Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Philosophy and worms!

I would hazard a guess that most folks won't generally warm to a blog with this title! In fact, no doubt lots of people won't read any further but believe it or not I'm very excited about the fact that we've got worms! Last term we set up an earthwormery. S really enjoyed the process of ordering the eggs himself, filling in all the forms online and waiting for them to come. To me to be totally honest I was more excited at using up the earthwormery I'd ordered ages ago and clearing out another space in the house! S has started a wee diary of the earthwormery and dutifully filled it all in. That must have been about 6 weeks ago. I was convinced we'd killed them all off!! As the eggs gathered foost and the signs of life inside the eggs seemed to die off I was trying to work out some way of telling S it was all over! Children with Asperger's don't cope well with throwing things away or things dying or breaking (well S certainly doesn't) and this seemingly great idea was looking like going completely pear shaped! However, last night to much excitement S's dad announced that we had a worm! This worm to me is significant! Last term was a struggle. I didn't enjoy home school! My heart was not in it and it seemed a long term! It's amazing how quickly a bitterness can build up and it's not very easy to contain that! The seeming death of our earthwormery reflected to me how I felt about things. The temptation to throw it out and be done with it was strong! Yet we have a worm! The Easter holidays have been a very significant time for me to reflect, read, pray and reassess life! That might sound all a bit philosophical and it is! With all sorts going on in our family life to do with health, career, house, future, everything really it would have been hard not to get quite philosophical! I can thankfully say this time for me has been so valuable and turned around what was a growing bitterness into a hopeful (much humbled) new start! Does that make sense? This little worm to me signifies a new start for us in home school. What looked dead and hopeless has suddenly had a new chance! Term officially started today. A very kind friend (S's leader at church) offered to take S for the day which was so kind! Tomorrow we will begin "work" properly with a new attitude (well from mum anyway!) Carrying on the philosophical thread... Recently I have been aware how much of a learning curve life is for S's siblings. More and more they are beginning to notice things that S just cannot cope with and are learning where their input can either help or hinder. S's brother came into the kitchen the other day and asked if there was one thing I could ask for in the world what would it be. I replied that I'd like Jesus to return. He replied, "Mum, would you not like S not to have Aspergers anymore?". Gosh! Do you know if someone had asked me that 18 months ago I would have said, "Yes!" no question. If someone had asked if I'd have liked S to be born without all the difficulties he has had I woul have said yes no problem. Just now if someone offered to take away all the tricky bits of life there is a huge temptation to say yes. But do you know, I realised when I answered my son that things have changed a lot. I told him that no I didn't wish for S not to have Aspergers as that is who S is. I said that really what we should ask to change is us! We need to learn to love S more and more for who he is and accept him. God has given S to our family because we are the ones to love him the most. I've reflected over my son's question so much since he asked it. It's made me realise how selfish we as humans can be. I'm not for one minute accusing my son of that! He is a child, naturally making sense of a pretty massive issue in our family life. As adults though it's made me think how much we want to change things to fit into our own mould of how things should be. I think that is quite possibly the route of my bitterness last term. S doesn't like being out and about in unknown situations. Noise bothers him. People asking him lots of questions bothers him. Making sense of situations bothers him. I no doubt bother him. That all bothers me! Instead of wanting to change him my job as a mum is to love him more and more each day. I've got a God who loves me so much despite all the things I constantly do which no doubt upset and hurt Him! Phew, this is getting a bit deep! I promise my blog entries will return to some sort of mundane educational lesson descriptions! I should go now actually and plan the next few days/weeks. All this optimism and new attitude could come crashing down if I am not one step ahead of my boy!

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