the cleanup at the church itself. I forget how animated his characters were even then.

“Dude, we don’t have room for this. I took some pictures of it. We can’t keep all your drawings.”

“NO, I want that one. I NEED that one!”

We all struggle with growing older. Prioritizing. Making tough choices. One such choice is throwing away. Sometimes the thing is old, broken, no longer usable. I’m sentimental about plenty of things (I still have Mother’s Day doodles from the little B’s in their kindergarten years), but at some point, room must be made for new things, so some old things have to go. It’s a part of growing up. It’s a part of accepting change.

And you know from my earlier post on Autistic Life how well change is received.

~*~

“Mom, why’s my hand keep bleeding?”

Bash holds his right hand out to me for inspection. It feels like sandpaper, cracked and lined to blazes. A few of those cracks by the knuckles are thinly colored with blood. “Oh dear, looks like you’ve got my skin, dude.” I grab some Vaseline to rub into his skin, but he quickly pulls back. “No, that stuff’s greasy! I don’t like it.”

“I get that, but you have to let your skin heal. It needs this stuff so it isn’t so dry. I’ll get medical lotion later.” I try to explain that I had lots of skin problems growing up, but the sensation of Vaseline on his skin shuts down all the other senses. Not that I blame him—it is greasy. But part of growing up is taking your medicine, even if you don’t like it.

In this, his twin is a mirror copy.

“Agh, don’t touch it.” Biff holds both hands over his mouth.

“I’m not, dude, I promise. But I need to see better what’s in there.”

“Just. Don’t. touch it.” And Biff barely holds his lower lip away from his teeth. Sure enough, there’s a canker sore right on the tissue connecting the lip to the lower gums.

Since when do little kids get canker sores? Oh yeah, I think, the boys turn 13 this year. And then my stomach knots, because the boys will turn 13 this year.

No more little kids.

Heck, no more kids.

I swallow the lump in my throat so I don’t look like I’m crying over a canker sore. That would only scare Biff more. “We can get some medicine today for that.”

“Nooooo, just leave it!” Biff runs down the hall, into his room, and buries his face in Kirby plush creatures. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he mumbles, as though the power of stuffies can heal all wounds.

And I can’t help but remember our first Emergency Room visit together, Biff and I. He had tripped on the stairs of a slide bit through his lip. This little two-year-old, face full of blood and tears, stopped wailing the moment he could hold his blanket to his face. Ten years later, he still seeks that healing power even though his logical brain knows a stuffy can’t make a sore in his mouth go away.

~*~

I have written before about the struggles of Autistic minds to handle change. The Unknown Difference is terrifying, whether it’s a change in where they sleep, what they eat, or even what they use to brush their teeth. Sometimes I’m lucky, and their big sister prepares them in her own way for that change. Bumps on their face? Acne comes to all big kids, like their sister. Doing chores? That’s a part of a big kid’s job, like their sister. Preparing their own lunch? Big kids do that all over, just like their sister.

A little foreshadowing goes a long way like that, but there’s still the act, the stimuli, of undergoing it yourself. That first time I used the acne face wash on Bash so he could feel what it was like, he hated it. It smelled. It stung. It was going to make his face worse and be horrible and ugly and it was all my fault and WHY does he have to, he doesn’t have to, it’s stupid.

Change is hard.

And not just for them.

It’s tempting to keep doing everything myself, because then the chores get done. They’ll eat the right foods for lunch. I’ll know their faces are washed.

But how does that help Biff and Bash, or frankly any child neurotypical or neurodivergent, be ready to take care of themselves? The point of such tasks at home while growing up is supposed to remove that feeling of The Unknown Difference. Shielding the boys from those challenges may keep them “kids” for longer, but not in a good way.

And so it goes. Bash will scowlingly clean his face before constructing another robot out of Lego. Biff will talk through commentary about his favorite Kirby game while his loved-worn bear watches him sort laundry.

We pick our battles as best we can. For now, we work on what is possible, here and now, to help them now and ever on.

“The way we look at our children and their limitations is precisely the way they will feel about themselves. We set the examples, and they learn by taking our cue from us.”  – Amalia Starr

Thanks for taking this parenting break with me. I’ve got more about boys and books coming up, as well as an interview, a podcast, a resource highlight, and managing this whole “time” thing.

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!