Thanksgiving

For last year’s pre-Thanksgiving blog post [which can be accessed by clicking here], I described all the things regarding Alex that made us thankful. This year I’d like to express gratitude for all the annoying phases he eventually outgrew or just got tired of doing.

I’m grateful that Alex no longer needs to check the microwave clock before he uses the bathroom to see what time his toileting begins and ends. Ed is especially pleased he outgrew this phase because Alex often stopped the microwave mid-cycle to check the “official” time when Ed was using it to cook. I know this because I frequently heard Alex’s rapid button pressing followed by Ed’s muttered cursing.

I’m relieved that Alex doesn’t slam doors anymore as he’s waiting for his bath water to run. When he was younger, he would run from door to door, slamming them closed in a pre-bath time ritual. This nightly routine made me extremely nervous, not only from having to listen the banging sound of doors closing abruptly, but also from the worry that Alex might catch his fingers in the doors as he slammed them shut. Thankfully, no fingers were lost before he got bored with this evening activity.

I’m pleased that Alex no longer objects to our using contractions when we speak. One summer he became irritated any time we would say contractions, such as don’t or can’t, and insisted that we use the more formal do not or cannot. I have no idea why he thought he was the grammar police that summer, but we were happy when he got past that stage.

I’m glad that Alex doesn’t insist that people keep their legs uncrossed when they’re seated. For some reason, when he was younger, he developed an aversion to people crossing their legs when they were sitting, and he would complain, “No crossing legs!” If we ignored his orders, he would come over to us and pull on our legs to uncross them. We found that it was easier at the time to sit with our feet flat on the floor, but I must confess that sometimes I crossed my legs just to annoy him. Now he could care less how people sit; in fact, he usually sits cross-legged himself.

I’m thankful that Alex stopped imitating football every time he heard the word or saw it on tv. He went through a phase where he would pick up things and throw them like a football and/or run and dive as though he were tackling an opponent all the while yelling, “FOOTBALL!!” Ed and I became very good at quickly changing the channel anytime a football game or commercial came on the air, and we hid the sports pages during football season. Although children with autism are described as not engaging in imitation or imaginative play, Alex apparently thought he was Chicago Bear Brian Urlacher and was determined to act out this part. If his sudden running, throwing, and tackling imaginary opponents hadn’t startled us, we might have found Alex’s behavior funny. We were just glad that it only lasted one football season.

I’m happy that we don’t have to change light bulbs as often as we did when Alex was younger. When television commercials would abruptly change from one to another, Alex would yell, “SWITCHOVER!” and for some inexplicable reason, tip over lamps, often breaking the light bulbs in the process. Besides several light bulbs, he also managed to break a few lampshades and a couple of lamps. That was a somewhat expensive phase, so we were especially pleased when he got over that destructive one.

I’m glad that Alex no longer enjoys turning up the volume of televisions, radios, and CD players to full blast. At one point, he found this hysterically funny, probably because it annoyed Ed and me so much. We would hide the remote controls, and I even taped shut the door that covered the manual volume controls on our televisions so that he couldn’t blast us with the sound. Similarly, he enjoyed a brief stage in which he would press the button repeatedly to find the handset for our cordless phone, producing a loud beeping sound that amused him terribly. Fortunately, the novelty of irking us with the loud sounds wore off quickly.

People say, “Someday we’ll look back on this and laugh,” and thinking about some of these things Alex used to do now strikes me as kind of funny. However, I am glad that he no longer engages in any of these irksome activities. Also, as I think about his current behaviors that are annoying, I realize that eventually these, like the previous ones, will eventually fade. And for that, we will truly be thankful.

“The Lord is my strength and shield. I trust Him with all my heart. He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy. I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.” Psalm 28:7

Gleaning

One of my favorite things to watch on television is old re-runs of Little House on the Prairie on the Hallmark Channel. The other day, I saw an episode from the first season of the series that I had seen several times before. However, as I watched it, I found myself moved more deeply than I had been in prior viewings. In this episode, Pa Ingalls had planted a successful wheat crop that was about to be harvested. Pleased with the fruits of his efforts, he has his daughters calculate how much money the wheat will bring when taken to market. Then, they begin making a list of the things they will buy with the money earned from the wheat. In a terrible twist of fate, that night a hailstorm comes and ruins the crops along with the hopes the Ingalls family had of selling the wheat so that they can buy necessities. Disappointed but not defeated, Pa must leave town and go in search of a job to earn money. Staying behind with her three young daughters, Ma decides to rally her women neighbors to glean the grain from the damaged stalks by hand, salvaging some good from the devastation the hail brought. By pulling together, the family did not allow the destruction of the crop to destroy them.

