Managing Expectations

Dear Red Bird

Yesterday the boy and I had a little disagreement. It was more me than him, poor lad, he really didn't see it coming! I find myself getting frustrated every now and then with his literal thinking and the barrier it puts between him and casual conversation, focusing on the big picture when doing school work and managing his expectation when we head out to new experiences. Yesterday I kind of snapped at the effort of having to re-explain myself a thousand times because the language I used wasn't exactly right. I found myself begging him to just stop already. Quit it, it doesn't matter which word I use, you know what I mean. Of course he didn't and never will. He can't just stop, his brain doesn't function that way. Having a child on the autism spectrum in a whole mighty lesson in patience and backing up when you loose your cool. It doesn't take more than the confused look on his face to snap me back to reality and apologies. Take a deep breath and try again, hopefully with the right combination of words this time.
His literal perception of the world can interfere when heading out for dinner or at special events, like Christmas and Birthdays. His autism prevents him from using past experiences to know what to expect and each new outing really is a new outing. Anxiety then kicks in as it would for any of us when faced with an unknown where there is potential for performance failure. A coping mechanism is to research the event and spend weeks asking questions about what's going to happen, where we are going, who's going to be there, what's it like, how many people, will he have to do this, will he have to do that, will other people talk to him, what should he say, what if he says the wrong thing, what if he sits at the wrong spot. If he's really excited about it, like a birthday or Christmas, he will have planned it all out in his mind from how he's going to walk into the room to how he's going to unwrap his gifts, from the order in who they were gifted from, to the time at which each gift will be opened. This sadly often leads to special events taking a turn for the worst as life is unpredictable and going off the timetable is too stress inducing for him to be able to handle.
I understand why he likes to spend time alone in his room, there are no unknowns, he has his routine. A particular time of day to watch his You Tube updates, a time to write programs, a time to listen to his podcasts, a time to eat apples (we spend more money on apples each week than anything else! I'm just glad it's not junk) But life is more than just his bedroom so we will continue to have our little disagreements as I say things the wrong way and interfere with his schedule and force him out into the big wide world. I just wish he wouldn't look at me with that heart melting face of his. Big deep breath, Sparrow, big deep breath.