Simple Pleasures: chocolate chip cookies

Today I baked what I rank as one of the most delicious batches of chocolate chip cookies that have ever emerged from my oven. They were superbly crunchy on the edges, then moist and creamy inside. Eaten still warmed from the oven, they tasted heavenly. The boys seemed to think so too.
Perhaps the perfection was due to Eli’s assistance in mixing and rolling lopsided drops of cookie dough in his chubby little fingers.
Once baked, Ethan helped himself to cookie after cookie, until I placed them high out of his reach. I managed to exert some degree of self-control and limited myself to two cookies.

Here’s my recipe:

150 g butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cups self raising flour
1 cup chocolate chips
Sometimes I add ½ cup crumbed walnuts but I omitted them today because this batch needed to be nut-free so Ethan can have some in his school lunch box.

Cream butter and sugar until pale; beat in egg gradually, then add in vanilla. Mix in flour, choc chips and nuts with a wooden spoon. Roll out teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking tray and place in 180°C pre-heated oven, for 12- 15 minutes. Once cooled, they can be placed in zip lock bags and frozen.

I find baking to be quite therapeutic - I enjoy creating something delicious with my hands. Baking generates feelings of contentment and happiness, as I am busy in my own kitchen; delicious aromas wafting through the entire house; relishing the enjoyment the boys show in participating with the baking process and then tasting little treats they have helped to create, with a freshly brewed cup of tea. These are simple pleasures, but something as basic as baking seems to right things in my world, even if only briefly.

The Inevitable Perils of Comparisons

It seems every time we go out and spend time with other “neurotypical” (to use a buzzword) children, I come home with sadness and disquiet in my soul. As much as I try not to, I inevitably compare Ethan to the other kids. Everyone says you shouldn’t compare, but I find it impossible not to! My hope is that as I grow more accustomed to Ethan’s diagnosis and more accepting of his disability I won’t compare as much.

The sadness is not so much for my loss of the same depth of relationship that other parents have with their 4 year old children (although that is part of it). I feel sadness for what Ethan seems to be missing out on, and what I fear will lead to him being rejected by his peers. The other day as Ethan played on the prep playground after school, I watched as an older boy tried to strike up a conversation with Ethan. It went like this:

Older child: “Hi are you in kinder?”
Ethan: no eye contact, after a 5 second delay “yets” (“yes” – his standard echolalic response)
Older child: “I’m in prep. Do you know where that is?”
Ethan: no eye contact, no response
Older child, pointing: “Prep is in that building over there, see?”
Ethan: no response, no eye contact, climbs past the boy

My heart ached, I felt sad for the other boy who had put so much effort into that interaction and received so little in return; and sad for Ethan who doesn’t understand or respond. We have spent hours coaching and drilling him in “parallel talk” in therapy, but his ability to generalise social responses is so inconsistent.

His poor physical skills also concern me – he stumbles along, running too fast in his loose gait, trying to keep up, falling over constantly, tripping, falling off playground equipment, getting distracted, with perpetual bruising. Other people must see me as a “helicopter mother”, always hovering around him, but they don’t realise how uncoordinated and accident-prone Ethan is. And his inattention, poor visual scanning and limited awareness of safety mean that he needs constant supervision.

I want to just stop worrying about his differences and delays, which seem to be ever-increasing as his peers’ development speeds up. Lately I find myself often thinking about his longer term future as the extent of his disability becomes more evident. It is sobering and anxiety wells up – even though I am so grateful to God for who Ethan is and what a precious, sweet son he is.