I have not written about Adri starting high school yet, and I think that is because we are still in the middle of it. He started in September. We are a month in. Both of us, him and me, are still getting the hang of this.
I did not want to write a tidy update when it is not a tidy season.
The summer of quiet worrying
I spent the summer in a kind of low background worry. It was not active. I was not sitting on the couch spiraling. It was more that it lived in the back of my head all the time, a little hum I could NOT switch off.
What I remember most clearly is wanting it to happen already. I wanted to be past the unknown. I wanted him to be in the building. I wanted to start working with him from the real place instead of the imagined one. Worry does not do well with waiting, and the summer was a lot of waiting.
I was also worrying about Guille.
He started primary school this year. First grade. New classroom. New classmates. A different lunch playground. The teachers at his school already know him, and they knew Adri too, so I keep telling myself he is more protected. He is in two classrooms, one special education and one regular class, and both have adults who know him. That is a gift and my peace of mind.
But Guille does not communicate the way most children do. If something feels wrong, he is not going to come home and tell me in sentences. I will have to read his body. I will have to listen to what the teachers see. I will have to trust that the people around him are watching the small signs. And I am sure they do.
Worrying about Adri is one thing. Worrying about a child who cannot always tell you what is wrong is a different kind of worry entirely. And even though Adri comunicates more he is not going to tell me if something good or bad happened at school.
What high school actually looks like
Adri walked into a school with one hundred and fifty new students from different schools. He is twelve. He has a very specific way of communicating, and people do not always understand it the first time if they do not know him.
That was the part that woke me up at night.
I know Adri. I know what he thinks about. He is not thinking about which clothing brand is cooler or whether this notebook is better than that one. The things that come up in teen conversation are not what live in his head. He is thinking about history. He is thinking about his trains. He is thinking about what day he has swimming and what day he has therapy. He is building his week in his head like he builds everything in his head, carefully and completely.
The social gap between him and his classmates is becoming more visible this year. His old classmates who came with him to the new school are turning into teenagers. And I can see that even though they do care for him they are growing apart, and that breaks my heart in pieces.
I watch this. I do not know what to do with it some days.
What is helping
The school gives us an agenda every day. The teachers who from day one have shown so much care, empathy and willingness to help write down what happened during school day. This is new to me, and it is one of the quiet gifts of this year. Adri is not going to sit with me after school and tell me about his day. He is getting better at it, slowly. I am getting better too. I have had to learn which questions do not stop at yes or no. Questions that make him tell me a little more than he was planning to.
The teachers are the other thing that is making this possible. They are amazing. When something good happens, they tell me. When something not so good happens, they tell me too. It goes back and forth. I advocate for him. They are okay with it. That is not a given with every school.
I am learning that part of being Adri’s mom in this new chapter is being in constant conversation with the adults who see him when I cannot. I used to think that handing him over to school each day was a kind of letting go. It is not. It is a kind of handing over that requires more communication, not less.
Where we are now
Adri is settling. Guille is settling. We as parents are settling. These are three different kinds of settling, and they are all happening at the same time, and none of us are quite done. Whom are very happy are the grandparents that they get to brag about Adri being in High School and Guille starting first grade.
I will write a cleaner update at the end of this school year, when I have more of the arc to tell you. For now, this is the honest middle.
A note on Guillermo and the book
Something I did not expect this year is that I have been using our book Autism: A New School Year more with Guille than with Adri. Guille is in a new classroom with new routines, and the social story format has been exactly what he needed to prepare for the week ahead.
Adri has grown past some of what that book was built for, and that is its own kind of pride. Guille is right in the middle of it.
Books, like kids, meet you where you are.
With Love,
Dalisse