Thank you for joining me at Life With Mars, and welcome to my new subscribers, I am so glad you have found us!
The way time passes when you are a parent doesn’t quite seem real. It feels almost mystical how the days can feel like an eternity, yet each year ends quickly preparing for another Christmas despite it seeming as if you only just finished up the previous year's celebrations. Yet with other notches on your timeline, it can feel like an age since a scenario or conversation occurred, when in fact that moment only occurred two or three years back.
One such moment for me was introducing Mars to kindergarten not quite three years ago. Spoiler alert, it didn’t work out. This interaction was around three months post autism diagnosis and I was still very much in denial that Mars was on the spectrum. I would mention to the teachers at visits to kindy's that he had received this diagnosis but it was quickly followed by a "but I don't feel that he is".
To be honest I can't even recall the exact situation that I was in with Mars this particular day, it was something that involved throwing and breaking various objects. As I have witnessed many of these moments with Mars they all tend to blur into one long memory of chaos and destruction. Back to this moment, I was feeling highly embarrassed that Mars was throwing things, actively trying to break them. I certainly didn't see any other children following the path of attempting to defy gravity or watching how many pieces something could possibly break into. He was almost three years old and he had no inclination to listen to my pleas to stop. The head teacher didn't seem to mind at all and was quite happy to allow him to explore this destruction and after observing him for some time said "he is a real cause and effects guy isn't he?" I was momentarily stunned. Why had I not seen this myself?
He had a plan, he wanted to see what would happen which is a natural curiosity, but I had only ever seen it as breaking things.
This revelation somewhat changed my perspective on how I coped with this constant urge to explore cause and effect. As someone who liked things in a particular way, I say liked in a past tense as I have had to block it from my brain so that it doesn't keep me in a perpetual state of anxiety. Aren't brains wonderful like that? As someone who liked things in a particular way, reassuring myself that Mars was investigating and learning kept me sane.
Wind back three years once more, and my husband and I were not yet at the stage of resigning ourselves to having a home with no homely attributes, instead we just continued to move precious objects higher and higher up the shelves. Until we started to add non-precious objects to the highest shelves. They may not have been precious but they still cost to replace and we were paying out constantly for replacements for everyday things. Over a span of three years the pictures started disappearing from the walls to be stacked in any space we could find that Mars couldn't access. Our home became void of the personal touches that brought us comfort. No more pot plants unless in a strategic place that wasn't accessible, placing the plant in a life or death situation, now that is cause and effects of a different nature.
No pretty throws, ornaments, candles, photographs or our eldest child’s artwork could be on display. Then the books were put away, even his toys were put away at times. Legs were removed from the sofa; because flipping it over is fascinating, as is undoing the zip from underneath to pull the stuffing out, or tearing at the satin underside to see how it comes away creating a raw edge of fabric.
Cause and effects had truly and utterly taken over our lives.
Coming back to the present we have not really moved forward from this. Our home still feels barren, with oddly placed touches to give us the tiniest sense of home. Instead we need to embrace that “home is where the heart is”, and we can add music and views of greenery through the window to bring art inside.
How long will this last? I have no idea. Mars is only 5, and it could be another 2 or 5 or 10 years before we can go back to a life of paintings and trinkets.
I am however holding on to "he is a real cause and effects guy isn't he?" in the hope that one day this special outlook he has will bring something incredible to the world.
Thank you, one day hopefully we will be in that place :) and yes you are right, perspective does change everything, we do still get cross and frustrated especially when the damage is done to something that can’t be removed, like a window sill! But we are better at coping with it overall. X