Hating Daycare

My poor baby.

Yep, another meltdown today at daycare. I've got to find something else. This is just too hard on him, and it's killing me to see the look on his face when I arrive.

He looked like he had just been in a battle from hell. His face was red and blotchy, his eyes had dark rings under them - at first I thought he had black eyes! He was absolutely miserable, and he started to burst into tears when he tried to tell me what happened.

It didn't help that as soon as he started to talk, the caregiver started giving him flack for tearing the place a part. I carefully explained to her that his meltdowns are a response to an overstimulation to his senses, and that he has no control when they occur. I was basically trying to interrupt her so that she couldn't keep lecturing my son. I didn't try to minimize why she was pissed off. I understood that. But I didn't want her to continue trying to discipline a child that was not only traumatized, but unable to control his actions. She started in on him a second time, and I interrupted her again. I wasn't being mean or rude. But I wanted her to talk to me, not to him. He had obviously had enough.

At one point, Nathan started to tell me what took place, and said that he was hit. The caregiver exclaimed that this was more than he had told her! Gee, big surprise. I told her he is autistic (I didn't know if she had been told before) and that he has trouble communicating sometimes. I said he needs to start at the beginning, and talk through it step by step. I then turned back to Nathan and asked him again what happened. He had already clammed up after she interrupted him, and I needed to do a little coaxing, but I got him to talk again. He said that he was hit. I asked him if he was hit by a ball (they had been playing a ball game), and he said no, it was a part of someone's body! Then he burst into tears and said, "He told me that he didn't care! He hit me and he didn't care!" Aw geez. He is so sensitive to injustice, that he just can't handle when others won't apologize or won't show regret. Poor kid. I said, "Nathan, I care." Somehow this seemed to calm him down considerably. I think that's all he really wanted, was for someone to give a damn that he'd been hurt. Not so much to ask.

Before we left, I asked if he was thrown out of the after-school-care, or if he could attend tomorrow. She said no, he could return tomorrow, but NOT TODAY. Yeah, no problem. I couldn't wait to get him out of there.

On the way out, we ran into the kind man who we had talked to yesterday. He could see for himself the look on Nathan's face, and held out his hands saying, "what happened?" I told him that today was worse than yesterday. He shook his head and apologized. Nice guy. It looked like he was just coming on duty. Too bad he didn't get there earlier. Maybe Nathan would have made it today.

You know, Nathan has a pretty good read of people. He has good instincts. He can tell when someone thinks he is bad, even if they don't say the words. That woman caregiver had a real attitude about Nathan. I had a pretty good impression that this was making the whole meltdown much worse than usual.

I've got to do something. I don't know what yet, but I have to change this. I need to get him somewhere where there is more patience, more understanding, more compassion. Does it even exist here? How can I keep facing that look on his face? That emotional pain?