A day full of nothing

[matril]

So today we're starting the Big Step of potty training for Luke - of course we don't expect to see results right away, or even after a month or a year or ten years or - all right, so I'm feeling a bit bleak. The system, which is directed at near non-verbal kids, involves putting him on the potty every half hour, and checking his pants every fifteen minutes, with incentives for pointing to the "potty" picture and saying potty, for having dry underwear, and for actually going in the potty.

Well. It's tedious, to say the least. So far Luke has wet his pants three times and done nothing in the potty. He'll sit pretty willingly on the potty for the full five minutes, smiling pleasantly and repeating "brownie" when I remind him what he'll get if he goes in the potty. But of course he hasn't had a single taste of a brownie. Yes, I didn't expect him to catch on in the first day, but a part of me is thinking "So, this is my life for the next...how long?" Blech. Since the schedule is so demanding, I've been refraining from doing much else. The dishes are piling up in the sink. I picked up a tangled mess of yarn to try to sort out, the kind of mindless activity that I can drop at any moment to get Luke to the potty. Same with a book of Sudoku puzzles. But the result is a feeling of absolutely zero accomplishment, hitting my head against a brick wall at every turn. Add to that the nice little letter from a school district that my husband had interviewed with and was really feeling pretty positive about: "You're very well qualified and skillful, and we were quite impressed. Therefore, we hired someone else." It's all that stupid ugly monster Lack of Experience. Yeah, and just how does he get that experience, praytell? Not from you people, apparently. I feel like kicking someone in the head. I'll have to find an inanimate object instead...I guess...preferably something that will explode.

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry about the job - that always sucks, when everything goes well and then it turns out ... no. It's the whole "What else can I DO??" feeling. I hope something else pans out.

Good luck with Luke's training - it sounds like you feel like you're stuck in a hamster wheel. SOMETHING will come of it, though, I hope, even if it takes a long time.

BTW if you don't mind my asking, do you read any autism blogs? You mentioned before that you have a hard time in groups, and I was wondering if reading blogs by autistic people/parents might help in terms of not having to go mix with a group but still being able to communicate with people who know the shorthand, if that makes any sense. (I ask because at the worst point a few years ago, when I felt like I was stuck in a never-ending hellish rerun of negatives-every-month, infertility blogs helped a lot - I could read if I wanted, not read if I didn't want to, and people knew what I was talking about and could sometimes offer ideas). I do apologize if this is something you already do, but I thought I'd mention it just in case - mostly because one blogger I read linked to the Autismland blog a few weeks ago and I found it really interesting, if exhausting just to read!

[matril.livejournal.com]

I haven't really looked much for such blogs, probably because a part of me worries that it'll just make me angry or sad or exhausted instead of helping. But really, I can always try, and if it helps, that's great, and if not, I can always just leave. Thanks for the recommendation; I think I will try it.