We made it to Friday. Excited for the weekend, and even though the week seemed to glide by pretty quickly, we were all probably a little gassed.
Henry woke up a little rough around the edges, after a few rough nights of sleep. It was a big week for him, so we weren’t surprised to see it have an impact. But he did pretty well with his therapist that morning and I got to work wrapping things up for the week.
Amelia, who just started back to school last week after a nearly three-week break, had yet another day off. Yup, it’s a four day weekend for MLK Day. I know I’m probably misremembering things a little bit, but wow I feel like days off from school were a mighty rare thing. Now it seems like there aren’t many weeks without one.
Anyway, things went pretty smoothly in the morning, but after Henry’s therapist left, I could tell he was struggling a little bit. He was pretty revved up, doing a lot of jumping and other sensory stimulus kinds of things. Sometimes when he gets over-elevated, he can get physical, and indeed this time did result in a shove of his sister over a toy he wanted.
I took him aside to try to help him find his way back down, but this was one of those days where he just wasn’t having it. We wound up in his room for a while, offering up a number of his sensory toys and other calming techniques, but he was refusing everything.
It became pretty clear pretty quickly that the poor little guy was just plain exhausted. He was rubbing his eyes, and we knew he needed a nap. We told him that, which of course temporarily made him more upset. But I took him to bed, laid down with him and let him scream it out a little. After a little while, he did settle down and fall asleep.
Along with a few tough nights of sleep, Henry has just had a big week, with his birthday, the first day of preschool and his first drum lesson. He took it all in stride, but sometimes these things have a way of showing up a little later.
But he woke up about an hour later a changed guy. With a little rest, his spirits were back up and he was in a good, fun mood the rest of the day.
I think we all have days like that. Days where we’re maybe a little out of sorts or tired and because we’re a little frayed, little things can send us over the edge. Henry is just learning to navigate those big feelings, and I know I certainly have days where everything seems out of balance. And for Henry, as for any of us, sometimes it’s important to just take moment to remove ourselves from the situation and rest so can come down off the ledge.
As I’ve written in previous posts, Henry has come so far in learning how to communicate and to navigate his way through meltdowns, frustrations and giant emotions. That’s not to say there aren’t still challenging moments, and this was one of them. But even in that, I was heartened to see how he was able to bounce back and continue on. That resilience, I think, is one of the main things we are hoping to help him with. Everybody has bad days, sometimes even on Fridays. But the weekend is here, and better days are always ahead.
