Brother's clothes

One of my 3 year olds (I have twins), taught me a lesson today: we're all in this together. It's so easy for my husband and I to get so wrapped up in my 5 year old's recently diagnosed autism to forget how it affects all of us. Not that this thought is new because we regularly think about all of our children but, today, my first born of my twins almost brought me to my knees with his desire to help his older brother.

My 5 year old was having what we call an "Aspie moment" - he was having a very loud tantrum over a rigid rule he has applied to getting dressed after a bath. After my once saying he couldn't "do anything" until he got dressed he decided that meant he couldn't do ANYTHING, including go down and get his clothes. If a neurotypical child were to say this, their intent would likely be to manipulate and frustrate their parents. When a child with autism is doing something like this, it is because they are incredibly literal in their use of language. It is actually distressing to them to be told to break this rule of not doing "anything." Eventually, we'll work with him to redefine what he can or can't do after a bath but, tonight, this issue was still unresolved and my husband and I were trying (and failing) to convince our son that he could go get his own clothes. As our 5 year old was screaming that he couldn't do anything, we were responding in frustration, trying to convince him that he could get his clothes.

During this moment of tension and unfortunate arguing going on between my husband and 5 year old and I, our twins were walking around in the middle of it but neither of us were paying much attention to them. We were so focused that it took my first born twin a while to get our attention as he began to yell that he had his brother's clothes.

While we had been trying to negotiate with my 5 year old, this little one went to his big brother's room and found a shirt and pants and brought them up to us so his brother could get dressed. He was trying to help his brother and, likely, was trying to make everyone happy again. My attention shifted to this little child holding his big brother's clothes and crying because he wanted us to be happy.

My heart ached and I picked up my son and held him, thanking him for being such a good brother and son and apologizing for not hearing him sooner. My heart ached because I couldn't explain to him why his brother was yelling, that it wasn't his brother's fault or his fault or anyone's for that matter. When times are difficult with my son's autism, it is often hard to wrap our adult minds around why our son feels or behaves a certain way. Until this moment, I hadn't fully grasped how much this confusion and the need to make things right extended to his brothers who are too young to understand that their brother has a neurological condition that sometimes makes our life a little less than peaceful.

My heart ached because this child was trying to make us all happy, a burden that is too great for anyone much less for a 3 year old child. It is our job as parents to make our home stable and peaceful for all our children and, unfortunately, my 3 year old made it clear to me tonight that we haven't achieved that yet.