Rolfing is a massage technique that involves putting lots of
pressure on a tight nerve/muscle in order to release it. It’s a good metaphor
for a strategy I’d like to recommend, particularly to those parents (and I know
you’re out there, ‘cause I married one) who spend a fair bit of time trying to
make sure that things remain the same in your kid’s life. I totally understand
the temptation to do this, but I have to confess that when I hear stories from
parents of young kids about how their child had a meltdown because the school
bus was late, or they drove a different route to the mall, or those media
stories about a kid who will only eat [insert name of some product that has
been discontinued], I sigh a little. To be fair, I sigh a little at the way I
often did this when Devon was small: I still remember when we discovered that
Loblaws was no longer producing their frozen jumbalaya, which Devon adored, and
my husband actually got them to give him the recipe for cooking it himself so
we could keep him stocked up (all these years later he can take or leave
jumbalaya, but we still make it occasionally for old times’ sake). And just to
be clear, I’m not suggesting that you disrupt routines half an hour before
everyone’s heading out the door for the day, or at a time where everyone’s
stress if a little higher because of travel or holidays or whatever. Here’s
what I’m advocating for: (1) regularly
change up routines and (2) give your kid choices and let them deal with the
consequences of those choices.
For number 1, I like to use the “same but different”
approach, like going to a different grocery store or library, some place that
is almost but not quite the same as the favoured destination. Or getting pizza
from a place that’s not the usual one. Buying groceries at a different store
(within the usual chain, or at a different one). Eating at a different location
with the same fast food menu. Travelling a regular route with slight variations
each time. Seeing a movie at a different
cinema. The changes can be tiny, but in my experience they’re cumulative. Like
any new thing, don’t try this at a time when you (or they) are particularly
stressed. In my experience, doing this enough leads to a tipping point where
you can do such wondrous things as eating at a restaurant that is not a chain.
For number 2, the possibilities are endless. Red shirt or
blue shirt? Orange juice or apple juice? Jam or peanut butter? Bath at 8 pm or
8:30 pm? Watch two shows and then the TV’s off, or watch one show then have a
break and watch another show? See the movie at 2:00 or 3:30? At this cinema or
that other one? Start with easy win-win choices with limited possibilities
(e.g. “no juice” is not an option)- the idea is to encourage a choice at
all. When you’re both comfortable with
that, you can work on choices with actual consequences. My personal favourite
is pointing out that when all of [insert name of most favoured food] is gone,
there won’t be another one until whenever you say so. For example, my guy loves
those BBQ chickens from the grocery store, and would I suspect eat the whole
thing in 2 days if we let him. I used to try to rein him in but then I stopped
once I made it clear that another chicken would not be forthcoming until the
next week. This led to numerous occasions where I observed him take the chicken
out of the fridge, pause, think, and put it back again: a sight that brought
genuine joy because it showed me that he was thinking of the consequences and
making a conscious choice. Does he still complain? You bet he does, but nothing
ensures that the juice will be kept in the fridge like a morning with no cold
juice to drink. It’s the same strategy I describe in the [article about fast
food choices]. Obviously there are limits around safety: I wouldn’t let him go
out on a winter’s day with just a tshirt, for example, or leave the house without
his wallet and cell phone because those consequences are a bit too high, but if
he wants to blow all his money on a completely unnecessary item and be broke
for a week, or run his cell phone battery dry at home because he can’t be
bothered to plug it in, or pay a fine because he wasn’t paying enough attention
to when his library books were due back, I’m good with that. Yes, I may hear
complaining about whatever the instance was, for much much longer than I really
care to hear about it, but that’s a small price to pay.
I really believe this works: there are times when I turn
to my husband in utter astonishment as
our guy sails through an event that would once have resulted in a week’s worth
of argument and unhappiness (I’m talking about something like the ice cream
machine not working at a Mcdonalds here, not a major life crisis). He still
complains about it (sometimes so much that I have to draw an arbitrary “you can
complain about that X more times” and then count down the times) but not nearly
as much as he would if I was still investing extra time in making sure
everything in his life went smoothly. (I still find it funny that he will
complain about the non-occurrence of something he didn’t particularly want to
happen in the first place!)
I used to be wildly stressed at unexpected changes (stressed
on his behalf and in anticipation of his reaction, but frankly I’m not keen on
them either) but I’m much more confident
in his ability to handle them now. I try not to be unfair: if there’s a known
change, I write it out and let him read it (harder to argue with a piece of
paper, and easier for me to redirect the endless pressure for clarification to
the written word), but none of this happened by accident: invented changes are
much easier to control than unexpected ones.
I drew the inspiration for some of this from a speaker at a
long-ago Geneva Centre conference, an articulate young British woman on the
spectrum, who said something like “we
have to hear ‘no’, we have to hear ‘it’s not your turn’, so that we know we can
live through those experiences and come out the other side unscathed. At 25 my
guy still continues to astonish me with new interests and ability to cope with
change and new experiences, and I hope I don’t sound too immodest when I take
just a wee bit of credit for that.
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