I have officially thrown in the towel. Or at least the cake pan.
Newt’s 7th birthday is coming up. A few months ago, when he declared that he was having his party at a well-know, pre-packaged bouncy-house place, I subtly tried to talk him out of it in favor of an at-home party with a cool Star Wars theme, including Darth Maul face paint, a homemade cake (I’m freakishly good at decorating cakes), and some other amazing stuff that we’d surely come up with (like real light sabers for everyone, or something). Fast forward to today, and we’re scoping out a painfully loud arcade that serves pizza-by-the-slice and has cakes that you order from the supermarket.
Yes, I’ve officially hit rock bottom. It started when I slacked off and ordered Elfie’s birthday cake from the grocery store in July, using the excuse that my mother had just died so I couldn’t handle the stress of a birthday party, homemade cake, and funeral all rolled into one. Probably true, but now it’s just too easy to troop down to the store and order that Star Wars cake. And book that bounce house. And not deal with ten or more 7-year-olds galloping through my house. Because we just went to an at-home birthday party, and after one kid knocked his tooth out and then my kid got his hand smashed in a door, the birthday boy’s parents looked like they’d been through that scene where the guy is forced to watch horrible movies in “A Clockwork Orange”. They told me next time, they should probably get insurance.
An amazing aside to all of this is that Newt is totally jazzed about his birthday. For most parents, this is just a given. For us, we had years of watching a kid who was completely uninterested in opening presents. Or going trick-or-treating. Or getting out Christmas decorations.
If you would’ve asked me four years ago if I’d be worrying about Newt wanting too many kids at his 7th birthday party because he couldn’t cut down his friends list, I’d have thought you were being cruel. When you’re told that your child is autistic, you basically hope that someday he’ll be able to be around other people without being singled out and ridiculed. Or ostracized. In your wildest dreams you don’t see him with a bunch of friends.
Which is why when he came home the other day and told me that he and four other boys had gotten in trouble for throwing rubber chips on the playground, I couldn’t help but cheer inside. As he described the five of them getting busted by a teacher and having to sit down for the rest of recess, I didn’t see a kid doing something against the rules. All I could see was my supposedly different son in the middle of boy chaos, just one of the guys, commiserating with his buddies about the world’s injustices on a school bench.
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.