Booga has fallen in love with Julie & Julia…
He loves that movie and I think it's a good movie. It's interesting. I think I like the history aspect more than anything. It does open areas of interest in Booga that I think are good to address. For one thing he now wants to learn to cook.
Well, that's fine. I am not going to go overboard and enroll him in culinary school like some parents would. I am going to teach him to brown hamburger and he can learn to cook slowly like I did. Learning to cook fast is like someone learning the alphabet and then being expected to read. It's not that easy.
And teaching an autistic child is different than teaching an average kid. You have to literally put your hands behind your back and allow him to do his own work; which is hard because you want to help him. There is a clumsiness involved with Booga that goes against everything I learned about cooking also and that's hard for me to stand there and watch.
But I don't put limitations on him. He can do what he wants.
So far he has made:
Taco Lasagna
Taco's
Low-fat Brownies from a mix.
I would have let him do dinner tonight but it's one of those meals I just throw in a slow cooker and forget about it.
Here are a few words on not putting limitations on someone.
Okay, I don't put limitations on Booga as far as what Booga wants to do. I suggest to his teachers that he might benefit from this or that or that he expresses an interest in this or that, but I don't go out and force him to take drawing classes because he is interested in art.
I don't force him into culinary school while because he takes a passing interest in cooking.
If he wants to take classes and we can find these classes adapted for people with special needs-well, then great.
If we can't (which usually doesn't happen) well, then we'll just keep looking over time and eventually there will be a class or a situation for him to take advantage of his interests. Just like this play he's in right now.
I think a lot of time and effort is put in by parents of average children and children with special needs and especially autistic children to find that one area that they will excel in (autistic children especially because of the whole "Rain Man" thing) when sometimes it just needs to naturally happen. To do otherwise is to spend a lot of time and money doing something that is just going to make you frustrated.
If your child has a passing interest then, in about a week it will pass. However, if it persists then you can encourage it by buying them books on it or perhaps talking to their teachers about opportunities to learn about it at school. They might even know of a class that your child can take that is geared towards children with special needs. But for pity's sake, when I say, "I don't put any limitations on Booga," I mean, I don't put any limitations on what he really wants to do, what he shows more than a passing interest in and what can be gotten from either school or from the people that work with him in the school system and mental health services.
If he wants to be working in movies, I am not going to force some person that knows nothing about autism to try and include him in a film class. That is unfair for him, it's unfair to me and it's unfair to the people in the class. It's especially unfair to the instructor.
However, if it's a film class geared towards people with special needs or has an instructor willing to take the time and who has the patience to work with a special needs student, than by all means, I would have him take it.
You are working with a world that is learning to change for people with special needs; we can slowly help them to acclimate. We can't force this, it's unnatural to force change, and it's realistic to allow it to change over time. You suggest the change and let it allow it to happen, and I think that is best. It makes everyone do the best job they can because they have the time to think about it. Sometimes the suggestion to someone like a classroom aide or a special needs room teacher can spark a fire that will warm many.
However you don't throw your child into the cauldron of fire and expect good things to come from it, you simply don't.
It's patience people. Have a little patience with your kid. Have a little patience with the rest of the world. Average people who now populate the world are terribly slow.
Church
We are fortunate to have a pastor whose wife is a special needs teacher. It's like a blessing from God because he is well aware of children who are intellectually disabled.
He formed a special needs Catechism class for my son and Booga is a confirmed member of our church.
This was not always the way.
We have come across those who believed that Booga would never be able to be confirmed in the church. But apparently God had other plans.
Booga copes with church in a way that is unique. I have been aware that it is hard for Booga to be in a room where it echo's or where there are lots of people for a long time.
My girlfriend and I would take him to movies and five minutes after we got settled in the theater he would want to head to the bathroom for a self-stimulation episode that might go on for several minutes- until he got his ya ya's out.
