Carly and Dale

It has been a long time since I wrote about Dale.  He's now 14 years old and will be in Grade 8 this coming June.  School was great because for the first time in years, he didn't get a line of 7 in his final grades and he finished 6th in the classroom.   Behavior was tolerable, from what his teacher said.  There was an episode where he ran to the library and hit a senior with a pen, but it was handled well.

He acquired another "annoying" habit of "taser-ing" his neck with his fingers.  Tasering, as he calls it, is like sending an electric shock through his body.  He said it helps him control the bad and evil thoughts that comes through his brain.

He also touches surfaces of the furniture or the light switch in rapid succession and tells me he is trying to ward off evil by his touch somehow.  He also asked if he could speak to a priest about it.  Of course, I said yes, but we haven't really gotten around to it somehow.

It's a tiring and hot summer, and all he wants to do is play on the computer or his Bolt (a tablet).  He is begging off violin lessons since it's summer vacation.  Maybe we'll go back as soon as school starts.

I feel terrible when most of the time I start to tell him to stop doing the things he is doing, like talking too much or whining when he doesn't get what he wants.  I should understand him better.  He asks me to pray with him before he sleeps because he said I help him to not think of other bad things.

He said that this attitude came also from him becoming a teenager now.  Come to think of it, maybe it is.  Maybe the normal rebellious teenager ways for him are these behaviors. 

There was this one time that we went to a family gathering, and he didn't want to swim.  He claims that the trees bother him.  We got into a fight where in all the frustration, I punched him in the arm (yes, I am a bad mother) and I just screamed at him and cried while we talked.  He even told me "You dare punch your own son?!" I told him things that I am not proud of and regret now.  I think all my patience ran out that day.  All my frustrations, I just let them melt and explode.  When I wasn't talking to him anymore, he silently slid on his trunks and went to swim because he said he didn't want me to get mad anymore.  He got out of the pool after an hour because I earlier said that "if you could only swim for one hour!"

The next day when we were both calm, I told him I was sorry and he said, "It's okay, Mom. I'm sorry, too, that I cannot follow everything you want me to do."

He reminds me now of Carly, the brave teenager who has autism and cannot talk.  She is now 17, I think.  Carly said here that her brain is wired differently.  Exactly what Dale told me years ago.  I am now telling myself to have more patience with him and be thankful that I have Dale, just as her parents have Carly.  No two children are alike, but Carly and Dale have something in common.  They just want to be happy.

Watch Carly's story below: