Mama...beast?

I hate the phrase Mama Bear. It makes me a little nauseous. That's the only phrase I can think of that describes how I felt a week ago. There have been plenty of times that I defend my kid, but I have never experienced quite the physical, ingrained reaction like last week. Sweaty palms, increased heart beat, pure fury.

I don't want to go into details because I don't want the details being out there, but my son won't return to the daycare he's been attending since September. When my husband got home and relayed the information to me (I work until 6:30 so he's the daycare picker-upper) I told myself that surely there was a miscommunication? Surely? I obviously needed to call the daycare director because what he thought happened would never happen there. In that moment I knew I wouldn't have the ability to remain calm when I spoke with her so I slept on it and called her the next day.

Her explanation made things worse. It highlighted how incompetent they are in terms of handling a kid on the autism spectrum. Whenever she tried to defend the staff, it just made it worse. By some miracle, I didn't rage-sob while she was on the phone. I made it perfectly clear to her that they are incapable of handling a kid on the autism spectrum. I let her know that how they handled my son was not okay. I let her know that we'd never be back. I hung up the phone and shook.

He is in such a specific niche that I can see this kind of thing happening repeatedly and that scares the shit out of me. He tends to pass as this quirky kid to people we're not around a lot, but the behavioral struggles always emerge. He is the best thing that's ever happened to me but dealing with autistic behavioral challenges (especially meltdowns and defiance) is NOT an easy thing to deal with. Teachers aren't always going to have the patience that a parent has. They have countless other kids to look after, of course they don't have an hour to deal with a meltdown.

So where will he fall? How are we supposed to find a daycare that we can trust after this? Is he regressing? Do we need to amend his IEP and push for more hours? Does he need to go back into ABA therapy? Where is the damn manual for all of this? Hopefully the developmental pediatrician will be able to answer our longgg list of questions in January. Like everything-just as soon as you feel like you're getting the hang of something, life changes it up. Time to keep learning and moving forward.