One day a few years ago, my son Peter was bossing the hell out of his brother TJ. At the time, when TJ would get frustrated and blow up, he would run out of the house and threaten to take off.  Now not to sound selfish, but on that particular day I had a lunch planned with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and I didn’t want to cancel it. Judge if you want, but I had not gotten out in a long time and I really needed it.

Anyway, I interfered before things got so heated that TJ blew up. I used my best Snow White calm voice to ask Peter to please not tell TJ what to do.

This is when he said, “Mom, I'm helping him to be normal. Is that OK with you?!”
Snow White promptly left the building.

I took Pete to a different room (yes, he’d said this in front of TJ) and asked him if he remembered the week before, when a man, in his 20's, made fun of TJ playing mini golf. Pete said he remembered, and it made him really mad. I told Pete that he just did the same thing by saying TJ isn’t normal in front of him.

He got it.

Anyway, long story short, Pete felt bad, apologized to TJ, who hugged his little brother, and I got to go to my lunch.  All’s well that ends well.

Except there was more to it. As kids TJ’s age were getting older, the differences between them and TJ were becoming more noticeable than ever. Pete had always been the more-often overlooked one when it came to our daily struggles, as most of our efforts went towards building TJ’s self esteem.

There’s no permanent solution. We deal with our struggles one day at a time, with both boys. Some days I’m spot on. Some days I suck.

Most days I’m fabulous.

But in the end, as long as both boys know how loved and cherished they are, I’m doing OK. Right?

And as long as they keep talking out the good and the bad, well, I can’t ask for much more.

And just out of guilt, I let them have extra iPad time. Just a little.

Barrington native Lauren Swick Jordan is a stay-at-home mom to her amazing boys, TJ and Peter, and wife to Sean (“The Dreamboat”). Since TJ was diagnosed with autism at age 2, Lauren’s mission has been to spread autism acceptance wherever she goes. She blogs at lauren-idonthaveajob.blogspot.com. She and her family live in northern Vermont.