"Dear God,

could you please help Kael stop being so mean to all my friends?" I overheard Kylee as she said her prayers the other night.

Thud went my heart as it dropped to the floor. I took a deep breath, and sighed, wondering how to approach her.  The truth is, being the sibling of an autistic child is hard.  One that Kylee has handled with charm and strength  as well as you could expect any five year old to handle it.  Especially considering that she doesn't even really know that he's autistic.  Neither does he, if you're curious.

The kind of things Kael had been doing went beyond typical brother-sister "I'm going to bother you and your friends because your friends are here and mine aren't" stuff.  He was really frustrating them and he didn't even realize it.

I've seen it coming and have tried to stop it.  For example, during a Little League game last year I heard another mom say to her son in a hushed voice, "Just try to stay away from him then." I had a bad feeling about it so I asked her if she was talking about Kael and I could tell she didn't want to cause a big fuss.  "It's ok, just typical 7 year old boy stuff," she replied.  She was trying so hard to be nice.  I knew she wasn't going to tell me what was going on so I did something I never do. I blurted out, "He's autistic.  If you can tell me what's going on, I can talk with him about it and try to make it better." Instantly her face softened (which is why I rarely say anything so blunt- I don't want the autism to be an excuse for his behavior, but rather an explanation) and she said she'd had no idea then out came the story. Kael had been bullying this kid in the dugout.  Say what??? Kael, who has been on the receiving end of such mean, unjust behavior, was being the bully? It took me a lot of talking with Kael to get to the bottom of it all, but suffice to say he saw all the other kids goofing off in the dugout and he was just trying to do the same.  Social things are so tricky. Turns out this kid had been making some sort of "angry noise" that really bothered Kael's supersensitive ears so that's why Kael was taking it out on him.

As an aside, I found out the hard way it is not always good advice to tell your kid to "just stay away from him/her if they're bothering you" because I don't want kids to stay away from Kael.  I want them to not give up on Kael so he can have a chance to learn how to interact with them. Well, once Kylee came home from school telling me about a kid who always bothered everyone so I told her to just stay away from him.  When I got to the school program (in May, no less) I spent some time around the kid and realized that he was autistic. Doi. What I should have told her is what I wish people would tell their kids (referring to Kael), "Well, Kylee, if he's bothering you maybe he just needs a little extra attention.  How could you try to be his friend? How could you try to include him?" 

There's a lot I don't know about being a mom.  A lot I don't know about being the mom of an autistic son.  But I'm learning; figuring it out, day by day.