The monkey loves to go to my parents house. Loves it. My parents have a small swing set in the back and he will be out there for hours. It’s extremely secure, fenced in, and my dad has an additional wood fence around the entire house as well. It’s perfect. My parents will be outside with him for hours, while he is pushed in his swing.

The bad thing is getting him to leave. It’s very difficult. He needs a lot of help transitioning. We have to tell him in advance we will be leaving soon. We have to give him cues, give him time to process. But even with that, it’s tough. It usually ends with him crying and fighting us.

Yesterday, my husband went to pick him up. The monkey wasn’t having it. He fought, he scratched, he hit. It was bad. Very bad. My husband realized he wouldn’t be able to leave with the monkey since I wasn’t with him. The ride home would be difficult. He couldn’t drive safely and take care of the monkey’s fustrations.

So he left the monkey with my dad.

Monkey- 1. Dad – 0.

My dad called me after and told me what happened. He then says, “After the monkey saw his dad leaving, he started laughing. He was laughing so hard. As if to say yep, I won.”

My husband and I talked about this last night. We struggle with my son’s issues. Everytime he struggles we question, is it because of the autism? Or is it because he is seven years old and simply throwing a tantrum? We try to be firm with the monkey. We try to always think of situations and ask if we would let my daughter get away with this, so why would we let the monkey? But then there are those times that we understand his struggles are different. We see him struggle with noise, with light, with people, with change in schedule, with so many other things that my daughter never struggled. We see how the lack of communication makes him so frustrated, and we understand that his struggles are not them same as my hers.

But then we hear he was laughing so hard after my husband left yesterday. And he stopped crying right away. And he kept swinging away, enjoying the evening. And we question if we did the right thing?

There are so many times we are in complete exhaustion and we simply give in.

And then we question our parenting. Are we doing the right thing? Are we not? I honestly don’t know. We are just winging it most of the time, hoping and praying it will be okay.

This Autism journey is hard.

But loving you my child, that part is easy.