Two confessions

Here are a couple of things that must sound dreadful. My day started with me just flattened by the emotions stirred up during S's "mini-assessment" yesterday. I became more convinced that the psych's suspicions were right, that I had just been interpreting things with an inadequate framework for understanding AS. I was sobbing before I was out of bed. I felt incredibly bleak. I had to start adjusting to the new reality taking shape before me.

S didn't want to go to kinder as usual, and P was fighting going to school. I had nothing in the tank; I told them there would be a new toy if they went. Immediate change of attitude; S even went and got himself something for "show and tell" (no-one has discussed this with him, he must be copying his brother's routine from school last year). He apparently had a terrific day, played really well with a new boy, and when I arrived he was happily playing with a girl he knows quite well, even if he was telling her she was dead for not following some crucial instruction (so he was mimicking a computer game like P does). He told me he'd played with everybody. He seemed relaxed, happy. I should have been happy, and I was really, but here is the dreadful-sounding part; I almost would have found it easier if he'd been the unhappy, mal-adjusted child that I'd braced myself for. At school pick-up, I found myself with another lovely son. We had to bring home a friend of his whose father couldn't get there on time. All 3 boys were happy and well-behaved together.

I do not know what to think or feel. On top of this, Q has had to go to a work function tonight, and I always pace myself carefully on such evenings. The boys had a lot of computer time, a lot of leeway to play, were up a bit later so that they'd be just that much more tired when I tried to get them to bed. The next dreadful-sounding bit; sometimes I feel almost too nervous to do things with them. They are so unpredictable, I get confused, I get drained, I get frustrated, I get angry. I don't know what to expect, and sometimes I just hold back and try to make it to the end. On nights when it's just me like this, I wonder how single parents cope, I wonder if I make more sense to them, or if maybe I'm not as alone as I feel.