That is your circus and those are your monkeys

And that is why I make my outings short and concise as possible, because there's only so much I can handle when the monkeys decide to get out of hand. I don't believe in putting them through more than they can handle either. So yes, these days if I get comments from strangers they are usually positive.

And yet, there was a time when one child could drive me to utter humiliation.

I've had two weeks off from taking my oldest to speech and OT (Oh, how I wish I never had to go again). So today was a first day back and I noticed the "regulars" on the severe end of the Autism Spectrum were having very difficult days... almost all of them seemed to be very agitated... for some reason.

But it was the tantrum by a child whose age I'd guess around 3, that really took me back to my earlier motherhood years, when my oldest was about that age. However, the way I dealt with it was very different from how the mother I witnessed today. As she lingered in what seemed to me an exceptionally long time, I distinctly remember struggling to hoist my flailing child up onto my back and hauling him out to the parking lot to the car, while this mother kept trying to coax her hysterical boy to move on his own, and they wound up in the hallway between the therapy center and the other businesses inside the building for a very LONG time. The area she was in is designated as quiet zone out of courtesy for the other building occupants, and the therapy clinic has two "quiet" rooms for folks to use when the kids are over stimulated. By time I corralled my own circus out the door, this mother was very distraught and was in the midst of a confrontation or intervention (it was hard to tell for sure) with another woman (a receptionist or someone who worked within the building). It wasn't a pretty sight.

Still the event took me back to those days when I learned that I needed to be prepared to pick up and leave if the situation required it. Church, shopping, eating out, wherever we went I needed to be able to take my son out quickly if he needed some timeout. And I spent a lot of time standing outside of buildings missing out on ceremony and meals. Looks were made, food got cold, folks may of been quite annoyed... but I always cared too much for what others were thinking to stick around long enough for any of them to give me a piece of their mind.

Guess that's just me... I worry about what others think.

I don't want to be thought ill of.

But I'm so grateful for the calm we are able to find now. We can do things now! But I'm still always mindful not to push our luck and keep our outings within reasonable confines so I don't wind up having a meltdown of my own.