There’s comfort, annoyance – yet growth – in the over-again cycle of our new days.

The mom I want to be desperately wants to tell you our new normal is Will and Jeff-centric. That our daily schedule rigorously keeps the boys on track. That I’m consistent as the textbooks say I must be to force their growth. That I’ve helped their scrambled neurology with overt structure to show Thursday differs from Friday, from Saturday in our new normal.

The reality is we’re reachers. Four of us live here and have our daily needs to be met. We strain for a brass ring called Everyone’s Happy. We rinse and repeat daily tasks from morning coffee to nightly tooth flossing so we are intact, a micron more capable than the day before, and enrich the earth entire. We jump, we stretch, we hope that next time we’ll grab the magic ring and feel the wonder of being hoisted above our daily selves – finally There. Wherever the new There is.

To do this I’ve had to give up illusions and allow the boys about two hours or stim time – something a behaviorist would label a big No-No, as it sets up stimming as an acceptable activity, rather than forcing more normative patterns. This is vastly different than our former day program schedule where Will’s iPod alarm began playing the Village People’s YMCA -“Young Men- There’s no need to feel down….” – at 6:50 am, with just enough time for a brisk pace of making their lunch, toothbrushing, shaving, showering, dressing and barely making it for the 7:35 am bus.

Short of sacrificing our jobs, our new normal is to loosely supervise the environment yet give everyone a semi-structured block so we all get what we need. I can’t ride herd to the level an ABA purist requires. Essential skills violations are corrected – like their selecting the drinking the cup with their name on it, using a coaster when they place it on the end table beside their La-Z-Boy chairs.

But we look the other way as they pursue odd calming repetitive activities that merely soothe, even though when overdone, lead to really problematic behaviors. For Will this is disrobing, and for Jeff, albeit a long time ago, was self-injurious picking at hang-nails or moles until they bled.

For Jeff his stims are an OCD-like realigning the way Kleenexes pop out from their box, or racing across the room if the garbage cabinet drawer isn’t perfectly closed. Or grabbing a napkin to hold in his hands while he stealthily rips tiny balls of them to hold between his fingers. Or crooning babbly words, inventing a vocabulary to new tunes that make me laugh when I wonder how he possibly came up with these sayings. Or dog-earing my now laughably ancient Gourmet Magazine back issues, tossing them willy-nilly on floors and counters.

For Will it’s perseverative water play – running water and rinsing his hands for minutes at a time, then dripping a trail of water across the first floor. Or wearing socks from the orphan basket on his hands, and sorting through them as if there were hidden snacks to be found a the bottom. Or blaring video models from his iPad without his Airbuds on, so we all get to enjoy about 30 repetitions of the 4-minute tape of his sister Jenn saying Hi at Xmas – or the tape of his helper Vickie teaching him to fold a shirt. Or pushing dog-eared phonics cards into their box.

God only knows why these particular activities collect the guys. Sometimes they want music in the background during these morning reveries. So we play Soundscapes or a similar blanket of calmness from the cable TV music channels – tunes I can still allow me to think and create unlike rock and more upbeat tunes that unfortunately confuse my brain-lanes.

Meanwhile in our new normal while the boys stim the parents triage work, maybe do a fast surf of Facebook or scan the day’s pushed-news headlines on our phones. I usually thrash the piles of yesterday’s newspapers to find the To Do notepad where I scrawl reminders, which sadly gets lots or forgotten half the time in the craziness of the new schedule. Or I write, usually feeling guilty about having needs that divert me from Momly devotion, while intellectually knowing without it I’m like a soured apple hidden too long in a far corner of the fridge.

This particular Thursday, stim time was more like 3 hours with a work deadline. Glancing at Will, I saw his confused, I’m not at ease look – the one cries out, where the hell is my schedule, where’s my teachers, and what is my life. Cue the parental guilt, at other life roles taking priority. At not being one of those bouncy Facebook friends who delightedly manage 4 kids and their schedules while Instagramming souffles.

I don’t have a picture symbol card for Morning Stim, although maybe I should. The perfect mom-wannabe in me knows I shouldn’t allow it. In the new normal, I must. Yet I take heart that we’re consistent, and learning to handle free time is an important skill, too. That no one is in crisis in our house. That I actually like these people, and the strong good bones of our home. That the collective health of the family unit – including my own – overrides some dusty prescriptive ABA must-do textbook. Most importantly, that the new rinse and repeat cycles we’re establishing – all of us here in this house, together – is perhaps the most important Meyer-Johnson schedule strip of all.