Last week I watched a video posted by a mother of a child with Autism who shared about her son’s meltdown in her car. The video was raw and real, she shared that the meltdown was over, but she was not over it. My heart went out to her as she shared her fears about who will be there for her son when she can no longer be there. A very real fear for those of us who know how hard it sometimes is to be there but know that we will continue to step up to handle whatever behaviors our children present as long as we can as that is what love does. We struggle with the fear that we are their last defense.
That mother’s point was driven home later that night when Micah’s pica was in full control and he was ransacking the cupboards for late night snacks. He should not have been hungry as he had a big dinner and two or three after dinner snacks, but he was in a cycle in which it seemed that he could not stop looking for other items to consume.
After eating a full bag of Goldfish, he came back out of his bedroom, opened the pantry cupboard and grabbed an unopened box of Angel Hair pasta. I reached him just as he was trying to put a full handful of spikey pasta into his mouth. If you are ever tempted to wrestle Angel Hair pasta away from someone, I have one word of advice: don’t. In my attempt to wrestle the pasta from him, I was able to break his handful in half, the result being fragments of pasta flying literally everywhere from the kitchen into the adjacent living area. Days later I am still finding pasta in the most unlikely of places. Despite my efforts to stop him, Micah probably consumed close to half of the box. It was a tough night with neither of us getting to sleep until well after midnight. As I waited for him to finally fall asleep so I could go to bed, I found myself wondering, like the other mother, who will care enough to calmly try to keep Micah safe when I can no longer do it? His pica-propelled behaviors can try my patience to the extreme and I don’t always maintain my cool. Micah is a big man, and I am not getting stronger. The episodes are so hard and when they are over, Micah seems fine, but it takes me much longer to get to fine.
Micah’s pica behaviors are cyclical; thus, this week has not been remotely as challenging as last week. I asked Melody if she would talk with him about the Angel Hair battle to see if, through Spelling to Communicate (S2C), we could get his perspective on what triggers the behavior and how we might be able to help him stay safe when he is driven to consume items are either not healthy or worse, dangerous for him to eat.
Micah’s words this month are hard to write, and I am sure hard to read. This is his life and his story, so, with his permission to share, this was his response:
“Sometimes I can’t control my body. It has caused me and mom so much stress. I am broken. I wish there was an easy solution”.
Let those words soak in. I have sat with them for a few days before typing them here. My response to Micah is: “I hear you, my son. We are all broken in some way, some of us in many ways. It must be so hard to have a body that betrays you in so many ways. I don’t want to diminish any of your feelings, but please know that you have so many gifts and we want to learn from you. We won’t stop searching for solutions to try to help. Use the voice you now have through Spelling to Communicate (S2C) to help us understand how to use your many gifts to keep you safe and to make this world a better place. We need you! As your t-shirt says, Silence is not an option.”
Jan Lessard Peightell and Micah James Lessard September 16, 2025