I was writing an introduction to my blog on another site the other day and came to the realization that my children really are bookends to the same puzzle... Robyn, my 11 year old is the daughter of my heart, who came to live with us at age 3 and is an exceptional child in many ways. She excels at academics, loves math and science, but is socially awkward and as she heads into the murky waters of puberty is an emotional ball of goo on the best of days... She's so much like my husband and his sister (her mom, who passed away 9 years ago of cancer) in so many ways, but her one 'unique' twist is that she is very rules oriented... and thinks that everyone should follow the rules. She loves books, animals and lately vampires...my fault for unleashing the Twilight series into the house, but what can you do... She has a wicked sense of humour and even more like the rest of us, a keen need to be sarcastic...
My son on the other end of the shelf is an adorable, mischievous monkey who climbs on the furniture, jumps off the back of the couch and wants to spend his days swinging and sliding...if you've followed this blog, you know he has autism and doesn't speak regularly, although we've made leaps and bounds progress in the last few months... He's law and order, to a point... he follows the rules and then pushes the envelope to see just how far he can go... when he's running ahead of you and you call him to stop, he stops, turns around... grins... and then takes off... until you call stop again... or you call him back to you to start the whole game over again... When you tell him to stop jumping off the back of the couch, he goes over to the big arm chair and climbs on that... he may not be able to communicate with words, but darn he has the say it with actions thing down pat... now that doesn't mean he doesn't want you to follow his rules... the trains, cars and toys must be lined up in his order.
I've been fighting the school system a long time for my daughter - to make sure she gets challenged enough, to make sure that her school work is balanced... and now I am starting to navigate the same system with my son whose IEP is at the opposite end of the educational spectrum, but the fights are the same.... and what I'm learning is to shake the dust off, skim read all the books between the bookends and then pick the ones that are most important and fight to keep them on our shelves...
