Neighborhood Drama: the party

On Saturday, our new neighbors were having a get-together/birthday party for their daughter Zarah (who stays with them on the weekends). We went at 3pm when they said it was to start. They really went all out. They rented a moon bounce and they had gobs of food. Shortly after we got there, Alexa and her mom Melissa came, and then about an hour later, Dane’s dad dropped him off. (He excused himself saying he had to tend his barbeque, even though these people were barbequing too, and the weather was actually quite chilly.) We were surprised that Amy and Joe didn’t bring their kids over. With all the food they had, Rex and I felt obligated to try and make a dent in it. Around 5pm, lots of other people came, mostly of Arabic nationality. (The absence of our other very social neighbors made me wonder if they declined the invitation because there was no alcohol or if it was the fact they weren't white. At least Melissa was there.)

James was especially impressed with the pool table, but he got his fingers smashed by the balls. (He was playing with Dane, so I can’t help but wonder if Dane rammed the balls into his hand on purpose, but I know that’s probably not the case.) James was extremely excited about the party; I was very nervous about letting him run around without me, especially as more people showed up with a few more kids. More than my fear of my kids breaking something, I was worried about James’ tendency to get emotionally out of control and push people away with his odd conversations and his crying/screaming outbursts.

It started as soon as we got there. He kept saying to Zarah, “I have a question to ask you” repeatedly before he could get to the question. Then he kept asking “How old are you?” phrased differently each time even though she’d answered it several times. She didn’t seem turned off yet, but I wondered how long it would be before she was.

When Dane showed up, my anxiety amplified. I cringed when James, out of the blue, excitedly told Dane he had the Magic School Bus at home. (He and the other kids had been watching that movie from the library a lot lately, even though it is somewhat below James’ age level.) Fortunately, Dane merely said, “oh” and left it at that, even though his face showed he thought it was babyish. James was simply doing the same thing Dane always does: boasting of whatever cool new toy/movie/game he had. Only what James thinks is cool is not necessarily cool to his peers. It wasn’t long after another little boy showed up that James came upstairs where Rex and I were with some other adults around the pool table; James was crying and said that Dane wouldn’t let him play with him and the other boy. I held him and simply said I didn’t want him to play with Dane; there were other kids here he could play with and he should stay away from Dane. But that’s impossible for James. When I came downstairs, I found what he was talking about: Dane had fetched some new wrestling play set and brought it over to flaunt and play with, but he had excluded James. I was angry when I saw that his parents still continued to let him bring his own toys over to other people’s houses – to a birthday party, no less! He can’t stand being outdone!

Alexa is usually very nice and polite, even when James is acting weird or pushy. But she, justifiably, gets scared when he explodes. Because I was so nervous about James’ ability to hold his own, I told Megan to watch out for him and that if he got upset or started to cry, to come get me. She did come to get me several times. This time, I heard the wailing from afar. When I got there, James was hysterical that Alexa drew this face on his balloon. I couldn’t get anything out of him in this state and his emotions had swelled so high by this time that he was not able to regain control and we had to leave. Meanwhile, Alexa could not be found. Her mom was searching everywhere for her. As we exited the front door, I saw she had finally found Alexa and was sitting with her on the couch talking.

After holding James till he calmed down, I was able to piece together what happened. Alexa was drawing faces on balloons for everyone, and James asked her to draw one for him. She drew one with a tongue sticking out as she did with most of her faces, but when she handed the balloon back to James, he got angry and told her it wasn’t what he wanted and he burst into screaming tears. This frightened Alexa and hurt her feelings and she ran and hid. I heard she had gone home, but as I said, I later saw her on the couch with her mom so I don’t know where she went.

My first approach to the situation was to try to explain to James how trivial this was. It was only a balloon, something that was as disposable as a piece of paper you could draw on and throw away. It was only a tiny mistake, not a huge catastrophe. But to an Asperger child, every little problem is a catastrophe so he couldn’t understand this. Then I moved on to how he could fix the problem. First, he could have turned around the balloon and drawn a different face on the other side, but he said the balloon was already messed up; second, he could have gotten another balloon and tried again. Neither of these solutions were acceptable so I moved on to the more important aspect of this situation.

I rehearsed with him the conversation he had had with Alexa when he rejected her drawing. “When you told her you didn’t like her drawing and you screamed at her, how do you think that made her feel?” His face contorted and he was unable to keep himself from sobbing all over again as he said, “I hurt her feelings.” I said, “Yes, it is like if you drew a picture for me and I told you I didn’t like it.” Then I had to hold him some more until he could regain his composure. We then role played what he needed to say to apologize to her: “I’m sorry about the way I acted, and thank you for drawing the face for me.” I didn’t know if he was going to be able to do it without crying because he was sure fighting his tears all the way over there, but he insisted he wanted to try again and play at our neighbor’s house still. Besides, this apology needed to be made, one way or another. I was impressed he was able to spit it out without crying or stumbling over the words too much. She was cool about it and said it was okay, and then he joined her and the others in the moon bounce again.

I found Melissa and explained to her what I had pieced together and I had him go and apologize to Alexa. She seemed somewhat surprised that I was able to ascertain her daughter’s point of view and seemed grateful that James made amends. I think I was able to salvage the relationship instead of burning more bridges.

The worst was yet to come. We’d been there for 3 hours and the kids did not want to go home. This much social interaction for James was really strenuous on his emotions and he was really riding high. So what followed wasn’t exactly surprising. Joe and Amy still hadn’t come over, but Dane had fetched Spencer and Martin and they were now in the moon bounce with him. Unfortunately, James wanted to join them. I saw them hitting him through the mesh wall as James leaned on it from the outside, and I figured he would back off instead of climbing into the battle ground so I went back in to help the kids with their cake. But James didn’t have the sense to stay away. The next thing I knew, I heard wailing from outside. I rushed out to find Rex trying to console James on the porch. We gathered our things and left since it was close to bedtime for Megan and Isaac anyway. I was mad at myself for leaving James’ side, but I keep telling myself I can’t protect him every second.

I later learned what happened: James had gone in, thinking the balloon hitting was part of a game, not realizing it was really a boxing ring. The three boys ganged up on James and only hit him with the balloons. When he realized they were only hitting him and not each other, he tried to get away, but got cornered. Unable to escape, he growled and leaped at Spencer, the older boy, knocking him to the floor of the moon bounce. Rex witnessed all this and squeezed into the moon bounce and pulled James off of him before he could beat him up. The younger two boys had backed off in shock and fright. Spencer was apparently so shaken and scared to death of James, he too was nearly in tears. Rex said that he had to console James and Spencer. But we both admit we were extremely proud of our little underdog to take on the three bullies and tackle the biggest one. I was relieved that Habib sided with James and said he was proud of him too; I hate to make enemies of yet more neighbors. Unfortunately, I am sure that the bridge that had previously been burned with Joe and Amy is probably still smoldering; I can only imagine what those boys said to their parents about our “lunatic” son when they went home that night.