After giving my child a proper talking-to the other day, he has finally understood that Mom isn’t always available. It was about time—he’s sixteen! So yesterday I told him: I’ll be at the doctor’s, please don’t keep calling me like you usually do. Only call if something’s wrong, okay?
He only called twelve times.

Unfortunately, he calls other people too—and if he can’t reach them, he tries even harder. I keep repeating that this is not how it’s done: if you can’t reach someone, you wait for them to call back, and after 7 p.m. you don’t call anyone except family—at most your very best friend. But since that very best friend specifically asked not to be called late because their family goes to bed early, and my dear son keeps ringing anyway, the friend often ends up blocking Kende. Then Kende comes to me to complain—again, for the two-hundred-and-twenty-sixth time. Every single time, I patiently explain: your friend blocked you because you kept calling even though he asked you not to… do you understand?
It’s the same with texting. If you don’t pick up the phone, he writes. If you don’t reply, he writes even more…

But luckily, the other day he finally understood that Mom isn’t always available. Since then, before addressing me, he now tacks onto the beginning of whatever he wants to say—like an indispensable accessory—a monotone, declarative, even commanding, rapid-fire phrase: “Are you free!” And then he launches into his monologue.

Autistic children have to be taught everything separately that others learn by imitation — often with a lot of patient repetition. Very patient, with much repetition. Repetition. That is, repetition.

For years I’ve been telling Kende to put his clothes in the laundry basket in the evening. In vain — he leaves them on the floor. For years I’ve been telling him to take his plate away after eating — he leaves it on the table. For years I’ve been asking him not to pee on the toilet seat — yet he still pees on it. When that happens, I send him back, he protests, I insist, he gets upset and resists, I pretend to be very angry (though sometimes I don’t have to pretend much), then I threaten to take away his phone or mowing time, and then he finally does what I asked, grumbling. But usually, various swear words start flying around, which I generously put down to his Tourette’s syndrome, so we don’t have to argue about the same things all the time.
Lately, Kende often asks how long he still has to go to this school. I always tell him, “just this year, then you graduate.” He says, “I’d already go from here.” I understand him. He has been going there for nine years now and learns more or less the same things; he still counts within 10 or 20 and reads and writes on a first-grade level. He often says: “Tomorrow I’ll go on sick leave.” He hears this from his sister, who goes to a vocational school and already works every other week. There, you can’t just stay home for no reason — only if you’re on sick leave.

Lately, my son has been sick a lot. Even last school year he was almost always at home, and I was already afraid he’d have to repeat the year. And now this year, already in the second week, he got sick again, and last week too he was at home. At times like that, he blasts folk music in the living room and songs like Bogyó és Babóca for preschoolers, about two hundred and forty times a day. Speaking of repetition. And he wants pancakes. Every day. And every five minutes he asks the same questions. You can probably guess what my days are like. I cook him something healthy then, which of course he won’t eat, because it’s disgusting. Needless to say, I would also be glad if he were at school more. But no matter how much I tell him that he has to go to school, and that if he doesn’t, he’ll have to repeat the year, he just keeps repeating, a hundred and fifty times a day, that he doesn’t care, that I should leave him alone, and that he’s very sick.
Lately, though, he usually says all this rather kindly, which makes me melt completely, since I’m used to his wild swearing and banging. He’s sixteen, strong — I can’t drag him by force even into the next room, let alone to school.

But then I had an idea, when he kept complaining about how bored he was.

So that’s how our entertaining sick leave sadly came to an end, and the repetition of gray weekdays began again. I think I am the one who is a little bored now.