Life with autism is like that. As parents, we sow seeds through various therapies and interventions, hoping that our children will flourish and grow. Sometimes, we have such high hopes for a great harvest and even start planning what we will do when the harvest finally arrives. Other times, we face droughts where nothing seems to be growing, or we cope with infestation by grasshoppers, such as allergies or illness, that attack. Perhaps most frustrating, however, are the sudden hailstorms, those unexplainable setbacks, that appear to destroy all the progress achieved. Last year, Ed and I were figuratively standing in the middle of our fields, thankful for the abundance we had witnessed with Alex’s progress. His behavior had improved significantly; to the point we could take him to restaurants, concerts, and stores confidently, knowing that he would act appropriately. Moreover, his cooperative attitude made teaching him new skills and working on his weaknesses, namely his speech and social skills, easier. We knew this was an opportunity, and we made the most of the situation.

In the late spring, a hailstorm in the form of allergic shutdown threatened to destroy all we’d worked hard to reap in that Alex became less cooperative, less talkative, and less interactive. Despite our best efforts to reclaim what could be lost, we have had to work at trying to get Alex back to where he was previously. Essentially, we have gone back to the fields to glean what we can recover so that everything the three of us have worked diligently to achieve will not be lost. Stepping around Alex’s anxiety and obsessions, we have tried to engage him in activities that interest him and encourage him to develop and improve while trying to avoid upsetting him. At times he reminds us of the old joke: "What happens when you cross a gorilla with a parrot? I don’t know, but when he talks, you’d better listen!" While we’re glad that he’s talking again after some self-imposed silence a few months ago, we hope he starts talking more about things he likes than things he doesn’t. In the meantime, we keep picking through the battered crops, gleaning the good that we can find along the way and refusing to give up on the hope for a good harvest eventually.

"And she said, ‘Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.’ So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house." Ruth 2:7

Monitoring Log

I’m not sure if it’s the teacher or the list maker in me, but I’m constantly making mental notes about changes in Alex and the progress he makes. Often, at the end of the day after Alex has gone to bed, Ed and I will compare notes about what we’ve observed in Alex’s behavior, and we nearly always come to the same conclusions in our interpretations. The past few days we’ve noticed that he has reverted to some old standbys and come up with some new material for us to monitor.

For months, he’s been telling us that he never wants to use his typewriter again, even though he hasn’t used it for several years. The typewriter is a frequent topic of his meltdown ramblings as he repeats over and over that he used the typewriter in 2002 and 2003, but he retired it because it was boring, so he doesn’t want to use it ever again. As he rants about this during his anxiety attacks, we calmly reassure him that he never has to type again. Over the weekend, I heard a vaguely familiar clicking and clacking coming from the basement. As I came down the stairs, Ed was sitting in the basement family room and pointed to our spare room, where Alex was typing away happily! For someone who never wanted to use the typewriter again, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Maybe facing his demons will help him get over the obsession he’s been driving us crazy with for the past several months. Another old pastime reappeared this weekend, as well. I found a stack of catalogs and magazines strewn across the couch where Alex usually sits, and Ed told me that Alex had been enjoying reading and looking at the various periodicals that had arrived in the mail over the past week. While Alex used to like reading magazines and looking at catalogs, he hasn’t shown much interest in them for quite a while. Similarly, he also started writing lists in his notebooks again, something he hasn’t done in months. After deciphering his barely legible handwriting, we discerned that he’s been recording oil prices over the years, an interest he had a couple of years ago. We always find it intriguing whenever he reverts to earlier interests that we thought he had abandoned. So long as he finds these new/old activities enjoyable, we’re pleased to see him entertaining himself.

