They had some free half-hour starter lessons for various things at the arts center downtown this morning. We thought we would try Simon out in the piano lesson for young kids. He wasn't having it, partly because the instructor wanted to teach rhythm and singing, which Simon reacts to by covering his ears, but mostly because there was no actual touching the piano.
To see him react that way while the other kids engaged was, to say the very least, frustrating. Maybe I would even describe it more as heartbreaking, because it seems representative of the situations where he isn't wired to fit in, and I fear that's going to make his childhood more difficult. The next half-hour, Diana did a beginning violin lesson, and Simon was in that mode of defiance combined with his sensory issue induced hitting. This inevitably made me wish that he could be "more like other kids," which even thinking makes you feel like the shittiest parent ever. So first you feel like you can't provide for your kid by helping him when he's not behaving, and then you feel worse because you want him to be something different. It's a downward spiral of self-loathing.
In a more rational moment, I know I want him to just be him. He has a very cute personality much of the time, and he's generally able to be polite and kind, and his intelligence at times is just remarkable (especially his crazy ability to remember things like navigation). Simon, at his core, is a great kid, and of course I love him like crazy. There are just times where selfishly I want being his dad to be a lot easier.
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