I have a fairly predictable routine right  now. The mornings are devoted to my various writing projects. The early afternoon segues into errands and exercise. After 3, the boys suck up all the attention, until Steve gets home around 6:45. When things are going smoothly, it’s a very nice and well-rounded day. Lately, the work time is bleeding into the errand time, so we don’t have paper for the printer or  butter in the fridge. The kids have a lot going on, so I’m attending school concerts and fielding phone calls from the school bureaucracy during work time. The house needs some repair work, so I have workers stopping in to give us estimates during dinner time. Routines are off, in other words.

We’re in the process of moving Ian from one special ed program to a different one. Right now, he attends a regional transitional autistic program in a public school about 30 minutes away. Ian’s program caters to kids who can be mainstreamed for some classes, but need supports and additional help in a special classroom. Ian goes to a regular fourth grade class for math, social studies, and specials, but his home base is the special classroom. His teacher helps him out with reading and social skills. He gets extra help with speech and handwriting.

In the fall, he’ll move to a similar program in our new town. Since the town budget passed this spring, there will be room for him in this school. I attended a bunch of meetings this spring about the switch. Steve and I are very worried about the transition. We’re worried about how Ian will handle this big switch, and we’re worried about the program itself. Will there be kids who have similar strengths and weakness as our kid? Will he really be a part of the new school? Will the teachers have the right training? But it will be nice to have Ian finally in the same school district as Jonah. Maybe he’ll even get to know other kids in town.

Other than the programmatic concerns, Ian has been very low maintenance this year. His speech continues to improve. And he’s generally a super happy kid, who gives us no grief.

Jonah had some bumps this year, as he made his own transition to teenager land. We had to readjust our parenting style, so we had some of our own bumps. Being a teenager is more than just managing the fuzz on the upper lip and the mood swings. It also about gaining certain life skills.

This spring, Jonah had to learn to take ownership of his responsibilities, and we had to learn to let him make mistakes. For example, if he has four hours to do four homework assignments, he can’t spend four hours on the first assignment and then rush the last three assignments. He had to learn to manage his time. It’s very, very hard to sit back and let him fuck up, but he needs to fuck up in order to learn. So, I had to learn to detach myself from the situation.

Jonah also had to learn how to recover quickly from adversity. In December, a substitute included his name along with the usual suspects on a list of boys who were disruptive. The main teacher punished Jonah and the usual suspects with three days of lunchroom detention, which involved sitting in a chair silently for the lunch period. No reading or homework allowed.

Jonah was outraged, because he said that he wasn’t disruptive. He said that he didn’t say a single word during the entire class period. Since Jonah has never been in trouble even once since kindergarten, I believed him. Jonah wanted me to correct this injustice. But I didn’t. I didn’t call the school. I didn’t want to use up my one “outraged parent phone call,”  in case I needed to use it again in the future for something big. I also wanted Jonah to learn how to deal when unfair things happen in the future, because unfair things happen all the time when you’re a grown up.

I’m still not sure that I did the right thing by not intervening. Did I teach him to be submissive to authority? Did he lose trust in me?  Sometimes parenting is tough.