Some days, my body feels like a cup of herbal exhaustion tea over-steeped, having been forgotten in a steady steam of distractions to become saturated with fatigue and aches. There can be no denying that frequently Tony’s therapy sessions and outings end up looking like extra workouts for me. Sometimes when people witness or see some of Tony’s more spectacular public meltdowns they may wonder if he is aggressive or violent. The short answer is no, but that does not guarantee working with our little man will be an injury free experience, which can flavor my days with a bit of pain as well.

I texted the above picture to Whitney earlier this month to bemoan the greenish state of my latest Tony-inflicted bruise…and I am wearing a light layer of foundation in this picture to try and minimize the discoloration. I had been leaning down to clean something up off the floor, he went running into the kitchen, yanked open the refrigerator door to grab something and WHACK! He just wasn’t paying attention to where my body was.

I’ve had a series of a bumps, bruises, and black eyes that have come from these types of incidents. I was holding his computer out to him to answer a question last month and he over rocked the chair forward, causing a painful bump on the side of my head and two days worth of nasty headaches. Chasing after him to keep him from eating a paperclip got me a black eye that blossomed and bloomed for over a month. He ran into the pantry with me in rapid pursuit and dropped it. I leaned down to brush the clip away from him on the floor just as he pushed the door shut and I got caught in the eye by the doorknob. Yeah, that one definitely hurt.

Sometimes it helps to have someone I can share these experiences with that I know is still going to see my son as someone to be cherished- as I do. I texted this picture immediately afterward with a tinkered up version of a nursery rhyme (“Mary, Mary quite contrary/ how does your shiner grow/ it blooms and it swells and hurts like <ahem>/and gives you headaches for days in a row”) to my sweet friend G. R. I was correctly anticipating it’s more colorful stages yet to come with my adaptation 😉 These types of things can happen with any child, but they are far more likely with Tony, who really struggles to pay attention to what other people are doing around him.

I’ve had teeth chipped because I got behind him to reposition and hold him when he was trying to crack his head into the wall and I didn’t correctly anticipate the angle he was moving his head. He absolutely wasn’t trying to hit me with his head, my reflexes were just off. Anytime you have to physically stop someone from harming themselves there is always a possibility of getting hurt. I’ve also had scraped or bruised fingers from protecting his head when he was trying to bang it on the sidewalk or other hard surfaces.

Sometimes the things Tony has done to ease his sensory related issues have seemed potentially aggressive to others. As I mentioned in the last post, Tony went through a phase of throwing end tables, bulk boxes of rice/almond milk, my air purifiers, and for a brief period of time chairs.

His first Occupational Therapist, Miss Dee, explained to me that joint compression from lifting heavy things released hormones into the blood that have a calming effect. Many of Tony’s sensory symptoms left him feeling like the world was a scary and painful place, so he had a lot of calming he was trying to do. Never did he throw anything at another person though, and we were able to redirect his need to throw heavier items to weighted balls, and that is what he seeks out now. Occasionally he picks up and carries around my dumbbells and weight plates too.

Miss Dee also explained to me that the biting and chewing was for a similar reason…as I mentioned in a previous post, more of those self-calming hormones get released from jaw compression. Before we started working with the chewelry, Tony bit me on the hip a couple of times so hard it broke the skin through my clothes. Every now and then when our little man gets overwhelmed or scared, he forgets and tries to lean in to bite me, but when I remind him “no biting” he pulls back. He really has no interest in hurting people. I just give him one of his chewies once he’s pulled back, and he and I both go on.  When a behavior is related to a coping mechanism from his sensory differences, these are examples of how we are providing an acceptable and safer substitution behavior.

This past week we were completing Tony’s annual Vineland assessment, and the question about aggressive behavior always comes up for this. I know some people would consider Tony trying to push past a person to get what he wants to be aggressive, but I do not. I asked Stephanie and Jennifer their professional opinions during the assessment, since they have witnessed what he does, and they agree with me. He’s usually not even trying to use his hands, he just leans his chest with all of his strength into whoever is blocking his way to try and brush past them.

This is another area where he’s absolutely not trying to hurt anyone…but make no mistake both he and any person trying to keep him safe could definitely get hurt if they weren’t strong enough to block him. Just this past week we were doing a community safety outing, standing and waiting patiently (or so I thought) at a cross walk as a car drove by. Tony darted forward just as the car was starting to pass us, and it took speed and a fair bit of strength to keep him from getting struck. We’re definitely seeing a reduction of this behavior as we’re working with him on communication and waiting strategies, but sometimes he has impulse control issues and it’s like his brain just gets stuck on a relentless “I want that” loop. When that happens, he will not stop for a verbal prompt or a raised hand and I still have to physically block him or carry him past the area if he can’t move past his immediate desires.

I think most of these things, even some of the community safety issues, boil down to what got me so many bruises and bumps. He struggles to pay attention to all of the elements of his surroundings- both the ones that could hurt him and the ones that could cause pain to the people around him. I have witnessed my son cry and whimper time and again when an animal was injured in a movie. In his heart, he is gentle and doesn’t like animals or people to get hurt. But he’s still learning how to control his body, and at his size, sometimes that can come with a bit of “ouch.”