Once we are past the tantrum and everyone is thinking with a clear head I often say “nobody likes change” in my head. 99.9% of the time it’s in Ross Gellar’s voice and I picture him and Rachel fighting over the girl from the copy place. It makes me smile every time, which is good because at this point I need something to break the tension.

It’s true. We have a little girl that doesn’t like change and apparently two parents who are really bad about realizing something has changed until we are strung out and have lost all patience and are trying to regain some composure and patience. Then it hits us “oooohhhh, we had a new bus stop today”. Molly won’t ever tell us why she’s anxious or what has changed or how she’s feeling, it’s like a guessing game from hell.

You’d think we would better at picking it up the subtle changes to our day. After all, we are five years into living with a child that needs uber-consistent days and regular schedules but there are times we just fail at it. I don’t feel guilty about the failing, life is what it is and sometimes it means change. I just want to be better at preparing for the tiny things that will occur during the day that won’t seem so tiny to her.

Normally speaking, change brings about tantrums and the inability to function. She seems to have difficulty getting one foot in front of the other and putting two words together. Little eye contact is made on these days and there is a lot of crashing into objects around her. There are super strict routines that must be followed lest we break out into a 45 minute crying jag which always results in a loss of a shoe. Usually it’s this part of the tantrum which sends Stampy and I to the mental ward and we end up losing our patience. There are no incentives or rewards on these days to change her, it is what it is and it leaves us all drained wondering “what just happened?”.

Today, she handled change differently. Today she sobbed, hunkered down in her bedroom and clutched one of my old stuffed animals while she stared out the window waiting for me to come home. Schools were closed today. My in-laws are back to their babysitting duties for the first time in six months but my father-in-law didn’t come today, he always comes on Tuesdays. Molly pointed that out. Today was different.

Today was different in the fact that once I came home, Molly told me what she did. She told me what she didn’t like and told me how it made her feel. Today was one of the first days she expressed rational thought to her emotion and how it made her feel. And that is a big change. That is a change I love.