Living with Aaron can certainly have some challenges. Gary and I fight frustrations nearly every day as we live with our adult son…………..our son who has his own challenges that can at one time break our hearts and in the next few minutes be causing us to want to pull our hair out. We bite our tongues, or at other times wish we could undo what we just said. The years have helped to temper these episodes, but we still struggle.
Then there are the times that Aaron is so funny that we laugh. Or our struggle may be to NOT laugh because of encouraging a negative behavior or an inappropriate comment…………..or because Aaron may not appreciate our laughter and so he will become angry. We’ve chewed our tongues more than once during those moments………….or shared knowing glances behind his back……………or waited for him to leave the room before we collapse in laughter. What Aaron doesn’t know won’t hurt him – and it sure helps us to feel better!
Aaron has made some really funny comments over the past few days, so I decided to share some of them with you. Maybe they will lighten your day and help you to smile…………or laugh………….and you don’t have to worry about how it will affect Aaron.
Aaron saw a small candle on the kitchen counter and asked, “Mom, can I have that light up candle in my room?” He knew the answer would be no, but he always thinks it’s worth a try to ask just one more time. Anything that “lights up” is not allowed in Aaron’s room.
One of the staff at his day group, Barb, gave us a jar of grape jam that she made. I wanted Aaron to try it, so he agreed – a little reluctantly, because he just wasn’t sure that he would like it. And my instructions from Aaron were not to toast the bread – “Don’t make the bread crunchy, Mom. I want it soft.” So I spread some of the jam on the untoasted slices of multi-grain bread that I was using…………..the bread that has oats on the crust…………and watched him struggle to eat it. I finally asked, “Aaron, don’t you like the jam?” He answered, “I like the jam, but this bread has white crunchy things on it that are squares.” Leave it to Aaron to notice every tiny detail of his bread and to make faces like he was eating little cement squares instead of oats!
Yesterday after Aaron ate his lunch, the place mat under his plate was full of crumbs. Aaron has watched me shake the place mats over the sink to get rid of the many crumbs he leaves after he eats. He stared at the crumbs on his place mat and then asked, “Mom, how are you going to get rid of those crumbs on this place mat? Wiggle it?” Well, I guess you could put it that way, strange as it seems.
We passed the water tower not far from our house as we drove around last night. Aaron thinks water towers are very interesting and always asks questions about them, so last night he made a comment about the tower. I affirmed that it was a water tower and he said, “It’s a water tower? I thought it was a sewer tower!” Ewwww! Of course, this was followed by a long conversation about sewers, until I finally told him – as I so often do – to google it!
This morning he had yet another observation about his sore elbow and how it was folded under his chest in his sleep and was this why it was sore and would I say that this is why it was sore, etc., etc. And finally he came to this conclusion: “I’m guessing the muscle has been squished. It’s not squished into the normal position.” Ouch!
And finally, on our way to meet his group, he was very happy to have Jackson riding with us. Which brought up talk of other dogs, which led to talk of Cody’s dog in particular: “Mom, Cody has a Husky dog. He has one of those dogs that’s in the mushing race!”
If you don’t know what a mushing race is……………..google it!
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