Changing Seasons

Yes, it's that time of year again. The mornings are getting chillier, and the kids are driving me crazy.

Autumn and Spring are the transition seasons, and we all know how much sensory-kids and ASD kids love the T-word.

It seems like only yesterday that I finally convinced Dreamer that it was too hot to wear jeans and long-sleeve shirts, and I swear it was last week that he finally stopped resisting and started wearing shorts without complaint. Now all the pleadings have to start again, as I try to get him wearing long pants and jumpers again.

Speedy was sitting watching TV the other night, and asked if he could get the electric heater out. I looked over, and there he was on the sofa in his shorts and t-shirt summer pyjamas.

"No, we are not putting the heater on and wasting electricity. Go and put some warmer clothes on".
"Oh, so you care more about money than your son freezing" was the pathetic response, and he sat there and shivered for another ten minutes, complaining about his stingy mother.

Ha. I'm a bad mummy, and he lost the standoff. He eventually appeared back on the sofa wearing trackpants and a hoodie.

That was the easy one done.

Except that he's grown ridiculously since last winter, and his trackpants barely reach past his knees, and I'll have to buy new ones, and they won't be comfortable, and... oh, I'll deal with that next week.

Next, Dreamer. I'll probably have to have 'the argument' with him every time he gets dressed for the next month.

I might even have a bit of luck this year. He has his new Senior Jersey to wear for school, and it's nice and soft, which means I get to avoid the arguments we've had for the last four winters about the horrible, scratchy, polyester-knit school jumper. The old scratchy jumpers can be passed down to Speedy, and I am hoping that after a few years of being washed, they'll be a bit softer and attract less complaints.

The seasonal transitions are definitely easier now with older children.

Now that they're taller than me, I don't worry as much about them dying from hypothermia in winter and heatstroke in summer. They probably won't, and if they do it's their own silly fault.

I also don't worry about what other people think.

People will assume that 17- and 15-year-olds have chosen their own clothes. It's not like when you have to send a 5-year-old to school in winter in shorts and t-shirt and you just know that everyone is thinking "What a lousy mother, she doesn't even care if her kid freezes to death".

When they were younger, I played dirty tricks. I used to sneak into their bedrooms while they were at school, steal all the seasonally-inappropriate clothing from their cupboards, bag it up, and hide it. Twice a year.

Then I would endure the cries, whines, and tantrums when they couldn't find their favourite clothing item of the moment. And eventually, they would become so attached to their next favourite clothing item of the moment that I'd have to steal it when the weather changed a few months later.

Apart from that, I'm enjoying the crispness of the autumn mornings.