Springtime in the House of Aspie

Just for giggles, y'all, I took a little trip down memory lane in the "Asperger's" category to see if I was somehow deluding myself.  (I delude myself on a fairly regular basis.)  But, no, I found it there in black and white:  Springtime makes my boy crazy.  Cra.  Zy.  I think it's a few things:

1. His allergies make him want to claw his own nose off.  He walks around in a sort of daze of itching and you can tell he's miserable and distracted all the time.
2. His winter haircut has grown out and the little hairs are tickling his ears and making him want to claw his own ears off.
3. Not only has the angle of light changed, but the hours of sunlight have, too.  I think they should give Aspie families a Daylight Savings Time exemption.  Or an island.  OMFC, an Aspie Island.  With, like, lots of bounce houses and bubble wrap and books about insects.  I totally need to buy an island.
4. He is so sick of school that he wants to barf on it.  (And, with the exception of last year, I am totally right there with him.)
5. His birthday comes with cool presents and candy.  And CAKE!!  And BALLOONS!!  And...MORE PRESENTS!!!

Anyway, suffice to say that I am gritting my teeth and groping my way through tantrum-choked mornings and loud car rides and a child so vague and spacey that the other day he honestly forgotten that I had put his medicine in his mouth THIRTY SECONDS beforehand.  Whew.

Also, can I just say that this school year is just over?  Honestly, just stick a fork in the NotHannah family, because we are done.  Doooone.  I fantasize every day about pulling Jeffrey out of school early and all of us spending our mornings peacefully toodling around in the yard or going on errands and NOT going back to the place where the legally binding interventions keep getting pushed aside, ignored, or modified without rhyme or reason.  I could go on and on about it, just fill up blogs with the asinine, careless, illegal mess that keeps happening, but I just...don't want to.

Like...when a teacher emails me and tells me that Jeffrey said something inappropriate in class and I ask him what it was and he says they were doing a Word Scramble (in Math/Science/Social Studies...but it's testing week, so whatever) of "April Showers" and there was a clue to "find the dirty word" (I'm assuming "showers," but seriously, isn't that inane?) and he found "ass" and said it out loud--I mean, I know it's WRONG to laugh my "ass" off over it, but that didn't stop me.  Are you seriously going to spend however long it takes you to type up this relation of evilness in my child and on the same day, NOT give him a schedule by which to organize his day?  Seriously?

I say this every year this time of year, and it finally occurs to me that I just need to suck it up and bite the bullet and do whatever else I need to do to get it through my skull, but public schools just don't seem to get Aspergers.  It's as if they look at my boy (and boys like him) and say, "Well, they SAY he has autism, but he's really smart and he can talk, so let's fling him to the wolves and hope for the best."  And then "best" is not really so much "best."  It's more like "pitifully not enough."  I get that the public schools have in their minds that we want to mainstream these kids and make them like everybody else, but I am finally at the point where I want to say, "WHY?"  Why do I want to mainstream my kid?  He isn't mainstream.  He is beautifully, weirdly, rainbowifically NOT swimming in the mainstream.  He did so well last year in his contained classroom, venturing out to do fun stuff with the mainstream kids.  He felt secure.  In place.

This year?  He has no friends.  He is constantly confused about what it is he's doing wrong.  (He shot a bird the other day at a girl.  He had no idea what he was doing.  The other kids made a big deal out of it and embarrassed and pleased him at the same time.  Where were the teachers?  Goodness knows.  Perhaps coming up with more phrases for Word Scrambles.)  The teachers and parapros and administration seem absolutely clueless as to how to handle him.  Shall I tell you about the AP who told Jeffrey he was breaking the law the other day by touching another child?

I'm just sick of it.  Sick.  Barfingly, tiredly, dragging my feetedly sick of it.  (Adverbs are my friends today.  Better than chugging vodka straight from the bottle, yes?)

I just did a quick read through again.  Every.  Year.  Every year I've felt this way except for the one year that Jeffrey was in an environment designed to bring out the best in him.  Why in the world the system chose to change that for him is beyond me.  But...

I almost can't even write this.  We're changing schools again.  We're pulling the plug on the disorganized, chaotic mess that Jeffrey's school was this year.  We're hoping that the school he's zoned for will work.  They have new procedures in place, better than when he was there.  He and River will be able to go to the same school. 

Can I say, "Blahblahblah?"  Because I am not only not hopeful anymore, I'm back to the "Keep on messing with my kid" place.  The place where I want to homeschool him.  Where I want to keep him away from the grudging guidance he gets in the public sector.

And I HATE being here on a beautiful Spring day when the bees are buzzing and the greening is happening and we should be skipping around being hopeful.  I'm tired of being here.  I want to be happy in the Spring.

And I'm not.  Springtime in the House of Aspie is blechy again and it pisses me off.