Thursday, December 16, 2010

My love, my darlin, my Gabriel

I love my son.  I love all of my children, please don't get me wrong, but Gabriel has daily struggles that no one, not even myself can comprehend.  I can't get into his head, I cant read his thoughts or his eyes, I can only identify that I can't understand what is going on in his little head.  People think that he has major behavior problems, have pegged him as a spoiled brat or a holy terror.  One of my ex friends even named him the serial killer in training and would not allow him to come to her kids birthday parties because of the way he acted.  But I have always known that he is not a bad kid, he just needed to be understood.  He is quirky, tempermental and super smart.  He does adult hard Suduko puzzles, puts 500 piece puzzles together, first picture side up, tears it apart and then puts it together picture side down.  When he starts to have a meltdown, my mom, Dan and I are the only ones who can calm him down.  He causes himself to go into a dead weight because of something he doesn't like.  He doesn't like loud noises, does not like large crowds and does not make eye contact.  To him, the school bully is his friends because he interacts with Gabe.  He does not understand what a "friend" is, and does not have any social skills.  When things do not go his way he becomes very agitated and starts to scream, hit things and throw things.  The only thing that makes him feel better is when you hug him tight, talk softly to him and snuggle him close.

My son is not a holy terror, he is not a spoiled brat and he is not a serial killer in training.  My son is a beautiful little man with light brown hair, small scars on his face from picking owies, he is a love bug, a chunky monkey and he is the sweetest little boy in the world.  He crawls into bed with me at night when Dan is gone because he doesn't want me to be lonely.  He is the sweetest little guy you will ever meet and I am extremely lucky to be his mom.

My son is on the spectrum.  Not the color spectrum, not the educational spectrum, the Autism Spectrum.  My son has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, which is a high functioning form of Autism.  My son is not ashamed of his AS.  I am not ashamed of his AS.  He is not defined by AS, he DEFINES his AS.  He is my love, my darlin and my Gabriel!

1 comment:

  1. oh I wish I could hug him right now and squeeze his little cheeks and tell him he is my favorite Gabriel, and tell him he is cute, to all that he would reply, "I KNOW"

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