Just to keep us on our toes, however, he came up with some new things this week, as well. The other evening during one of his verbal tirades, he began talking about not liking “dee-does.” We have no clue whatsoever as to what he means by “dee-does,” but apparently, they really make him mad. In trying to discover what they were and why he didn’t like them, I asked him some questions. All he would volunteer about them was that we had them at the old house. Since we moved from there more than nine years ago, I have no memory of “dee-does,” but Alex remembers them unfondly enough for all of us. While I’d like to get to the bottom of that mystery, I’d rather that he just forget them since they seem to upset him so much. Another new trend this week was that yesterday when Alex woke up, he informed Ed that he was sick. This occurrence was odd for two reasons. First, Alex is blessed with good health and rarely sick. Moreover, he rarely voices any physical complaints; he usually only complains about stupid obsessions, like typewriters. After Ed ran through the gamut of typical symptoms (headache, sore throat, tummy ache, etc.), none of which Alex seemed to have, he insisted that he had a fever of 130 degrees. From reading all of his medical books, I’m sure that Alex knows that a body temperature of 130 degrees is impossible, but I guess he thought that sounded dramatic. In fact, he had no fever at all, and once he was reassured that he was fine, he happily bounced down the stairs. We’re hoping hypochondria isn’t something Alex plans to add to his gamut of behaviors. Of course, as Ed reassured me the other day, the good thing about Alex and his phases is that they only last a little while. On the other hand, as I reminded Ed, every phase always seems to be replaced by another equally perplexing one. At least life around here is never dull.

“How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. “ James 4:14

Stages

All kids go through stages, and Alex is no exception. Alex’s stages, however, have unique twists to them because they often have ties to his sensory or OCD issues. Others are related to his desire for control. When he was little, he created routines, as many children with autism do. For example, at bedtime, he insisted on having four cups, each a different color (red, yellow, green, and blue) and each with a different drink: water, juice, milk (before we knew he had sensitivities to casein, a milk protein), and Sprite. He would line up the cups in his order, take a sip of each, and then he was ready for bed. After watching television shows, he intently watched the credits and insisted on saying, “Bye bye” as each name appeared on the screen. More recently, when words appeared on the tv screen, he analyzed whether any anagrams existed for these words. If not, he would say, “NO WORDS,” a phrase he learned from an anagrams game on his handheld electronic dictionary. Since time is important to Alex, he had a routine several months ago where he had to check our microwave clock before going to the bathroom. No other clock would do; this meant that he would often turn off the cooking cycle so that he could check the “official” time, which was annoying. These various routines gave him a sense of order, though.

At times Alex develops obsessions that make him a tyrant about others’ behavior. One summer, he decided that no one could use contractions; for example, if we dared say “don’t” or “can’t,” he immediately reminded us that we were to use “do not” or “cannot.” I’m not sure why this formality arose, but we were glad when it disappeared. Another summer, he did not want people to cross their legs for some reason. He would try to uncross our legs. Rather than battle with him, we attempted to remember not to cross our legs. If we forgot, however, he tapped our knees to remind us of our infraction. He also went through a phase where high gas prices really upset him, so if we drove past a gas station, he would let his displeasure be known from the back seat by whining, sometimes by throwing things, and when very agitated, slugging one of us in the front seat. We learned every route around town that would avoid gas stations so as not to invoke the wrath of our backseat driver. For someone who likes letters and numbers, Alex surprisingly will not eat with us or take vitamins if one of us is wearing clothing with words, numbers, or logos. He calls them “bad imagine clothes,” and we have learned the proper dress code if we want him to take vitamins or eat with us. It’s easier than debating him.

Other stages Alex has gone through have been directly related to his sensory issues. When he was little, he would rub his clothing tags as he sucked his thumb. He would also chew on his shirt collars, especially when new teeth, baby and permanent, were coming in. This was a nuisance because he needed clean shirts several times a day, and the chewing ruined several of his shirts. His current habit of twirling his hair is much easier to handle. A recent phase that seems to be fading is his need to imitate people’s voices, especially children. He then developed an elaborate routine where he would talk about dates and then try to recreate the voice he thought he had at that time, for instance, saying 1997 in the higher-pitched, or as he called it, “little voice” of when he was five years old. As that stage has gradually gone away, he developed the need to tear up little pieces of toilet paper when he is using the bathroom. I try to remind myself that it took him years to toilet independently, and I’m pleased that he can do so. Nonetheless, I will be glad when the little tp pieces stop getting tracked through the house, making it look like a hamster cage and requiring frequent vacuuming. Considering how well-behaved Alex usually is, these are just minor inconveniences. As I always half-jokingly say, every phase will eventually disappear—only to be replaced by another equally annoying one.

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:2