Motherhood Moments
For an autistic kid, Tad does sure have some interesting sensory needs and responses. And because of that, I wear many “hats” for him within the course of a day.
As an example, take last night. I had finally hit my limit on how fluffy his hair had gotten. But I don’t really feel like taking the kids for haircuts right now, even to the lovely Miss Rae, my stylist. I trimmed Ane’s bangs a couple of weeks ago myself, and I’m going to let Rerun get a little shaggy and then take him in for a proper cut before his birthday (which means pictures – Rerun’s hair is also straight and fine and unforgiving if Mama makes a mistake), but Tad’s thick, wavy hair needed a shearing. So I went after him with the buzzer and the longest guide, then trimmed up his neck and around his ears.
When he was younger, he used to fuss terribly at each haircut. He’s improved a lot since I started taking him to the salon for trims. And last night, he just giggled almost the whole way through the cut. “Mama, this tickles!” he squealed as the buzzer passed through his hair. Although he was less amused when the hair got in his mouth and down his back (“I have fur in my mouth!” he complained), he managed to hold still fairly well. Once I was done, the Webmaster got out the hand-held vacuum cleaner with the brush attachment and started vacuuming him off, which also made him squeal in giggles. It also made him feel a lot better, since the “furry” feeling went away.
As the Webmaster finished vacuuming him off, he leaned down to look at Tad. “Does he have a loose tooth?” he asked me.
I looked at Tad’s mouth. He did have a loose tooth that I knew of, but as I looked at the tooth, I decided to give it a tug. It popped out instantly. Tad was shocked, then thrilled (“The Tooth Fairy is coming! I’m going to get monies!!!“), and then he got to call Grandma and tell her all about it, too (phone conversation practice, yay!), which was very exciting.
And that’s motherhood in a nutshell, I suppose – being sensory therapist, barber, and dentist all in the course of an evening.
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