Autism Therapy: plastic

            You can tell it’s the beginning of March.  The kids are driving me and each other crazy.  Last weekend, I took them to the park in their snow boots just to get out of the house for a couple hours.  Much of our outing included sloshing around in muddy puddles and sliding around on the ice, but it was good to get out and get some fresh air.  Things are getting very stale indoors.

            Oh, that Thomas!  What he won’t do to push his sister’s buttons!  And of course, she lets him.  The two of them are driving me to hysterics.  Mealtime is a joke.  They sit down, side-by-side (big mistake) and bug the hell out of each other for fifteen minutes or so.  Then they move on to bugging the hell out of each other in another room of the house where I can’t necessarily tell if someone is really hurt or just screaming for fun.  Bathing time is like pulling teeth.  I would let Thomas go without a shower once in a while, but he really does stink a little after a long day of being over-stimulated.  His hair gets to smelling a little funky.  Unfortunately, Thomas rather likes the fragrance of his natural musk.

            One good thing that I thought of tonight is that Thomas really doesn’t mind having his hair cut anymore.  I know that when I started writing this blog – but even more recently than that – we would have to prepare Thomas as nicely as possible and then rigorously psych ourselves up for the battle.  He just stood on his little stepstool tonight and let me cut the hair, no problem.  I mentioned it to Thomas, asking him if he could remember when he cried the whole time we cut his hair.  He said that he remembered it and then snatched the trimmers out of my hands, declaring that it was “his turn.”  We let him take “turns” with us while we cut his hair.  He mostly just turns the clippers off and on a few times and then plays with this lever that I don’t know the purpose of.  We got it done in ten minutes tonight with no trouble.  Because of that and so many other things, it’s become so obvious that he’s come a long way.

            We’ve been taking Thomas along to Hayley’s dance class for the last few weeks.  It went well at first, but now Thomas is getting very over-stimulated there with the other kids.  The over-stimulation lasts long after dance class is done and well into the evening, usually until the Clonidine kicks in.  Jonathan was home tonight before we had to leave, but Thomas loves going along now so we all went.  It’s like a social event for him, even though he mostly irritates the other kids.  He tries to be good, but just like at home, he does things intentionally to frustrate others because he likes the reactions he gets, whether favorable or unfavorable.  One of the kids, a girl who is about five or six and I’ll call her Laura, is usually there with her mom, waiting for her little sister to finish class.  Today she was there with her grandparents because her mom was working.  Laura’s mom pays very little attention to her while we’re all waiting and I think I know where she gets it.  Laura’s grandparents were equally oblivious as Laura repeatedly threw this hard, solid plastic bear figurine at the brick wall of the room where we wait.  She was pretending that it was a super ball, but the thing kept hitting the wall really hard and since it was a bear and not a ball, it would come off the wall at really crazy angles.  Nobody knew if they were in the line of fire until it was too late.  Of course, Thomas loved this.  He thought it was hilarious, but he was getting way too excited.  We don’t let Thomas throw toys at home, which is probably one of the reasons he really got into it.  I was very surprised, too, that Laura’s grandparents didn’t tell her to stop throwing the thing.  It’s that and many other things that happen in the dance class waiting room that just make Thomas blow his top completely.  I want to stop taking him now, but he really loves going.  Gee, I remember when dance class was a time when I got to read a magazine for an hour.

            Yesterday, Thomas really freaked us out.  I was in the bathroom with him, drying him off after his shower and I was telling him that he needed a haircut.  I asked if maybe he wanted to try going the place where Hayley gets her hair cut, where he can sit in a little car while a lady cuts his hair.  He asked me what kind of cars they have, and I knew he meant what color cars do they have.  I said, “I think they have a red one.”  In my head, I was thinking that they might have a yellow one too, but I didn’t want to say that in case I was wrong.  I didn’t say any of that out loud, but Thomas then said, “I want to sit in the yellow one.”  I cocked an eyebrow at him and asked, “How did you know about the yellow car?”  Thomas said, “I heard you say it in here,” and he touched my forehead (cue “Twilight Zone” music now).  I asked him for further explanation and said, “What can you hear in my head now?”  He touched his forehead to mine and I was thinking this question:  “Do they have a yellow car?”  I was thinking it over and over and Thomas looked at me after a few seconds and said, “Oh!  Do they have a yellow car?”  Now I know that staying on the subject of yellow cars could have been leading in that we were just talking about that, but it was still very strange.

            I know that most of you have come to know me as a sane woman, usually quite skeptical about paranormal phenomenon, even though I’ve never discussed it.  But of course, if I had, everyone would know that I am a skeptic.  I still am, after last night’s occurrence.  The thing that weirded me out the most was when Thomas pointed to my head and told me that he could hear my thoughts.  It happened again today, twice.  He was looking for a particular ball and asked me where it was.  I didn’t know it was in his room, but I asked him if he could hear inside my head again, where I was chanting, “in your room, in your room, etc.”  He said, “Oh!  It’s in my room?”  He says that “Oh!” like he’s just come up with an answer that was on the tip of his tongue.  I won’t even count the ball-looking thing though because ninety percent of the time, if Thomas is looking for a toy, it’s in the abyss of his room.  Later, he asked if he could play with Play-Doh and we were getting ready to go somewhere so I was going to say “No,” but I asked him to listen to my head.  He did, and then he got a little frustrated and said a few made-up words with “no” in there a couple times.  He immediately dropped it and didn’t put up a fight about the Play-Doh, which is strange for him.  He almost always protests when he doesn’t get his way.  At least he listens to the words in my head, if not the ones on my lips.