Ready or not, here I come

It’s that time of the year when your Facebook feed starts getting flooded with pictures of excited kids starting their new school year , marking the end of a very long summer break. I’m sure a lot of the kids would disagree with the adjective “long” . Well, I do too…in parts.

The summer has been exhausting and exciting. It’s really tough to keep Vedant engaged and unlike what a popular article recommends, keeping him un-entertained does not flare up his imagination, it just pushes him back into his bubble. So, yes, it’s been pretty exhausting trying to figure out something that would hold his attention or just give his day some structure. There are tons of sensory and Autism friendly activities that I found online but apparently those are for kids who actually understand the activity. So there I was, with Vedant and my dog, both not really interested in each other , trying to read books which probably my dog liked more than my son, doing sensory stuff that didn’t hold Vedant’s attention for more than a minute or two pushing him on swings and hammock and making make-shift waterpark out of hose pipes in my backyard, water being at the top of his very small list of sensory games . And when I ran out of ideas, we both just slumped on the couch and watched rhymes, while I tried to sneak a word or two from the songs into Vedant’s teeny-tiny vocabulary. We tried dancing to the rhymes and it was cute to watch Vedant try to copy my movements …with his body mapping abilities still in it’s infancy. The evenings were better spent in his favorite theme park and the hot summer weekends in the water park he loves to go to. Not a bad summer by any means but an exhausting one nonetheless.

I was so ready for his school to reopen and now I’m not. I’m going to miss having him around. Whenever I was busy doing “my” stuff, he would call for me to chase him and if I ignored, he would count ….aaan, two, tee (1..2..3) expecting me to run after him…and I did–everytime. I call him my “Menaka”..the mythological dancer who was sent by the Gods to disrupt a famous sage’s effort to become all powerful. He is my Menaka, alluring me into his world with the most adorable attempts. I’m going to miss being interrupted, right in the middle of drafting an important email, or just when I’m about to load the dishwasher, or in the middle of  issuing a bank transaction. His senseless giggles and the incessant demand for his “taah” (straw)–his sensory toy…I’m going to miss those. Oh God, I’m going to miss him.

Well, ready or not, here it comes… the school. The internet is abound with ideas on how to prepare a child for the new school year. Of course, none of those work for me since vedant can’t really understand conversations but I still try. I wish there were articles on how to prepare a mom for the school. It’s that time again when Vedant is going to be away from me for over 6 hrs . The hours that will be lost for me. The hours I’ll literally have no idea about because I can’t ask him how his day was and expect him to respond. I do get a note from teacher with a few checkboxes marked and a sentence or two about his day in general. I don’t blame her. She can only report so much but as a mom there is so much I want to know and there is so much left to be desired. I hate not knowing what goes on with him so I’m never really ready for his school. That he will not be able to communicate what he feels and thinks, what he wants and if he is in pain ,is thirsty or hungry, exhausted or stressed makes me jittery . I don’t know if it’s to calm my anxiety or to help the teachers out at school, but I lately started sending an introductory sheet about Vedant anywhere he goes without me or his Dad. It talks about what he can and cannot do and has a list of words he uses for his basic needs, what they actually sound like and what they actually mean. It has helped. I feel more at ease knowing I did what I could to prepare everyone around him for him a little bit . Now only if I could prepare Vedant for the new challenges that lie ahead. I’m sure there will be a day like that…soon. Until then my frayed nerves, some old chewed up straws and Vedant’s furry friend are going to wait at the bus stop for him everyday while he braves the world out there on his own. Happy schooling!