Stacie Sherman

When my phone rang the other day and I saw it was my daughter’s home therapist calling, I almost didn’t answer.

Not because I don’t like her. I LOVE her — she is awesome. But I hesitated because she was going to ask me for a progress report. Frankly, I didn’t have much to share.

My daughter’s school is great enough to provide me with someone who helps me deal with all the autism challenges I face at home. At the beginning of each school year, we make a list of goals and then brainstorm strategies for accomplishing them.

Reality is, year after year, some goals go unmet.

My hopes for my 14 year old are not the same as those for a typical teenager. I don’t worry about messy rooms or missing curfew, about smoking or drinking or talking back. One friend with ‘normal’ kids actually told me once I should consider myself lucky. Ha. I let that go.

Here is my reality. I want Brielle to learn to dress and shower herself. I want her to use the bathroom without my assistance. I want her to stay dry overnight.

It is so hard to sit here and write about this. But to know me, is to understand my daily reality. I didn’t start this blog to paint a happy face. I started it because pretending is exhausting. Sharing is healing. Because maybe my brutal honesty will open some eyes. My autism life is not what you see on television.

“I don’t know how you do it,” I’ve been told. Well, here’s the truth — I don’t always do it.

My weekday mornings are rushed. I get up at 6:30, sleepwalk to the coffee machine, and then do some work from home while I make sure my son catches his bus for school at 7. Then I quickly get myself ready for the office before waking my daughter at 7:30 a.m., a half hour before her bus comes and I head in. She is not easy to wake up, so I find myself dressing her while she’s still comatose.

I make her breakfast. I give her medicine and vitamins. I pour her juice. I pack her backpack. I brush her hair, put on her shoes. Then just before the bus comes, I have her pee and brush her teeth.

If I make her put on her own shoes, it could take 10 minutes. If I don’t supervise her in the bathroom, she skips toilet paper and hand washing. If I don’t help her brush her teeth, she moves the toothbrush around a little and gets two or three teeth. If I didn’t brush her hair, she’d go to school a mess and not care.

Well I care. And so I do it for her, even though I’ve been taught that the more I let her do for herself, the more she will do for herself. Sounds easy, right? Well it’s not.

For any parent, when we see our child struggling, our instinct is to help them. But my helping, I know, isn’t always helpful.

Is my inner turmoil showing? It’s what made me hesitate when the home therapist called.

Nevertheless, I answered.

We went through my goals. I noted some progress with showering — she’ll wash her belly before handing the soap back to me to do the rest. She’ll go to turn off the water when she’s done — but turns it the wrong way and once almost scalded herself.

We discussed some new ways to tackle things. I said I would continue to work on her independent skills. Then I hung up, feeling like a failure, and went back to my reality.

We didn’t discuss the elephant in the room. The biggest unmet goal — the one that has been on my list the longest — has been getting Brielle to stay dry overnight. Potty training her awake was pure hell. Trying to train her subconscious bladder has proved impossible.

Please do not send me your tips. I have tried them all. We’ve been to doctors. She was checked internally, externally. We tried medications that dried her up. I tried bed alarms. I tried waking her every couple of hours. The thing inside us — the thing that wakes us up when we have to pee — she doesn’t have that. She sleeps right through it, in it.

I handle my life by picking my battles. This battle, I don’t have the strength to deal with. Maybe someday I will. For now, my teenager sleeps in adult diapers.

That goal, I push to the side. The others, I know I need to address. I blinked and my autistic toddler became an autistic teenager. I will blink again and soon have an autistic adult. The thought makes my hands shake as I type.

Last night, as I was helping Brielle get into her pajamas, I stopped myself for a second. Instead of dressing her, I sat on her bed, put the shirt face down on my lap, looked up at her and waited. The look she gave me, I swear, if she had words, they would have been “Really, Mom? WTF?”

After a few seconds, she picked up the shirt and put it on without my help. Perfectly.

I did an inner happy dance, praised her, and then placed the pajama bottoms on my lap. She looked at me again, smiled, and then put them on perfectly backwards and pranced out of her room.