Spaces in our Quarantine

On the one hand, canceled school days and therapy sessions drop fear into our headspace.

Uncomfortable unknowns.

We are losing opportunities to overcome serious life skills and communication obstacles.

It’s scary.

Dublin still struggles with tasks like brushing his teeth, eating with utensils, and washing his hands.

All of these things in his life are still overseen, still require us to provide hand-over-hand assistance and data collection.

Dublin still struggles with communicating without aggression, often resorting to breaking glass, hitting, and screaming when he doesn’t have access to something he wants and doesn’t want to do something we ask of him.

In fact, the first weekend of being quarantined, he broke his bedroom window.

The shatter of a dual pane window yelled out to the kitchen as I washed dishes. It yelled out that this quarantine was going to be particularly challenging for our family because the more cooped up our sensory seeking king is, the more likely it seemed upon shatter that more shatters would come. Especially since I yelped and let him know that the shatter startled me. When you let someone who struggles with communication know that some form of communication works to create a reaction, they usually use that style of communication again and again. A hard lesson for those of us who react for a living.

Still all of these basic struggles, even though he has been in therapy for 20-30 hours a week and in school since he was 18 months old.

On the other hand or should I say foot, we have to admit, untieing the shoelaces of our worn out sneakers in this rat race we’ve been sprinting in,

the sneakers that have felt like they’ve lost their arch support time and time again,

the rat race where we watch everyone pass us on the track several times before we hit even one meter,

also feels like we have just unlocked serious spaces of freedom.