A mom, a brain surgeon and an autistic child walk into a bar
I have committed to a sugar-free, wheat-free, intoxicant-free January, but tonight reminded me why sweets, carbs and intoxicants play an important role in my life. After a challenging (but successful!) first week back at school, Peanut was in full maddening form.
I had hoped to stave off the worst of Friday school exhaustion with a new practice: before we left for school, I invited Peanut to yell at the top of his lungs, to let out any pent-up frustration. But we nonetheless had morning drama over a game of Life (someone else got the “Brain Surgeon” career card); a midday wrestling match (yes, literally) over his desire to go to McDonalds; and an end-of-day argument over his eligibility for console time.
It was the console time argument that wore me down. Peanut gets 30 minutes of console time on any school day where he completes four class periods, and 45 minutes if he completes five; spending lunch or recess with his class counts as a period. He had only completed four periods today, but argued that lunch should count as a fifth because he’d been near (if not in the same room as) the rest of his classmates.
I told him that didn’t cut it, so he offered to give up his YouTube time on the car ride home and get fifteen extra minutes of console time instead. I liked that he was working towards a solution, and saw an opportunity: I told him we could count that mid-morning game of Life as a class period if we finished the conversation we’d started with his teacher while we were all playing. The four of us (Peanut, teacher, me and his support worker) had been bouncing around ideas for Peanut’s science project when he stormed off over the Brain Surgeon Debacle. Pick up that conversation and figure out your science project on the car ride home, I told him, and we’ll count that as your fifth period.
The project is supposed to relate to changes in state — like from liquid to solid, or gas to liquid. At first, Peanut wanted to look at why these changes occur, and since his support worker is in the process of studying for her MCATs, she was able to explain the basics of thermodynamics at a molecular level. (Yes, she is super-human.) That led into a conversation about how much heat would be required to turn gold into a gas, and by the time we were halfway home, Peanut had decided to do a “What If” project about turning something like gold into gas, inspired by his favourite book, What If (by xkcd’s Randall Monroe).
With that sorted out, he wanted to have YouTube for the rest of the ride home. I pointed out that he’d traded that as part of our console time agreement, and that we should keep working on the game plan for his project. The last ten minutes of our drive were a juggling act, rotating between his hostile demands for YouTube, my efforts to distract him, and his intermittent re-engagement in other topics of conversation.
By the time we got home, I was thinking about how much I would like my usual end-of-day bowl of pretzels, because a carbohydrate coma sounded like just the ticket. But of course, they’re off the menu for my month of virtue, so I fell back to my other end-of-day favourite: celery with peanut butter and raisins.
Meanwhile, Rob set Peanut up for his console time, and I set the five Amazon Echo timers we use whenever Peanut has game time. (“Alexa, set a timer for 45 minutes. Alexa, set a timer for 35 minutes. Alexa, set a timer for 44 minutes…43 minutes…40 minutes.”) As each timer beeped, I reminded Peanut of his remaining time: “That’s your ten minute warning.” “Five minutes. Peanut, you should be saving and wrapping up.” “Two minutes…”
While Peanut has been doing really well at wrapping up game time promptly in the past few weeks, today he was back to his former habits: even after all those warnings, when the final timer went off, he said he needed to finish his level.
“Turn off that game or I’m going to turn it off myself.”
Rob heard the sharp edge in my voice and came down to take over. But I was already done. That primal yell I’d encouraged him to try out this morning? It had nothing on the deep, heartfelt scream that began in my chest and tore out of my throat.
But that wasn’t enough to throw Peanut off his game.
“I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ARE STILL PLAYING WHEN YOU HAVE ALREADY HAD THE 45 MINUTES YOU ONLY GOT BECAUSE I GAVE YOU A BREAK!!!”
I was so furious that I pulled on my coat and walked out the door. Walking out the door only made me angrier: I didn’t want to go out, and I’d be damned if I’d let his intransigence drive me out of the house. I stormed back in.
“I AM SO ANGRY!”
I swept out of the living room and into our bedroom, throwing myself down on the bed. All I wanted was to numb out the anger — but was I really going to give up on my “no intoxicants” goal in week one?
Well, maybe I should. After all, there’s nothing like an end-of-day indulgence to dull the rage and frustration I feel after a day of Peanut conflicts. How can it be good for my kids to have me be this angry, this resentful? Maybe it’s better for everyone if I allow myself a few vices…if those vices make the deep rage recede, and turn me back into a content and tolerant mother.
As an experiment, I fired up my favourite meditation app instead. I listened to a meditation for anger, which instructed me to breathe into my anger. Well, no trouble finding it: it was that smouldering blaze in the middle of my chest. Perhaps breathing into it was making it recede a little…I could try another breath….
An hour and a half later, I woke to Rob gently rubbing my arm. Ninety minutes of deep sleep had settled my emotional exhaustion, and I was able to rejoin the kids in the living room. But the minor conflicts that erupted over the next hour — “I don’t like dinner!”, “I want YouTube!”, “I don’t want to watch Star Trek!” — still grated.
The prospect of sitting with that irritation until bedtime left me feeling discouraged at the prospects for a month of relentless sobriety. I wanted to call a friend to meet up for a drink. Instead, before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled on my gym clothes.
Two hours and 700 calories worth of cardio later, I feel the calm that I get from a good workout, if not the elation I was looking for. I’m glad I didn’t give into my cravings, and that my vow of sobriety has lived to fight another day.
Yet waiting for me at home — besides two sleeping children — was the dread of long days, weeks and years of struggle ahead. How do I do this job without an emotional get-out-of-jail-free card at the end of the day? How do I survive this daily grind of conflict and still have something like tenderness, or at least patience, with my kids — if I don’t have a way of flipping the emotional “off” switch when I need to?
These are real questions, and the reason I’ve only committed to thirty days of sobriety, and not a lifetime. I want to check in and see how much emotional resilience I have when I’m at my cleanest, not just eating well and steering clear of intoxicants, but also exercising (hard!) at least three times a week.
But I’m not convinced that a totally sober parent is the best parent for my extraordinarily challenging child. That end-of-day drink (or drink alternative) sure does its job in making the resentments of the day recede. I’m more relaxed, more playful, less brittle and quick to anger.
In our cultural response to dependence and addiction, we love to tell people that instead of leaning on a crutch, they should change whatever is driving them to drink or drugs: leave that bad job, or that bad marriage.
But I can’t leave my exhausting, maddening child. (Nor do I want to, most of the time!) That’s why I wonder if those much derided crutches can play a role in keeping us all sane. Ask me in another 25 days.
