Dear Addie,
For as long as I can remember, far before any autism diagnosis you have had significant auditory sensitivities. For example, going to watch your big sister and brother before you were even walking at just about any school function was a struggle usually resulting in us exiting the gym or auditorium to watch what we could from the hallway. Not ideal, but we do what we have to do. Dinner out as a family - that’s a big leap of faith that there’s not going to be any babies that start crying inevitably throwing you into fight or flight. Speaking of faith - churches are acoustically friendly to music and sermons just not exactly your jam. Grocery stores, my beloved Target, any big box store - your hearing seems to be far superior to ours, like that of a bat or something (fun fact: bats are known for having the best hearing of all land mammals, but I digress…) sounds that don’t seem to register to the average person can be piercing to you. It’s enough to get your anxiety geared up to full throttle.
Over the years we’ve developed coping for such things, but every new stage of life can bring on a need for additional coping or a new game plan altogether. Anxiety has taken over a great deal in our day-to-day in this most recent chapter, making the last 6 weeks an extraordinary hurdle for you and an exceptional output of teamwork by a staff that believes in you deeply. You see Addie, after our big Blue Jay Point outdoor adventure field trip, came our next school project and it was none other than Alice In Wonderland jr. the musical. True story…I could almost hear your screaming of displeasure in my head as I was handed the script.
Deep breaths, deep breaths.
How on earth are we going to get through this one? Those words literally consumed my thoughts daily for the past few weeks. I mean the lights, music, costumes, Auditorium?????? None of it screamed a piece of cake for you, or me, or anyone involved - oh yeah, speaking of screaming did I mention you're a screamer?! Oh yes, when you don't like something, you are rather vocal (to put it eloquently) about how you feel. This was going to be a long 6 weeks getting through this one, but nobody ever said life was easy so through we shall go.
Here's the thing with growth and challenges such as this for you, you now anticipated the anxiety that could potentially come from an auditory assault. The rights Ad, you have anxiety about potentially having anxiety. Right when I thought I had figured out how to manage a great deal on our journey, this new fun comes along. Oye.
With weeks of dissecting different tactics on how to get you to even stay in the auditorium without vocalizing any displeasure, we had started seeing some real progress. Was it perfect? no. was I still worried you were just going to get in front of the audience and scream? 100% yes. Were we backing out and cutting our loss to participate from our fear of it all falling apart for you? 1000% no.
You see Addie, when you are given an autism diagnosis for your child you're often given some reading materials to help guide you along, for us it was the "first 100 days of Autism" binder. Now you may have heard me mention this binder before because it left us just wondering what happens after the 100 days??? I mean talk about a cliffhanger! All joking aside I think they should just say "Welcome to Broadway" because your life is going to be on stage in full display at almost every point on this journey. That ever-so-popular exposure is key advice, well that brings on a full audience when you're working through the good and challenging times that come in your life. Sometimes we will be met with an encouraging supportive audience and other times judging and disapproving patrons have found their seats in our show. All in all, it is important to remember while your life may be on stage it's always going to be your journey, not theirs.
The night of the show emotions were all over the place. I was nervous, yet excited, you seemed a bit tired and perhaps confused as to why we were back at school after having been there all day. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen at this point. With me being your aide we were set to perform two numbers in the show and there was no turning back now.
Lights, camera, action!
Our first number was up and we effortlessly danced our way across the stage with no incident. Literally no incident! As we exited back into the green room, I was feeling every ounce of being a VERY proud mama! If it all fell apart after this it almost didn't matter in my book. Six weeks of hard work for that 1 min number - I'll take it, but it wasn't over yet.
When it was time for our second number the set and staging of the cast were taking a little bit longer than usual. Standing in a dark auditorium on stage was about to put a spotlight on your hard work. You started in with "I want toys please" in your signature, let's just say elevated voice. Quietly giving redirection I stated "first song, then toys." You proceeded to ask for the toys about 30 more times but never got to the point of screaming. Still waiting for the cast to take their spots it happened... WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? That's right Addie, you decided to take matters into your own hands and started singing, to which some members of the audience lovingly even replied Who? Who? Who? with a little bit of giggling the scene was ready and the music started. Addie, you went on to paint the roses red like the best of them - with once again no incident!
You did it, Addie! You absolutely did it and this was no easy feat for you!
That night we got in the car after the show and I couldn't help but get misty-eyed at this whole thing. There was so much hard work that went into making this possible and you did it.
Addie, I know that you still have your fair share of anxiety and challenges, but I hope you can always look back at this and remember that you CAN do hard things and you have an amazing group of people that will love and support you through it all.
We are all so proud of you Ad.
Love,
Mom
Big sister Clara Made this little video of the big show!
Comments