The past 2 days have been BAD. I said earlier on Facebook that autism came barging in with a vengeance...
Stephen's teacher Heather has been letting him come over to her house the past two days, just to give him a change of scenery (since the summer camp we had signed him up for turned out to be a disaster - more later on that). We thought that his awful behavior had something to do with seeing his beloved Heather but not going to school - every time he'd sit down at his (also) beloved DVD player, after a few seconds he'd start whining, then crying...and he kept saying "Box...box!" and pushing us away.
We've been trying everything - saying "All done box," because we had no clue what that meant. A gift, maybe? The plastic boxes the DVDs come in? Or, tonight, I thought that maybe it was something to do with a DVD menu - maybe something square? I even moved a couple of boxes of winter clothes I had put close to his chair a couple of days ago - I thought maybe I had upset his feng shui...
We were going nuts - and feeling dumb for re-introducing Heather back into the picture, and maybe making things worse for Stephen (and ourselves) in the process. He was obviously having some sort of autism meltdown...
Tonight, after the tenth time Stephen tried a DVD, kept repeating "box," and cried, out of desperation, I sat down at his DVD player and put in a disc. It started, and I put on the headphones.
There was no sound coming out of them.
I wiggled the wire and got a feeble bit of sound out of one side, but...the light finally dawned. It WAS an autism thing, but it was so much more simple than we were making it. He couldn't hear his DVDs. He didn't know how to tell us that.
Luckily, I had a back-up pair of headphones (yeah, I'm learning!) in the closet. I walked down the hall, got them out of the closet, and brought them into the living room. I opened them, we got them plugged in, and suddenly...peace. And laughter and joy and hand-flapping. He was fine!
And you know what else? The headphones? Stephen was with me at Wal-Mart when I bought two new pairs so I'd have one as a back-up. They come in a plastic BOX.
He did try to tell us in some way, but we just couldn't grasp it. Last night I was with Kerry at Scouts, and David said that Stephen was upset the whole time...David was also here with the boys all day (except when Stephen was with Heather) and had to deal with Stephen's continual fussiness. He told me tonight that this whole situation is a lesson for him...he was convinced that the progress Stephen has made, and the relative calm we've had since school got out, had disappeared in a matter of a day or two. He said that he never even considered that there was a legitimate reason for Stephen's aggravation. Thankfully the pieces fell into place. Relieved doesn't even begin to cover how I'm feeling tonight.
2 comments:
I don't have a child with autism, don't really have any experience with it, but the story of Stephan and the headphones reminds me of ... me, my wife, my kids. The level and intensity of frustration and I am sure that the fact that it is so hard to communicate exacerbates the situation 10 fold, but the reaction to not having something you want and need is human. His desire to have something familiar and comforting, after a stressful day of "change" is what I would want, and I know I would want.
Again, my thought is not to downplay the frustration and the struggle to understand. Rather to recognize the common thread, to acknowledge that I've felt that way,and to some degree we all feel that way when we don't have what we need.
Michelle--so glad you were able to find the source of the problems! Isn't it funny when you have those little breakthroughs? You and David shouldn't beat yourselves up over not immediately knowing something was actually wrong. You know how highly functioning Austin is, and I've had the EXACT same thing happen with us. With ASD kids, even when they can communicate with you verbally, you don't always know what's going on in their brains and then when you figure it out, you feel relieved and guilty. Hah, here I am telling you not to feel guilty, and I cannot tell you the number of times I've stopped, realized it's a spectrum thing and then cried over yelling at him for something he probably couldn't help...
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