punchdrunkmom

In which the boy gives a compliment

The bus driver had obviously spent some time on her appearance. Her hair was carefully styled in waves that cascaded over her shoulders. Her nails were long and polished. She wore dangly earrings and a black shirt with gold sparkles.

“You’re pretty,” the girl in front of Kai said to her as they boarded on their way to a field trip to the zoo.

The bus driver’s smile was dazzling, revealing an overbite of epic proportions. Her teeth were spaced wide apart, jutting from her gums at alarming angles. It was as though each tooth had tried to escape one-by-one, and then got stuck, moored by its root and punished forever for its treachery by being frozen in place.

Kai passed the driver, her smile still radiant from the little girl’s compliment.

“Wow,” Kai said, stopping in his tracks, an expression of wide-eyed wonder on his face. “Cool teeth.”

Easy Money

On Monday, Kai lost another tooth.

Strictly speaking, this tooth wasn’t quite ready for prime time. It was loose, sure, but it wasn’t loose-loose. I figured we had a week or so.

But Kai was motivated to lose that second tooth, applying himself with the kind of laser focus the GOP has put on Bengazi. His paraprofessional has a four-minute video of him yanking and twisting and grinding on the tooth, four minutes where he could have been, you know, learning.

She texted me to tell me she thought the tooth would go, followed closely by a second text that it was now in the front pocket of Kai’s backpack.

Kai needed that tooth out because he needed the tooth fairy to come back.

Because he needed the money.

:::

Last week, the tooth fairy, by which I mean me, left a cute little pouch with five gold $1 coins under his pillow.

The pouch came from the bead store up the street. It was not purchased for this reason, but it made a pretty good delivery device for transporting fairy money, made as it was from chiffon highlighted with gold embroidery.

The dollar coins I just had laying around. My father collects all his change, transforms it into golden dollars at the bank, and gives them to us for Kai’s and Ryan’s college fund. I figured we’d just save them and give them to Kam’s directly when the time comes, but it suddenly occurred to me that they’d  make pretty good fairy money.

“Quarters!” Kai exclaimed the next morning, having thrown his pillow across the room to examine his tooth fairy booty.

“Not quarters,” I said. “Those are actually dollars.”

Kai stared wide-eyed at the money in his hand.

“Wow,” he said in an awed whisper. “This is the best present ever.”

:::

Kai took his money to school with him in the little pouch, which apparently makes an excellent weapon. In addition, his teacher clearly thought I’d given him too much money. She asked for a cut.

And I supposed that I had given him too much. I wondered if I’d give him the same amount for every tooth or drop it down after the first one, and then I stopped overanalyzing my tooth fairy strategy because (!) and just went on living my life.

On Sunday night, Kai and Ryan were playing with the golden dollars. I didn’t see what happened to them, but I heard it—heavy coins skittering over the wood floor toward our kitchen closet.

Kai got on his belly to look under the giant dog food container, around the garbage can, under the paper towels.

“Did you find your coins?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Kai, you can’t just throw your money around,” Scott said. “Did you lose your money?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well,” Scott said, “you need to find it.”

Kai just shrugged.

“The tooth fairy will just bring more,” he reasoned.

Scott and I looked at each other and had one of those moments when we were in complete agreement.

“Kai, that is so disrespectful. Do you think money just grows on trees?” I actually said that.

“Kai, you need to find your money. We don’t waste money in this house.”

Scott caught my eye as he said this because it is, of course, a bald-face lie. We spend money on things like craft bourbon and deep tissue massages and decorative pillows and radar detectors. And gold-embroidered pouches from the bead store.

But still. It was absolutely the wrong thing for Kai to say.

We found his money for him, and then we confiscated it.

“You can have it back tomorrow,” I said.

Kai had the good grace to look dejected.

The next day at school, he yanked out his other loose tooth.

“Easy money,” my mom texted me when I told her.

