Carrie Link

TODDLER INDEFINITELY

Rojo has gained less than five pounds in five years. He is not skinny, he is emaciated. We have been taking "drug holidays" with him so that he'll eat more and we hope, gain some weight. He does indeed eat more, but then he just poops more, and since he will only poop in a Pull-Up, I am spending the day chasing a hyper-active almost 10-year-old and wiping lots of poop off his bum.

One thing his meds help him with is impulse control. He has zero. This was actually why we put him on meds in the first place, the doctor told us he was very likely to run in front of a moving car and be killed. We knew he was right. Unmedicated he is still likely to run in front of a moving car, except I child lock all the doors when he's sans meds now.

I took him to Safeway and Trader Joe's today, he was almost run down by a grocery cart at least ten times. He has no sense of other people's personal space, no sense of what may be around a corner, no sense of stranger danger.

He spoke to each and every person at both stores. I know for some, he made their day. He grabbed the barbeque chips at Trader Joe's as soon as they were scanned, kissed the bag pasionately, and exclaimed, "Oh, chips, you are like a son to me." He is particularly good at noticing the ones nobody else notices. The obese, the infirm, the elderly, these are his favorites. It was darling when he actually was a toddler, now he isn't, and I still need to interpret everything he says to people. I still need to hold his hand, and still need to read others for signs that they want him to shut the hell up. He cannot read these signs for himself, and they do not understand. Even those that are amused, are left puzzled. Sometimes I wish he had "something" that was easily recognized like Down's Syndrome. There is no neat and tidy way to sum up Rojo, other than he is one of a kind. Even in his world of special educators I am always told, "I've never had a kid like Rojo before." Uniqueness is great, to a point, and then it becomes an albatross.

Finally home, exhausted from the heightened security and human sensitivities, I told him to go watch a show so I could unload the groceries and put them away. In the time it took me to do just that, ten minutes, fifteen max, he had managed to uncap every cap in the house. We now have glue sticks, chapstick and some nasty smelling Icy Hot oozing all over the carpets. He opened an entire box of band-aids, their sticky backs scattered to heck and gone. He found the paper cutter and shredded all the important papers on my desk, then grabbed the adjacent scissors and gave himself a haircut. He drained the new (huge) liquid Tide by opening the spout and walking away. He decided to make his own special blend of cinnamon sugar, leaving grit on every surface in the kitchen. He can't help it. He cannot control his impulses. It is all I can do to control mine.