What Really Matters
Today is Christmas and for us it means AJ will be overwhelmed, overstimulated, and out of control because he just can’t handle it all.
Christmas is not a happy time for us. It can have its shiny moments but overall it is just too hectic for him to make any sense of it all. Remember, AJ does not have autism but he is dealing with the results of institutionalization, neglect, trauma, and has severe sensory integration dysfunction. We also believe that there are some other issues that we are dealing with but we may never know what those are.
What we do know is that Christmas is supposed to be about family. He is just starting to learn what family really means and he is sad about that. He is grieving his birth mother and wanting a sibling, which we told him is in the works. He loves his grandparents, his aunts and uncles (the ones far, far away in India and in Georgia) and the ones right here. He desperately wants to socialize but gets so overwhelmed that he just can’t. So, we escape to quiet rooms and try to calm him but it does not always work.
That is why I am hoping that this year he finds that one toy to latch onto as a security blanket. Last year there wasn’t one and there were just too many toys in my aunt’s basement for him to function. Maybe this year we will take his new slinky’s or the new Rainbow Waterfall. Perhaps those will work.
Merry Christmas!
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