SHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

My beautiful boy woke me at 4am.  This doesn't happen very often but boy is it frustrating when it does.  Losing valuable sleep time is one thing, but him having a yelling, cursing, kicking and spitting tantrum and waking the rest of the house is another.  These things always make me sweat, make my heart pound and usually end up shedding some tears too.  
Let me tell you about my Johnny.  He was diagnosed with Autism at age 2 yrs 8 months.  I began looking into the possibility of him having autism when he stopped eating most of the foods he was used to, began lining up all his toys and walking past them repeatedly looking at them out of the corner of his eye.  Also his speech was not progressing as it should.  I believe at that age he could say 3-4 words, such as MAMA and DADA and OUTSIDE.  I welcomed the diagnosis because at least I knew what the problem was.  I have always said "It's only autism."  Imagine being a parent and being told your child has leukemia.  I'll take autism.  I immediately got him into speech therapy and occupational therapy through the help of an amazing woman, Ramona LeSage, who worked for the Early Steps Program in Florida.  She was my coordinator and I never met another like her.  Truly awesome and a huge help.  Both therapies were very helpful.  Johnny's only 'problems' were his sensitivities to sound, smell, light and touch.  Lining up toys was not a problem.  His 'stimming' was to run.  Anywhere we were, he was RUNNING.  Just like Forrest Gump.  In waiting rooms at doctor's offices, running, in the house, running, walking around the block?  Nope, RUNNING. I won't give you every single detail of his childhood but after a couple years his running stim turned into a drawing stim.  He drew tv characters, wrote lots and lots of letters that didn't spell anything, or sometimes he'd write 'Winn Dixie' hours after we had come home from there, spelling it totally from memory.  At age 3 he had to have surgery on his knee to flush out fluid from osteomyelitis.  Being a smoker, we walked outside a few times a day.  (Side note:  I am the smoker, not Johnny). I would push him in the stroller and we'd sit outside for about 15 minutes and he'd always have a little tablet.  I noticed one night at the hospital after he had fallen asleep that he had drawn the view we saw when we'd go outside.  Circular sidewalk, benches, table and chairs, huge palm trees.  You really had to look at it to see what it was and the drawings weren't perfect but it was definitely what he was drawing.  I was amazed.  One time I had written a grocery list on a magnetic pad that hangs on the fridge.  I had written "garbage bags" in cursive at the top of the page.  Upside down at the bottom of the page and in cursive, he had written "garbage bags" identical to how I had written it.  Autism was now getting to be interesting.  I remember when Johnny was 5 years old I said "Wow if this is autism why are so many moms whining and moaning about it?  I wouldn't have him any other way.  He's interesting, he gives hugs and kisses.  He doesn't SPEAK and he doesn't have social skills but wow this really isn't bad at all."  That was about 1,000 years ago.  He went from the sweet little goofy child and I DO mean GOOFY, to being an 8 year old boy who hits, curses, spits, kicks, throws and breaks things, mostly to just his family members, myself in particular.  It is called "mother battering" and it is just what it sounds like.  They take out their aggressions on the primary care giver.  He is very hard to handle.  At 4am today I woke to him nose to nose with me saying "I'll say 'shit' mommy. I'll spit on you."  I tried the normal things I usually say and they worked for a while.  I just wanted to go back to sleep and I didn't want him waking the whole house.  "That's not nice Johnny.  You need to lay down and go back to sleep.  It's still nighttime."  This only made him madder and he began kicking the wall, trying to slap me, yelling, screaming, cursing, spitting.  It is just about impossible to enforce new behavior strategies when it is 4am and you are half asleep, and you also don't want to wake everyone else.  His punishment for all the bad behavior last night is that he cannot draw on 'long papers' today.  For a while he was drawing on tractor feed computer paper.  He had to have 24 pieces of it which was laid out from the end of the hallway all the way to right in front of the couch in the living room.  On this paper he drew one very long road lined with telephone poles and street lights, roundabouts, store signs, etc.  The long papers started to really frustrate him because being old paper it ripped very easily at the perforations.  When he got mad about that you can bet the whole neighborhood heard him.  We took away long papers and now have a large and heavy roll of paper that we roll out and cut off, from the hallway to the couch.  He isn't as frustrated with this paper.  He thinks we're out of LONG PAPERS but we actually have cases and cases of it.  So his punishment for last night's behavior is no long paper today.  I am currently working on an activity chart for him.  It will take some work but it must be tailor-made for him, not some generic one I can print out online.  Not everything applies to every child.  This will also have rewards and 'take aways' for not complying with the activities assigned.  I will do these activities one on one with him and hope to have my other children do the same with him when I'm working.  Speaking of my OTHER children, last night I made the decision to allow them one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening playing XBOX.  They can earn an extra hour by reading for one hour at some point throughout the day.  They didn't put up too much of a fight about this because I don't think they realize I am going to stick to it.  Watch and see.
Meanwhile, back to that BOY of mine, I have recently found a great site for behavior strategies and just about everything you can think of that is autism-related.  I would like to share this link with you.  http://www.brighttots.com/Autistic_behaviors.html  Each time I find something new I am going to post it in my blog.  There HAVE to be other moms out there like me, struggling with raising a special needs child and I think we can help each other.  If you read my blog and you don't have a child with autism please take the time to read up on it.  It is both fascinating and frustrating but I wish more people knew about what are little ones are going through when they're in the grocery store slapping and hitting their mother or screaming or throwing themselves on the floor out of anger.  It doesn't always mean the child is a brat.  (SOMETIMES but not always).
Now, my quote of the day is this, which was said to me by my Johnny at about 5am when I was beginning to lose my grip on the end of the rope:  "I LOVE MY MOMMY.  THOSE ARE NICE WORDS."  How can I be angry with THAT?