I Can Do Hard Things!

Last week, we were faced with some heavy stuff in a lot of different areas of life. I was burdened. For anyone who doesn’t know me, my oldest son, Jacob, would be labeled as severely autistic – low functioning. I describe it like that because there are so many misconceptions and media always portrays autism as cute or quirky, but there is a whole world of us families dealing with kids who are extremely disabled and it can be really challenging and exhausting. All summer I have been heavily burdened with my son’s increasing ipad usage. I know that screen time is really bad for kids. I’ve read lots of studies on this topic. He is four years old and severely addicted to kids youtube on his ipad…not to watch the shows but to obsessively scroll through them. Admittedly, we use it as a babysitter because he has had a really long break from school and he is super bored. We use it as a crutch because I can’t take my kids anywhere by myself and my husband works all day. It works as a tool to prevent melt downs, too. Soooo, I justify his usage and deal with the guilt.

As of late, Jacob has been purposely waking himself up between 4:30 and 5:00 am, opening his door, slamming it shut behind him, and running to the kitchen where the ipad is plugged in. He grabs it and proceeds to get on kids youtube scrolling incessantly through the Disney Junior shows. He will stay on one show for about 30 seconds and go to the next. Sometimes it’s just a few seconds. He becomes a drone; he won’t play with toys. The more he watches, the more he wants it. It’s like crack…or what I imagine crack to be like. Recently, someone in one of my autism recovery groups posted an article about how bad ipad usage is for the autistic brain. I have read it before but it was an explicit reminder. Comment after comment (especially from some folks who have recovered their children) said that once they took the ipad away, there was a drastic change in their child. So, I was even more burdened this time. Later that morning, I asked my husband, “Why haven’t you backed me up on this?” He said, “I know it’s bad for him, but you are the one who has to stay home all day. I don’t know what you are going to do without it.” I said, “Let’s just try it. We don’t have to take it away, but youtube kids has to be deleted. If we can’t handle it, we can always put it back on.” So, when I was woken up at 2:00 am the next morning, I couldn’t go back to sleep because I was super burdened and couldn’t shut my mind off, I remembered to pray. Pray to God and seek his guidance. Well, this popped into my mind almost immediately, “You can do hard things.” Over and over I found myself saying, “I can do hard things.” Now I have heard God’s voice in my head one time in my life. This time this was a thought and a gut feeling that I believe the Holy Spirit gave to me. Friends, if Jesus isn’t your jam, it’s totally okay. This is for anyone who needs a little encouragement and we love all people. So stick with me. Simple but powerful words. “I can do hard things.” I jumped out of bed and deleted the app off both ipads. I made sure to really delete it. My kid can find youtube kids on any device faster than I can blink. Then, fortunately, I remembered that Jacob will definitely try to sneak my phone away, so we deleted it off the phones too. Jacob woke up before 5 am, ran to his ipad and cried hysterically for I don’t know how long. Ben had that shift. It was bad. Next morning, same thing. Pure devastation. Next morning, not so bad. And guess what, we’ve had playing. We see our boy having to use his imagination to figure out what to do. He likes to throw things and destroy things. That’s okay, we will take it. He picks up the ipad every now and then, plays a puzzle or traces letters and then throws it to the side. He is weaning off this technological drug. I’m not an expert at anything, but what we do know is that Jacob’s nervous system especially the vagus nerve is out of whack. His body stays in fight or flight mode. He craves this crazy constant stimulation and he can’t regulate himself. It’s up to us to help him no matter how exhausting the journey may be.

I want to say this. You, too, can do hard things. You really can. This may seem like such a simple task to some…taking the ipad away. It really did seem like a mountain to climb for us. I can guarantee that you are going through something difficult. It may be marital problems, a health issue, may be it’s your job, sticking to clean eating, or choosing a good attitude. I don’t know what it is, but you probably struggle with something. You may say to yourself, “I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” Or you delay action because it takes too much energy. Say to yourself and believe it, “I can do hard things.”  Say it over and over and over. I can’t believe how empowered I feel after doing this. I feel like I grew – like real personal development. I also grew as a parent. This is just one hard decision to make that will help us have strength for the next hard one. Small steps of faith, obedience, and personal belief will help you conquer anything. Remember – you can do hard things!