Something that we deal with often with Elijah is that he becomes fixated on one idea at a time, and it can be very difficult to shift his focus on to anything else, including daily tasks that need to be done. Whatever the idea is, it is going to happen. He is going to make sure of that. And, if, it doesn't.... well, God help us all! This is one of the reasons that the day to day can be so tough. He often comes up with these ideas while he is at school, then expects them to be carried out immediately, completely on his terms. Inflexibility is a huge issue with him. And anyone who regularly deals with a person who is often inflexible, for any reason, knows the exhaustion that comes along with that. So, anyway, I will be driving to pick him up from school, and in my mind, I am thinking of things that will need to be done that evening. After I get him, we need to pick up Owen, we need to head home and start practicing his spelling words, I need to make dinner, I need to make sure we do any homework he has, I need to spend some time playing with Owen, we need to make sure they both get baths, etc. But, once Elijah climbs into the car, I am usually faced with something not on that list. And, to him, whatever that is, is more important than any of those things I was just thinking about. Sometimes it’s something not all that difficult. Those are the good days. Sometimes it’s, “I want to stop and get food from Taco Bell today.” I usually don’t mind that. It’s right on the way, it’s cheap, and it means I don’t have to fight him over what he will eat for dinner. This doesn’t mean I always give in to that. There are days when I tell him we can’t do it that day, but if I tell him another day soon that we will he is mostly okay with that, unless he’s just having a really bad day, then everything is a meltdown. But often, the ideas he has don’t always have the easiest solution. Last Wednesday, he climbed into the car and said, “we are going to rearrange the living room furniture and also my room tonight.” I reminded him that it was a school night, and we had limited time and several things to do. He entire way to pick up Owen and home, he talked about it. He was announcing where we were going to put every piece of furniture. (Nevermind that it’s our house, not his, and I might want a say in where my living room furniture goes!) Any mention I made of, “we’ll have to see, Elijah, we might not have enough time tonight for all that,” was met with, “but we have to. I decided. This is what we are going to do.” When we arrived home, the asking began, “when are we moving he furniture?” Every time, my answer remained, “Elijah, I did not promise you that we would. This was your idea. We will have to see if we have time.” But I was just a broken record. I always am. Because in his mind, we are going to do this. He is not going to talk about anything else. Then, Scott arrived home. And, he started in with him. “Dad, we are rearranging the furniture tonight,” he announced. Scott looks at me, because he knows how this works. “Elijah thinks that we are,” I answered. “But I told Elijah only if we finish the things we need to get done first.”
“But we will, Dad. We will!” he insists.
One of the conditions was that he had to finish his homework, which was practicing spelling words. He wrote about two words, then said, “when are we rearranging the furniture?” This went on over and over for 45 minutes, him writing a few words, then asking, until he finally finished. (Yes, it takes him 45 minutes to write 5 spelling words, five times each, but that’s an issue for another day!)
Of course, when he was finished, immediately it was, “we have to go rearrange the furniture now!” We had not even had dinner yet. The rest of us were hungry. He probably was too, but when he is fixated on an idea, it can supersede all other needs. I told him we needed to eat first. The entire time he waited on dinner, he kept asking about the furniture. We ate. He finished his last bite, the rest of us were still eating, and he immediately said, “I’m done now. It’s time to move the furniture!”
I know what some people are probably thinking. If you have a neurotypical child, this is the point at which you say something like, ‘If you ask me one more time, we are not doing it at all!” Remember, I have a neurotypical child also. This does work pretty well with him. I would definitely have said this to him by now. And he might be mad at me for a minute, but he would get over it. But, because I have experienced this scenario over and over again with my autistic child, I can tell you saying that to him does not work. It causes a meltdown every time. And if you have experience with a child with autism, you understand that a meltdown is not simply a fit for not getting their way, that they will get over fairly quickly and be fine. For Elijah, being told that we are not going to do something that he has fixated on doing means that he is going to have to alter his thinking about the situation, and the thought of doing that overwhelms him to the point he starts melting down. This doesn’t mean that we never tell him no, and that we always give in and do all of his ideas. Of course, we couldn’t live that way. But, telling him no is a process. We have to slowly introduce him to the idea that what he expects to happen isn’t going to happen. His brain goes into shutdown mode when given a quick, harsh answer when it has been fixated on an idea.
This time, we didn’t end up telling him no. We compromised. We agreed we would rearrange his room, but not the living room. The living room is a shared space, and it’s up to us when we decide we want to move things around. But his room, we decided we would allow. I had actually been wanting to do his room anyway, because I felt that the way it was arranged was making it seem crowded, so I was more willing to go along with his idea this time. This seemed to satisfy him. He was as excited as ever. We made it through that evening, but we knew tomorrow it would be something else. There is always something else, some new idea that will be sprung on us. Maybe we will do it, maybe we won’t, but either way, it won’t be easy. Someday, when he is older, and more able to carry out these ideas on his own, maybe it will be easier. But, for now, as long as they are things we have to do or help with, we have the stress of wondering every day what his idea will be, and how difficult it will be to make it happen, or how hard it will be to console him if we can’t.
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