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Ever since I became Leo's mom and Leo became Leo, there is one special day I look forward to, every year. It's not Christmas, as the winter holiday season trumps even summer on my family's trepidation scale. And it's not the first day of school, despite how gleefully I usher my children into their teachers' care.
No, it's the day of Leo's annual birthday party. Because on that day, every year, my son gets to be his own exuberant self, unreservedly.
Leo's birthday party is dedicated to him, to the unstructured romping and bouncing and herd play at which he excels and delights. His siblings and his friends with IEPs -- and their siblings, and their parents get to cut loose as well. At Leo's birthday party, the world that doesn't easily understand or accommodate my boy is banished from the rented bouncy house emporium. Only people that know, love, and support Leo are allowed inside. There aren't any adults with forced smiles or children asking why our children look or act the way they do. There are no streets or cars or toddlers to endanger or impede. There is only the wild, wild birthday rumpus.
Seeing my son and his friends enjoy themselves so wholly at a party is an almost opioid pleasure. To be frank, my son rarely gets asked to birthday parties unless the kids are family, or have special needs themselves. And, to be equally frank, I don't want to take him.
Stereotypical birthday parties are meltdown crucibles for kids like my son. All the celebratory yelling and singing can short-circuit his sensory net and freak him out, and then we have to leave. He doesn't understand most games, and he's not going to sit still for any performer -- if we encourage him to participate, he may have a tantrum, and then we'd have to leave. It's almost impossible to keep our compulsive eater away from the typical birthday sugary foods smorgasbord, but if he gets more than a few bites, the otherwise discouraged sugar will send him into orbit, he'll start acting out, and we'll have to leave.
Even if none of those things happen, few unindoctrinated kids or adults are instinctively comfortable with a cherubic eight-year-old boy who behaves like a human superball, steals cake off plates, and doesn't like to answer people even when they use their extra-loud-and-slow voice. Leo finds little to enjoy at birthday parties, because they are the exaggerated version of life for Leo in general: confusing, overwhelming, and full of rules he doesn't understand.
So we avoid parties and other social scenarios that aren't Leo-friendly, highly regimented, supervised, and directed. And on his birthday, we work hard to create just the opposite -- an enabling but unstructured environment where he and his friends have no worries, and can run around and enjoy themselves like they almost always want to but usually can't.
I'm idealizing this birthday party scenario, just a bit. It's not perfect, because Leo's friends don't all quirk at the same frequency. Some of them are overwhelmed by bouncy houses. Some prefer to hang out next to the inflation mechanisms. Some can't physically access the play structures. Last year, Leo was in an aggressive phase and had to be supervised even more closely than usual. But since my friends and I all abandoned "perfect" long ago -- the word is irrelevant to our lives -- we are willing to settle for terms like "happy" and "content," and the bouncy house birthday party works.
There are typical sides to Leo's birthday parties. We make homemade cakes and decorations based on his favorite characters. There are no goody bags (I loathe them) but there are favors, occasionally homemade, and always geared towards Leo's friends both typical and a-. And there is singing, which Leo adores when the song is Happy Birthday and it's directed to him. I'm hoping this is the year he'll be interested in opening gifts and seeing what's inside.
Birthdays parties, and the way they can both draw and erase the distinctions between kids with special needs and their typical peers is such an emotional topic for me that right now, as Leo's ninth birthday approaches, my thought process is somewhat derailed. (Did I write that already?) I hope this makes sense. Here is what I'm trying to say: I love it when my son is truly happy. It's not always
