Sad thing about the couple three doors down.

It happened years ago, but it scared us all to death.  There was a break-in, you see, and one of their kids got shot.  Such a sweet boy...quick and smart for his age, had the paper route here for awhile.  He wanted to run track in high school, but he never got the chance.

Good Lord, it was a nightmare.  It doesn't seem enough to say that the family was heartbroken...and the whole neighborhood felt like it was under a black cloud for the longest time. 

We started the Neighborhood Watch not long after that.  That went pretty strong for awhile.  These days we've got a cluster of people who still keep up with it, but not like the year or so after it happened. 

But the family--well, that kind of grief and pain do things to people.  I have no idea what I'd do or how I'd be if I were in that poor mother's shoes...but still...

You'd see the dad out and after a while he'd stop and talk, shoot the breeze.  They had an older girl, in high school and two little ones in preschool, and he'd be out and about with them.  But the mom stopped saying hello, wouldn't even look at you if you tried to wave.

Then they started putting in the security system.  The new alarm made sense at the time.  But she was never satisfied with what they installed.  Seems like every other month they were changing something or adding something, different company vans pulled up to the house, security cameras outside, bars on the windows.  There was a rumor that she'd set up a panic room. 

It started to add up, home equity loans and all but the house itself started looking bad, peeling paint, the lawn wasn't cut as much as it used to be.  You saw the little kids less and less often--they'd look so sad and furtive and they'd rarely if ever go out in the yard.   The big girl left home right out of high school.

The old gal who lived next door to them told me she heard this screaming fight a couple weeks ago.  The dad finally blew his top and she heard him yelling that of course they were in debt up to their ears, they'd spent everything they had on the damn security system.  He needed to get his car fixed so he could go to work, the little kids needed shoes.  They'd blown the oldest's college fund and their IRA on security systems but not a cent of that was going to bring their boy back.  Ever.

When does it stop, he was yelling.  When in the name of God does it stop?

I wish I knew.

You see the little one in the sunbonnet on my avatar?

Around here, Mom still calls her The Boodle sometimes, but she's gotten a lot bigger than that; she starts kindergarten in the fall. 

Her hair is an ash blond that bleaches in the summer; it's been that color since about 18 mos or so--just my mom's color when she was young.  For awhile she even had a mop of natural ringlets.  In a floppy hat and peasant blouse, she looked like Goldie Hawn as a toddler, with personality to match. 

Giggly.  Impulsive.  Headstrong.  She throws herself into life and living head first.  The "girly" stage hit about a year ago, and now that her hair is long enough to do it she favors braids and buns.  And, to quote Steel Magnolias, "her colors are pink and pink."  Then there's the eight-months and counting Cinderella obsession.....slightly bananas-making for mom, but frequently charming in its way...she confidently cast herself as one of the mice in the Disney movie, and her school friends as what we call the "babushka birds..."

And, it would appear from the draft copy of the educational assessment I was emailed yesterday, there is a decent chance that she is somewhere on the autistic spectrum.

The assessment is not a diagnosis, of course.  That will be agonizing Step Two, with a doctor's referral, now that painful Step One has nearly been completed by the school district.  Tomorrow afternoon I will be going in for a meeting with the testing team and the group from her receiving kindergarten.  They do have a placement for her in a program with half a day of resource work on social skills and half a day of mainstream kindergarten--which is fortunate, because she's reading on her own and her verbal skills at least are off the charts.  

I can't say that I feel particularly thankful, though.  Not right now.  It's too early in the morning and I feel too hurt. 

I do not fool myself about my child and about her current needs.  I can't.  I do not want her to be inappropriately aggressive, which is why she ended up being assessed in the first place; much of the worst of the aggression, thanks in large part to extremely high-quality child care and some of the most kind, dedicated and supportive teachers around, is under control now.  She is making friends, and I want that to continue--I want a good and kind child, I do. 

I understand what is going wrong.   She has problems with social reciprocity.  She doesn't always make eye contact.  She has this stage, frequently just before bedtime, where she is compelled to run back and forth while she is talking--a little like a cat bouncing around the walls and the ceiling.  Transitioning from task to task is a difficulty for her.  She finds electronics and media unusually distracting.  There is a lot of stuff, and as I continue to blog about it, I can go into it a little more.

The problem is, so much of what these people indicate as symptomatic of a disorder is what I've always felt, and enjoyed, as right with my kid.

The way she makes everything a story.  The big words she uses--what they call her "stilted" language--which frankly, half the time, is her mother's stilted language.  Not to mention her grandmother's...gang, look, I had my baby at forty, and my mother was a Depression baby.  So if I say "don't mind if I do," "okey dokey," or "pardon my boarding-house reach,"  there's a good chance that my kid is going to pick it up too, just like my mother, and her mother.  

Her elaborate make believe world--the whole Cinderella-Winnie-The-Pooh-Angelina-Amelia Bedelia etc. mash-up, well, that's symptomatic, too.  The little songs she makes up--like the ones I have always made up for her.  The voices she uses for her characters; her ability to mimic.  "Sing-songy, " "stilted," "strange," don't be fooled by the girliness, people, There. Is. Something. Wrong. Here. 

Insert warm, impersonal computer vox:  "Classification:  Non-neurotypical."

As I've said, I'm not sure that I have any choice but to blog about this.  I'm sure I will, no, perhaps I will get to the point where I don't take this personally.  I have a whole today coming up, with work and this god-awful meeting where I am aware that it will be socially inappropriate to appear to take this personally.  My kid's future is at stake here, so I will endeavor to appear report-worthy as "intelligent, concerned and cooperative."  Give the people what they want.

Comments are more than welcome...with one exception.  I've already read that  "having a different kid is like flying to Holland instead of Italy" story, in Dear Abby when Abby still did the column.  If anyone's tempted to post that, know that straight-up sympathy will go over better right now.  Thanks.