 

In which I have a guest blogger tell you about losing a tooth

From Kai's journal entry May 8, 2013:

 

One day I was in school and my tooth fall out already.

Ms. Monica hurt* my tooth and then I went to the mirror and it fell out.

I rinsed my mouth with water. I put my tooth in a plastic bag.

I am going under my pillow for the money or a present from the tooth fairy.

-Kai

 

Kai's tooth.

*Kai’s teacher was checking its loose-ness, and obviously didn’t mean to “hurt” Kai’s tooth. As my mother said later, “That’s usually how it goes. Someone gets sick of waiting.”

-PDM

When the tooth in question was brand new, as was the guest blogger.

Unrelated. I found this picture in the same folder on my computer. Don't you hate it when you show up to a party and someone is wearing the exact same outfit? Hate it, I do. The other kid is Noah.

Friends

Kai sees two social workers as part of his therapy regimen, one at school, Ms. Aviles, and one that we work with privately, Miss Sue. They both work with Kai on his social and emotional development—things like interacting with peers and managing emotions.

Ms. Aviles, our school social worker, suggested that we begin to work on Kai’s ability to discern between a good friend and a bad friend. To that end he’d been getting lessons in “good friend manners,” such as not pushing or hitting.

But what’s interesting about all of this, is that we’re not working on this because Kai’s being a bad friend, although he has his moments. Rather, Kai needs help recognizing when others are not being good friends to him.

This is something I worry about a lot. I worry about bullying. I worry that Kai can’t necessarily tell me if something is wrong. I worry as Kai’s peers form more and more sophisticated social structures, nuanced relationships and complex play schemes, leaving Kai in the dust.

:::

We were at another mom’s house a few months ago, along with a few other parents from school. The adults gathered around the TV while the kids played downstairs, and every few minutes a kid would come up and inform us of all the ways Kai was misbehaving. I put Kai in a time out and threatened to take him home, my frustration growing. Finally, one of the kids ran upstairs crying, followed closely by a boy named Mika.

“Um, Kai’s Mom? Um, Kai is hitting everybody.”

I went downstairs to confront Kai.

“Kai? Did you hit anyone?”

Kai didn’t answer.

“Kai hit everyone here,” Mika said. “Except me. He didn’t hit me.”

The kid who had been crying came back down to the basement.

“Liam,” I said, “who hit you?”

Liam pointed to Mika.

Mika’s face went white. He had the good sense to look a little scared of me, squirming under my gaze before placing a tentative foot on the stairs, then another and another, finally turning and running the rest of the way.

And my heart broke a little. Because of all the things I can do for Kai—therapy for his speech and sensory issues, accommodations for his behavior and his attention problems, medicine for his allergies and so he can sleep, I can’t catch every kid who uses him as a scapegoat or bullies him or says something hurtful.

I can’t live his life for him.

:::

Kai made friendship bracelets last week with his school social worker. He made one with his friend Jovan’s name on it that he’s been wearing around (giving Jovan one that said, "Kai"), and he made one for Ryan.

I thought that was awfully sweet of him, but then I really thought about it. He spends a lot of time playing with Ryan, who doesn’t ever try and get him in trouble or blame things on him. She gets on his nerves sometimes because she’s his little sister and that’s her job. But they are otherwise great together, playing pirates or hide-and-seek, their laughter trailing behind them as they rush down the sidewalk in their scooters.

Kai was barely born before I started talking about having another baby. It was like a craving, an overwhelming need. Scott couldn’t understand the rush, why we would want another when this one already seemed like more than we could handle. I didn’t understand it either, really, until I look back on it.

I was a month away from delivering Ryan when the words “autism” and “Kai” were used in a sentence together for the first time. If we had waited, who knows what we would have decided about our family. The Universe knew we shouldn’t wait.

 “She’s my sister and she’s my friend,” he told his social worker as he made Ryan’s bracelet.

It seems that Kai can recognize a good friend after all.