This morning, my son went to school an hour early to pass out Earth Day buttons with other members of the high-school Conservation Club. First period, he'll check into homeroom and then go get his picture taken with the other club members. Second period, he has to change out of his Earth Day shirt and into a uniform shirt to go work for a couple of hours at a supermarket as part of a school job-training program. Next Thursday, he'll be out of school all day, on a hike with his Environmental Science class. The day after that, he's going with a couple of friends to the Junior Prom.
These are the kind of opportunities I was afraid he would never have. And now, of course, because that's just the way we special-needs parents roll, I'm afraid that it's too much for him. What if we've gone from being not ambitious enough to being too ambitious? How will we know when we've exceeded his stress-management limit without him having a meltdown in the grocery aisle? He's got a lot of good adults watching his back at school, and I have to trust that he'll always have eyeballs on him. But I sure am happy when he walks through the door at the end of the day, still in one piece. I'll be a nervous wreck for the both of us.
