Micromanaging

So am I a micromanager? And if I am, is that really a bad thing?

When it came to choosing a school for P last year, we were not exactly thorough. We live minutes from the local school, have had other family members attend it, and P would be moving there with a lot of other familiar kids from kinder; basically, they would have to do something seriously wrong in our eyes for us to make the effort to go further afield. Q attended an early intervention information session where, by coincidence, a mother spoke glowingly of her son's induction at the same school. But we also knew a few stories that countered this report. The EI worker who had helped with the transition of the happy mother's child was good enough to come to my home & have a cup of tea with me. She was frank, experienced, realistic & reassuring. She was also involved in our son's transition. The school representatives presented themselves as educators who had seen everything & would handle whatever came their way.

I could say lots more about all of this, but the big shock for me has been, what if your child doesn't throw anything at them? What if you have sat in office after office, for several years, either witnessing first hand, or having explained to you, that yes, your child's difficulties are subtle, but there they are. And every so often, you would discover a biggie, and realise that he's already learning how to detour around things that vex him. But often, you wouldn't even know there is a problem without someone to guide you to it.

So Tony Attwood describes, in his Complete Guide to AS, 4 responses by the AS individual to their condition. The lucky ones, it would seem, learn to imitate others. P is one of these lucky ones. The problem is that he's so good at it that the school, by and large, does not take his condition seriously. I have been nudged, patted, grinned at, or looked at with incomprehension or irritation when I have brought up issues that I thought needed attention, or even when I have asked for meetings or services that the school system guidelines recommend. Alas, I wish I was tough. I am not; I am crushed by the merest hint of confrontation. I spent the first half of the year literally making myself sick as I adjusted my expectations to what was actually on offer at the school, and combed over the evidence to try to pinpoint the problem and strategize to overcome it. I keep coming back to P's high-functioning-ness. But I also wonder about the difference between what a mother sees, or intuits, about her own child, and the powers of perception of the other adults around him.

To my mind, I am fairly well attuned to my child, but even so, he perplexes both of his parents. We went to a psychologist about him last year because of his night wakings. He's never been a good sleeper, but at that stage, he was waking a few hours after he went to bed & crying. He seemed indifferent to efforts to comfort him, but he was not experiencing night terrors; he was definitely awake. The sobs seemed almost angry rather than afraid, and dragged on and on. We had him to the doctor, and he ended up on antibiotics once. But the problem continued, so I suspect that the possible ear infection was a red herring (the only bright note was that his halitosis went away for the duration of the medication, so we introduced probiotics to his diet ...). We could not tell whether our son was in pain, or afraid, or make any connection with him (although he did cry louder if we moved away; that was as much feedback as we got). We felt totally inept. Hence the psychologist, who had no insight into it either. I suspect it had something to do with the transition from one stage of sleep to another, but really, that's a fairly uninformed guess (I did read an informative book on sleep when P was very young by William Dement, the title of which escapes me. I thought he was retired, but now I see he has a website at Stanford! Wish I'd thought to check when we were going through all this).

The point is that even when you are attentive to your child's needs, you will not always know what is actually going on, especially with AS kids. I recently heard Carol Gray put her audience on notice that ASD kids might look like they are in neutral, but actually be in a "slow burn", so when they finally ignite, there will have been little warning about the stress that they were experiencing. So I take for granted that I need to be fairly active about monitoring his moods, double-checking, and looking somewhat laterally for clues about his inner state. I also take for granted that there is no guidebook to help me with this process, that sometimes I will miss things, and sometimes I will fret too much. I decided long ago that if I were to err, it would be on the side of generosity; I would rather pay too much attention than too little. The risk is obviously that I, well, micromanage my son's life. But I truly think that I am treading a pretty good balance. I am realising, though, how easily the rest of the world, not privy to my reasoning, will see me as a thoroughly modern helicopter parent. Well I probably am, and I'm certainly anxious enough to be vulnerable to the suggestion. But I'm toughening up and realising that I need to be proud of my attentiveness too; no-one else will give that to him, except of course his father, although even there, he works full-time, so it tends to be me who thinks through the implications of what I notice, and who looks for a course of action in response.

We are nearing the end of his first year at school. His language skills are too good to qualify for formal assistance, and the school disappointed me by being resistant to having professionals come to the classroom. It became clear to me early on that my suggestions would largely be regarded as interference, and the prevailing mode of thought seems to be that if he's not kicking up a fuss, he is fine. Meanwhile, I see the subtle ways in which he is not progressing in his work, or his social skills. I think it is reasonable to be proactive about these things, and have some support now from a report written by an education dept. representative. The question is how to get the school to co-operate with the things that I believe need to be incorporated into his curriculum.