Sharon, my oldest was 3 I failed her miserably. I did not know at the time that she was autistic. It would have been even been a year or so before I truly understood the impact of it. She was quite tall. She still is at age 12. We had her in a booster seat at the table. One day I decided to modify it. The legs come down and it then sat lower, allowing the bigger child to sit comfortably. I did this in the middle of the day. When it came dinner time I was exhausted already. You can imagine in my case. I have an autistic child. My first child, have no idea that is the case. All I know is she is terrible at following instructions. She rarely listens to me. I know she is delayed at this point but that is about it. I remember this day vividly because I got extremely upset. I ask her to get in her seat. She just gets in front of the seat, where it normally is and stares. I instruct her again, get in your seat. She doesn’t do it. Here is the thing. I moved the seat down probably 3 inches. It was enough of a change for Sharon to think it wasn’t her seat. The seat that she was looking at was in the spot she normally sits at but that wasn’t her seat. I specifically told her to get in her seat. She couldn’t communicate this to me because she had no language at all. Probably maybe a 3 word sentence at this point.
I was upset because this child was not doing what she was told. She was shaking her head at me. She was being stubborn from all I gathered. I was extremely frustrated. We were trying to get her in that seat for 20 minutes. She knew how to get in the seat. I wasn’t going to lift her up there. I was screaming mad. I slammed one of the other chairs down on the kitchen floor. Then my neighbor came and yelled at me. Yelled at me for making such a racket. I lived in an upstairs apartment. I snapped out of my anger and realized I failed. I failed her. I apologized to the neighbor and to my daughter. I helped Sharon into her chair. As soon as she was in it she realized it was her chair. She smiled and was not confused anymore. I understood what had happened. I didn’t completely get it but that failure caused many victories. I learned my lesson. Any time we got something new we made sure we eased Sharon into it. We put her new car seat in beside the one she was using and let her try it out before we just said here we are. Daddy got new glasses? We would save the old ones and switch back and forth and say see same Daddy.
Here we are in a quarantine. We absolutely did not have time to ease our children into this change. You can imagine if changing a chair from 3inches would cause such a fuss what would this do? Of course, Sharon has adapted quite a bit. Let’s be honest here though, this has thrown everybody off. All the little things that we take for granted that had to be changed, they feel it. Every single inch. They don’t completely understand the concept of this virus. My children are very literal and concrete thinkers. All they understand and very focused on is their normal is gone. They feel very unsafe. That has nothing to do with the virus at all. This causes a lot of communication of behaviors. A lot of sensory seeking behavior. Things I haven’t seen in years. Their world has changed. Therefore, they have to make their sensory system, bodies, and minds adjust to the new reality. Is this insanely frustrating? Oh extremely. I sometimes get upset. I’m human and am not perfect. It is important to understand this. We are going to make mistakes. We are not going to have all the answers. In this time most likely their will be days where you felt like the worst parent in the world. You are not. They are learning more now then they ever did right now. Think about all the changes they have to process all at once? This is huge. Even if they do not do any school work the amount of change process and coping skills they learning. The impact that will make in the future for another life event. They might actually be prepared. This is rough and totally unexpected. You might think over and over fail, big fat fail when they can’t get something done today. However, in the near future something they normally really struggle with will be gone. It will be nothing to them. This trench walk will give them victory. Climbing a huge mountain will always give you the greatest view. You can plant your flag on that.
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