Jay answered the phone when I called him from his dad’s cell. He said hello after the second ring.

“Jay, where are you?”

“You’re not dad.”

“I know.”

“But it shows his phone.” Jay was referring to the caller ID on his cell phone screen.

My little trick had worked. I never called Jay from his dad’s phone. Some kid’s might generalize and figure out mom was with dad and using dad’s phone. Not Jay. Mom called on mom’s phone. Dad called on dad’s phone. That was his internal rule for phones. I broke the rule.

“Jay, where are you?”

“At the reptile exhibit.”

Now why didn’t I think of that? This whole time he’d been slumped in a chair in front of the TV playing Steve Irwin videos. “We’re out front and getting ready to leave. Come out here.”

“No.”

I heard anger, determination and fury in his voice. “Jay listen, I’m sorry you were scared about the ride. We’ll talk about it more when you get out here.”

“No.” Jay also said a few nuh-uhs and made sounds like cross between a groan and a growl when I repeated the request. He was anchored to the spot.

You can’t reason with Jay when he’s in a meltdown-shutdown mode. I could go back in the front gate and go to the reptile exhibit. I could, but it would set him off. There’s no way I could carry out, or manage to guide out, a resistant 6-foot-tall 13-year-old boy. It would only stir up a commotion and bring unwanted attention or, worse, the security guards.

“Jay, you have two choices. You can sit there and be left behind or come out here and leave with us right now.”

What the hell was I saying? That made absolutely no sense and it wasn’t even remotely true. We’d never leave Jay behind. Worse, it wasn’t a threat Jay would understand. In his mind he was already alone and scared. How could it get worse? Who but a frustrated powerless parent talks to their kid that way?

Jay wasn’t having it. He hung up.

Check the 'Special Needs Kids' category for more in this series.


More posts in this series: 1 2 3 4 5