Why do you ask so many questions?

Ironic huh. This is actually what my son asked me one day as we were getting in the car to set off for school. I literally stopped in my tracks as I couldn’t believe my ears. Here I was writing about the questions he asked me and he thought I asked him a lot of questions. And I wasn’t quite sure what question I had asked to make him ask me that question!! had I just asked a question? (Well there’s 1 question) Or was he just asking me a question as per usual?? (There’s 2) Did I ask a lot of questions? (There’s 3 questions!!). Was he a chip off the old block?? (There’s 4!). Crikey it is me!!

And as we were driving to school I started to consider all the questions I knew I asked my son frequently. And there is a lot. Here are the few I thought of straight away….

“Can I have a cuddle?”

Many many times I went in for a cuddle when he was younger and he would hit me, or push me away. After a while I realized that he maybe didn’t want a cuddle. We take it for granted that everyone wants a cuddle but he doesn’t so I learnt to ask his permission. And there is many times where I ask him and he will say not yet, I’m not ready or an outright no. That might hurt but nowhere near as much as getting whacked in the face!!

“Can I give you a kiss?”

The same as above goes for this one. I ALWAYS ask his permission now for a kiss.

“Can I sit next to you?”

Seatgate….we have the classic everyone has their own seat on the sofa in our house. We all know our places but sometimes my son doesn’t want anyone sitting next to him and if I dared to sit down when he doesn’t want anyone near him it’s a major incident. When I do sit next to him he wants to sit next to me so close that I can’t breathe. Shoulder to shoulder. Hip to hip. Leg to leg. It’s like he needs to feel me there pressing against him. This can be lovely to start with but as he wiggles I end up feeling like I’ve done it ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

“Can I open the curtains?”

Curtaingate is a good one. And sometimes when I’m asking the question I think my god I am asking my 5 year old permission to open the curtains on a morning. Am I actually doing this?!? Yes I am because the trauma of the curtain opening is too much….for us all. When we come downstairs on a morning we sit with a small lamp on in the dark. My son has his hood on his dressing gown or oodie up. He puts a blanket over himself and all you can see is his eyes poking out. After months of doing this I know exactly at what point in the morning it’s ok to open the curtains. For a long time I went too early with this and I was only allowed to open 1 curtain but I’m at the point where I can feel the tension subside and I know I can open the curtains. Whether it’s a sensory thing or a control thing who knows. But since accepting curtaingate the mornings mostly run smoother. In the summer there has been occasion where I haven’t even closed the curtains on the night so when we have come downstairs on a morning they are open and my son has asked me to close them and then after a while I’ve been “allowed” to open them.

“Can I look at you?/Can I take a picture of you?”

Since starting school there has been several occasions where I would be watching my son do something. Nativity, mother’s day assembly, harvest festival, sports day to name a few and he hates being looked at. If I catch his eye sometimes in the house, and then catch it again he will tell me to stop looking at him. And you know what it’s like as soon as someone asks you not to look somewhere you can’t help but look there. So on these school occasions I needed to know whether I was allowed to look at him or not.

“Can you rate your school day out of ten?”

This is a relatively new strategy that I’m piloting with him to find out how his school day has been. We sit quiet after school. I don’t ask what he had for dinner. I don’t ask how his day has been. I don’t ask what games he played at playtime. I only ask “can you rate your day out of ten for me?” And I do this because he loves numbers, he loves to measure things and by asking him to measure his day out of ten I thought it would give me an accurate picture of how his day was.

And so that’s quite a lot of questions from me just for normal day to day activities. Is it me??? It’s the good old cause and effect argument, or chicken and egg. Am I asking lots of questions because he asks lots of questions or is he asking lots of questions because I’m asking lots of questions??? (Yes that is another question from me!).

After some soul searching (seems to be all I do nowadays) I’ve realised I almost channel him in my behavior. He asks me questions. I ask him questions.He struggles after a while with sensory overload. At the end of the day I feel the need to sit in a quiet space. He needs lots of recovery time. I’m starting to need lots of recovery time. All of this affects his daily life. It’s really starting to affect my daily life. And I’m not making light of what he goes through by claiming that I am also going through what he does. But this situation does affect me, and is having a profound affect on my life, my other relationships and my work. And I am so tired, so bloody tired. I can count on one hand the number of full nights sleep I have had with him. Three or four times a night seems to be the standard number of wake ups at this point in time. And he’s absolutely no bother whatsoever when he wakes up, but surprise surprise he usually needs to ask me a question….what time is it? Is it morning? What’s the largest country in the world? Now I might ask a lot of questions but only during waking hours!!!

So why do I ask him so many questions? It’s a strategy that seems to work. It helps him to feel in control when everything else is out of his control. It helps me to think I’m in control when really I’m spiralling out of control. And who knows…in thirty years time he might start his own blog “The Questions of My Mum” and talk about his life with me and my many many questions!!