One of my absolute favorite things about our new life in Australia is that we’ve made best friends with the neighbours, who have several kids close in age to both of my children. All of our kids are neurodivergent and watching these gorgeous ND friendships flourish is giving me life every day.
(All of this and any future posts are absolutely written with their parents’ permission, btw — please don’t worry that you’re going to hang out with me and then I’m going to write about you on the Internet. There are surprisingly many of you around here and sometimes I accidentally show up to get free stuff that you’re giving away or run into you at the mall. 😄)
We’ve been navigating lots of new things in friendships, especially since my kids are now 6 and 7 and peer interactions are becoming a little more complex and a little more in depth anyway. We’re figuring out how to talk to one another about our brains and the things they need, how to share what’s not working for us and how to advocate strongly and passionately without being hurtful. How to take care of one another and hold space for one another. How to need grace and ask for it. How to extend grace. It’s legitimately the best thing in our lives right now.
Last weekend we did a ton of things and by midday Sunday my son was just DONE. Sobbing, screaming. There wasn’t any trigger that really made sense. He just felt like things weren’t going the way he wanted them to. (For instance, he was sobbing that he needed his sister while she was literally right next to him!)
After we tried several things to navigate all the feelings, I started to feel like he might just need some time and space and less stimulation to be able to get all the tears out before he could keep playing, so I guided him into his room just to give him some space and to give his friends some space. So we didn’t overwhelm them too. Not wanting to put the weight of having to take care of someone in distress on a child’s shoulders.
In his room with me he kept screaming that he needed his closest friend. I reassured him that his friend wasn’t going away from our house or leaving, we were just giving both of them some space for a minute.
In between screams and sobs and reassurance we both quieted down for a moment.
There was a little noise at the door, a hand shifting. “Apollo, I’m right here for you, I won’t leave you, you’re my friend,” said a little voice.
Apollo pleaded with me again that he needed his friend. And his friend wasn’t seeming overwhelmed so I thought…maybe I’m the one who’s got the wrong read on this situation.
I think the last time I wrote about Apollo melting down, I shared that he’s begun saying, “my brain can’t stop,” and now lately it’s evolved into, “I don’t know how to calm my body, I don’t know how to calm my brain.” I’ve been reassuring him that it’s not something he has to force, that it just takes time, it just takes being around someone who loves him (me in this instance — it’s just my description of co-regulation to him), and that I’ll be with him for as long as it takes. Sometimes he still panics, though, because he can’t force himself into calm any faster. I’ve been trying to teach him the super-basics of grounding techniques—walking him through the strategy of thinking about something he can see, touch, and hear—just to start giving him a tool he can use, something he can *do*.
Now, he was sitting beside me and still sobbing quietly. “I can’t calm my body,” he said, as he often does. “I don’t know how.”
His sweet friend was somewhere between “totally unfazed” and what looked to me like “not even paying attention”; his friend had a birthday streamer and was waving it around in the air like a ribbon, doing kind of an interpretive dance. But now his friend offered, “Apollo, I know what would cheer you up. Watch how beautiful this is.”
My boy and I sat, me slowly rubbing his back, as his friend danced around us with a streamer.
Then the streamer was offered to Apollo. “Do you want to try waving it? It will make you feel better.” Words spoken with utmost confidence. I’ll admit I was both delighted by the beauty of this moment and also cynical. I thought Apollo might be frozen, refuse to reach for the streamer, or maybe even reply with a clumsy “NO” as he sometimes does when he can’t find complex words. I was formulating, in my mind, a way to scaffold this moment for his friend that would honor the sweetness and kindness and authenticity with which they had tried to help him.
I needn’t have worried. Apollo took the ribbon and waved it around in the same pattern his friend had been dancing.
Then Apollo handed it to me and indicated nonverbally that I should do it too, so I copied the movement and commented out loud on what I saw, heard, and touched. “Oh, it’s like it waves in the shape of an eight, or an infinity symbol. I can hear the wind swishing it, it’s so soft.”
Apollo’s friend latched onto this description and happily chattered away about sensory observations of ribbon and dance and room.
Apollo’s brain latched onto the description and the happy chatter and the co-regulation.
It’s not something we had to force. It just takes time and being around someone who loves him (but not just me).