She suggested (and this was one of the suggestions that actually worked and I would suggest this to you also) that you take your child into church and into the theater and make them sit in the theater or church for longer and longer periods of time until they figure out that their heads are not going to explode or that the world will not end or at least they get use to it.
It does work. It just takes patience and time.
Another thing I allowed him to do is to go to the bathroom during church so that he can do his self-stimulating and get it out of his system and then come back. At first I went with him until I figured out that he could get back on his own. A couple of times I had to intervene and tell him it was time to come back or "No, you can't use the elevator anymore. You don't have cause to use it. It's not your stimming haven." To which Booga would answer and tell me that he was "not stimming mom!"
Another thing we found was that occasionally Booga does some inappropriate things in church like, oh say, crossing himself or using lines from movies during church or telling people about movies he's seen, like they care.
The "telling people about movies he's seen" thing is something people generally blow off. The crossing thing on the other hand, well….
Booga likes to watch "The Rosary" on the Catholic channel ETWN. And that's fine I guess. It is a pretty poem. However, I have to repeatedly remind him that we don't cross ourselves (He's seen it on television) and we're Lutheran. I had to do it yesterday when we were done taking communion. Then I sat down next to him in the pew and drew his face close and told him not to do it again and then I kissed him on the cheek.
Terms in church sometimes perplex Booga.
The concept of sin is something that children with special needs sometimes have a hard time actually understanding and because our beliefs require that you examine yourself before you take communion I had to think of a way for Booga to do that.
I found that he understood it once I explained it in "Booga Speak" (which is the way he puts things when he talks to you).
I told him that sin is "Being naughty to God."
And he understood what being naughty was, so he understood what being naughty to God was. So in self-examination, I asked him, "Booga? Are you sorry for being naughty to God?" And he says, "Yes."
I have to simplify some prayers. I told him to pray to Jesus and thank him for dying for him on the cross and it goes like this, "Thank you Jesus for dying for my sins-Amen".
That's it.
At the dinner table, we pray "Come Lord Jesus be our guest, let this food to us be blessed- Amen."
It's simple. He remembers it.
I wish sometimes that I could simplify life for my other children.
Booga has over time, learned to deal with some real disappointment and he's also had to learn something about change; which is a real challenge for someone who is autistic and doesn't like change.
This doesn't mean he doesn't have hissy-fits anymore. But we've learned to present disappointment, walk away and just let him explode sometimes. This is an ongoing project as far as Booga goes. How do you disappoint and not have to deal with a melt down?
Sometimes we have to reiterate that something is not going to happen or we have to repeat that something is going to change or when the change comes you have to deal with the inability to process the change. It's not comfortable and I doubt it will ever be comfortable. But the reality is this; there are sometimes things you cannot do anything about. In these circumstances it's almost easier for us to present the situation to Booga and let him freak out about it.
Sometimes it easier to present change or disappointment to Booga than it is to present something disappointing to our so called "normal" children.
Because we expect Booga to melt down and we expect our other kids to be adults.
It's true.
There is some kind of wild questioning that goes on when your average child gets angry and acts out. You do this, "Whoa, what's that about?" Which seems unfair to your average children, because really, why should they have to be any more adult about something than a sibling who is not that much younger than they are?
You almost expect them to be okay with it and work with you because you have this ginormous task with the other child. They have this sibling who is different and has some real special needs and needs more attention than they do.
In these instances you do have to be understanding and patient with them and you also have to be really careful that you are not expecting them to put up with something that you yourself would not put up with.
And disappointment and change is sometimes not about us- but about the facts of existence that compels us to have to disappoint them. And sometimes life makes things we would like to do-inconvenient.
We're not trying to punish them in any way when this happens; it's just reality.
Sometimes things don't work out the way we would like them to work out.
Sometimes we don't have the time we wish we had.
Sometimes things come up that we aren't expecting and we are disappointed in not being able to achieve something we had been looking forward to, however that is life; pure and simple.
Life sometimes is inconvenient.
And it's something that is uncomfortable for us too.
Doesn't mean we don't love you, it's just life.
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