Chaos Takes the House

If you're parenting a child with Autism, there are certain things you must assume will always be the norm in your house.

1)      Chaos.

 Chaos takes the house.

There are times when you can't help wanting to bang your head against a wall or think to yourself, "You know, if only we would have a zombie invasion right now, it would make this whole episode in my life seem trivial."

My niece came to stay with us so the situation in her home could cool down enough for her to move back in. She came to our house from her father's home (her father incidentally, is undiagnosed Asperberger's, I am sure) with an untreated sinus infection, which I had to take her the clinic at the hospital for so she could get some medicine for it. Booga didn't understand why she was staying with us. He just knew that in the middle of putting dishes in the dish washer, he had to stop and go to the doctor with his cousin and mother and it made him really angry.

He sat impatiently in the doctor's office wanting to go home. He kept asking if we were going to go home or eat dinner in town…Or what? And then I had the audacity to go from the clinic to the Walgreen's and then to the grocery store and then back to Walgreen's to pick up her prescription.

By the time we actually got home it was nearly eight o'clock and I told him to finish his dishes and I would get dinner ready…And that made him angrier because he wanted to help make dinner- but he had to finish the dishes! On top of that, we have a very small kitchen and I was in the kitchen with him while he loaded the dishwasher; which in his mind was a violation of his space-to have me in there fixing dinner while he was completing his task of loading the dishwasher.

And this was not to be tolerated.

But, thankfully he kept a civil tongue and just stewed in his own inner dialogue which we were all privy to because all Booga's inner dialogue is constantly uttered by Booga who can't restrict the thoughts in his brain from dribbling out his mouth.

Then after dinner was over and everyone got settled Booga went up to his cousin and told her he was sorry for the way he acted.

He later asked if he could have a diet Mountain Dew that was in the door of the refrigerator and I said, "Yes, and you know why?"

"Hua?"

"Because you apologized to your cousin for the way you acted."

It looked like he understood that he had done something good because he smiled genuinely. He doesn't smile that smile for the camera, but he does when he is genuinely happy about something.

He asked me later, "Mom am I being naughty?"

"No. You apologized so it's okay now."

            

2)      Be aware, anything an autistic person says shouldn't and can't be used against them.

Don't take the Autistic man's verbal stims seriously…Or there is no crying in Autism. (And yet there is…)

My husband and I went to Florida to pick up a car. It took 4 days and many hours bouncing around in a truck which was sorely in need of some suspension work.

So we left Booga with my aunt. My aunt is a tough, cigarette smoking, rum drinking, cat loving, baseball/softball playing, sports loving aunt.

And Booga made her cry.

Unfortunately, my aunt doesn't understand that Booga has no restrictions on his inner dialogue.

He spouts off whatever is going through his head and apparently he said some not nice things about my Aunt while he was going about doing his chores and stimming, drawing pictures and typing. He does the same thing to me sometimes but I blow it off because he doesn't mean to offend you, he just can't filter his thoughts.

She called me because he told her that he had a stomach ache and that he was sick. He ran into the bathroom shortly afterward and immediately felt well and she asked if he should go to the doctor.

"No, that's just his colitis." I told her. "He does that."

"He's being really mean to me." She started to cry.

"In what way?" I feared he'd done something uncharacteristic to him like striking her.

"Well he's saying that he wants me to leave and that he needs me to go and …"

"It doesn't mean anything."

"It doesn't."

"Nope, it's his inner dialogue coming to the surface."

"Oh."

"It's the thoughts you and I have everyday. Those things we don't say but creep through our minds, those flotsam and jetsam of our everyday existence. Don't cry about it."

She kept crying.

"Don't cry about it, there's nothing to cry about. This is not about you."

"It's not?"

"No. Booga does this; it's not really directed towards you or anyone else. It's his frustration with us being gone and having someone different staying at the house. It's just that he verbalizes it."

"Oh, okay…."

"Are you going to be alright?"

"Yes."

"Okay, don't take it seriously okay?"

"Okay." Sniff.

Nothing Booga says when you aren't speaking directly to him can be construed as offensive because of his inability to keep his thoughts to himself. When dealing with him, you have to learn to tune him out because most of what he says isn't about you entirely. If I took offense at everything he said, I wouldn't be able to pee I would be crying so much. I know he doesn't mean it.

You cannot take it personally.

That talent for tuning him out is not necessarily a good thing though. For instance, my girlfriend and I were at the Lincoln Memorial, in a crowd of people and I was standing there reading and she said something to me, and I ignored her, she said it again, and I still ignored her. Then after I got done reading I walked over like nothing had happened because I thought nothing had happened. She said that I should go have my hearing checked.

But I am able to hear things clear crossed the room and I am able to hear the bus coming down the road before it gets to our house.

The reason I couldn't hear her in a crowded room was that I was tuning everyone out so I could concentrate and it's something I learned by being Boog's mom.

Yeah. So you have learned talents as a parent of an autistic child and the ability to withstand chaos.

This does not mean however, that you have to like the chaos.

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