Overruled Thursday

Our autism journey

I tell Owen directions. He’s a kid, he chooses when to follow them, and I choose to keep telling him the directions over and over again. Add in autism and I have to decide when it’s Owen being five and when it’s him not understanding something. I said to Owen that he needed to sit on the couch. What he wanted to do was jump on my bed. He knows how to go sit on the couch when I tell him, he does it about half the time, but when he has something else in mind it gets very difficult for him to process my directions. Now this is where the fine line of grey becomes hard to even figure out. I try to be the stern mom, Owen if you don’t go sit on the couch I will take your tablet away. So the tablet is taken away this morning and the meltdown begins. The difference between a meltdown and tantrum are sometimes hard to distinguish, but in this case handing Owen his tablet back, after sitting with him on the couch, did not stop his emotions. In a tantrum situation it would have stopped him from screaming. Owen can’t always process what’s happening. In his mind he wanted his tablet while he was jumping on my bed. His order was to laugh at the video he was watching, move to the edge of the bed to “hide” from it, grabbing the pillow as his shield from the funny (or so he thought) moment that was happening, and then scooting his way back to the tablet to replay those exact 15 seconds over and over again. This makes up a lot of Owen’s learning process. The art of repeat, as I like to call it, helps him to understand things and be able to move forward. He will do this throughout the day, sometimes it’s with a video, or app, other times it can be with his food or a toy. He has to do things certain ways to learn. So this leads me back to, Owen sitting on the couch. Every day when I tell him we are getting ready for school, I tell him to sit on the couch. I make him take his clothes and then I come help him put his clothes on. It’s his “job” I tell him. Some days that goes easily, other days, like today it lead to a meltdown, but through all of this we are both growing and learning. Life is a journey. Not every moment is easy, but keep pushing through find your happiness, find your passion, and be the change. Growing Owen is what we do. Smiles to all and donut daze!