The only one constant I can see is that at the end of the day he has his beloved music therapy appointment. No matter how bad a day it has been, nothing makes that Kiddo happier than going to jam with Mr. "J". All worries at left at the doorstep. He is truly in his happy place. That Kiddo of mine sings his lungs out like a drunk after last call on a karaoke night. It's pretty delightful to listen to him express himself.
But the concept of time and waiting, this is not his strong suit. To quote my boy, "Waiting is hard to wait." I don't blame ya Kiddo. Waiting is hard to wait. I love this quote so much I might needlepoint it. Pffft. Who am I kidding? I can't needlepoint. Maybe I'll meme it instead.
And because of this, his thinking is as followed. (Or so I imagine.) "I do not like having to wait till 4 PM for my music time. Ergo, I will trying to rush through the day to get to the thing I want and woe to anyone that tries to slow me and time down. If I am miserable having to wait, I will make sure everyone joins me in that feeling." Give or take. It's subject to interpretation and my interpretation is if he ain't happy, ain't nobody gonna be happy.
This is coupled with autism, anxiety, and OCD with checking off all the things on the schedule, Holy crap, what a clusterfuck. In a perfect world, he would go to school, high five teacher, yell "Peace Out Bitches!" and hop right back on the bus to take him home so I could drive him to music. But that's not how these things work. I can pull a lot of accommodations out of my ass, bending the rules of time and space isn't one of them. He has to learn to wait but he also has a long history of melting down on Wednesdays. It's just not worth it anymore. It's not fair to him, me, or anyone else's ear drums in a fifty feet radius of the Kiddo.
So what's a gal to do? Well right now we are going to try to disassociate the activity from the day. That means changing the time he goes to a random series of appointment days. Mr. "J" is being more than helpful and we're wiggling those things around so we can shake this pattern.
I'm also not telling him when these appointments will be scheduled. It's just gonna be BAM! Music time! Non scheduled events in an autism house. Goes against everything ever said to us to do but hey, I'm out of ideas here. I deleted all events from his calendar app on iPad and added another passcode to my phone so he can't break into mine to see what events are coming up.
I'm not sure if it's going to work. I mean, he has other weekly appointments that he doesn't obsess on as much. I guess the level of fixation shows the high value it has in his mind. I'm not sure. Sorry Magic Speech Therapist who graduated from Hogwarts. Mr. "J" never made the Kiddo try to eat oatmeal like you did. I think that lost you a star on your review. ;-)
It's easy enough to switch an appointment but there are other things that just can't be switched that he's always going to obsess on. Just last Friday was my husband's birthday. It was "SCHOOL! DADDY! CAKE!" all day till we got that cake. What am I suppose to do? Tell my husband or myself or a national holiday like Christmas "Sorry, it's canceled. Not this year. We'll let you know when you can come round." I guess there will just be certain days and times we can't move and we'll just have to deal with it. Luckily for all of us it seems like he's in a much better place for school when his teacher gets that.
He seemed rather delighted and surprised when I sprung the appointment on him yesterday after school. This is where it gets tricky though. Does he fully understand that was this week's appointment? That this wasn't an extra he was getting. (As the kids say, my Kiddo is Extra AF!) Will he now think Monday is the now the new day? Will he completely lose his shit come Wednesday anyway? There's just no way to fully know until it happens.
Stay tuned to find out!
I made myself a social story.
And here I thought we were the only ones with a WTF Wednesday! Sounds like you may be on the right track with the music! And music is portable! You can play these songs anywhere! Print out lyrics etc!
ReplyDeleteWe have been suffering from WTF Wednesday for about 15 years, only things I can guess are: something terrible happened on a Wednesday, it's a transition from the beginning of the week to the end. Whatever movies are in her head that month, she will script the most exciting scary emotional part- dialog, music and sound effects all at the same time, all at the top of her lungs.
Your attitude towards life makes me happy.
ReplyDeleteI will be waiting with baited breath on how this goes down. My kids run on the clock and the calendar and if we changed something, we'd be living through death by a thousand questions. But we don't often have a sh*t day before we get to the events, because every day is a sh*t day! (Or so it seems sometimes.)
ReplyDeleteYou need to start a line of Tshirts, starting with "Waiting is hard to wait" and "I'm Extra AF!" I'll have one of each, thanks. Size 12.
At the school I used to work at the kids called it "Wild and Out Wednesdays" because our schedule was slightly different and everyone was on edge and irritable because the predictability was gone. There must be something about that day!
ReplyDelete