An altered state of normal

I thought about just jumping in.  Maybe showing off my latest creation.  Writing a post like what I hope will become average fare around here.  But then I figured an introduction is more in order.

See I don't really know what normal looks like any more.  Every family has stories about the time cousin dave jumped into the swimming pool when he was 2 and Aunt Sarah had to go in after him.  My family has stories about the time Mowgli almost walked off the bow of the USS Stewart at Sea Wolf Park.  

Notice the destroyer is parked on concrete, not docked in water.

But see those events don't really sum up the true distance from normal.  For most people, those are outlier events.  Things that happen once or twice in a childhood, they're not things that you have to plan against constantly.  We have alarms on all of our windows because more than once, Mowgli has gone out of a 3rd story window.  And I don't mean he's leaned out.  I mean all the way out, standing on a ledge about 5 inches wide.  Why not lock them?  Well the boy's just too smart, he's figured out every lock we've put on every door or window.  So we settle for alarms.

So what does normal look like around this house?  Normal is asking, "What do you want for dinner?" and getting "coming soon to DVD" in reply.  Normal is driving Mowgli to some sort of therapy 3 days a week, and having a therapist visit our house on 3 of the remaining 4 days.  Normal was crossing the street to avoid someone walking their dog so that Mowgli didn't become terrified of the pup and go into fight-or-flight mode.  Normal is trying to teach a little boy who just started first grade and is reading at a second grade level how to play with a toy pirate ship.

Think about that.  You don't have to teach kids how to play with toys.  You put the toy in front of the kid and imagination takes over.  But that's life in our house.  We have to teach Mowgli how to play.  We have to teach him how to say 'catch' before he throws a ball and pegs another kid.  We've worked very hard to teach him to say "I don't like that."  The boy will eat tofu, and while shuddering from how badly it tastes, say, "I like tofu." 

This dragon is called autism.  We just do our best to keep dancing. 

 

Mowgli