It's been a hot minute since I've been able to write a blog post.
Let me tell you why.
I feel stuck. Every day is pretty much the same, semi-monotonous routine. Don't get me wrong, I love routine, and so do my kids - especially Nate. Routine and schedules are integral to a stable household for an ASD kid. Yet, I feel stuck.
Every day is the same morning routine, the same afternoon routine, the same lunch packed for school, the same 3 or 4 choices for dinner, the same outburst when it's time to change his bum, the same whine when it's time to go to bed. We watch the same tv shows or movies. We have the same pattern of running in and out of the house to go to the backyard. My husband works *almost* the same schedule, my daughter takes the same nap times, and I do the same household chores (because somehow, everything gets messy the second I clean it - hello having 3 kids).
I'm not complaining. I know monotony is something a lot of parents of special needs kids crave. They want the simple, same routine, day in and day out. I don't blame you - like I said, I love routine. When you are trying to further your kids progress on your own though.... how do you try to fit new activities, new adventures, new opportunities into the same old routine without triggering your child? My neurotypical step-son is always up for a change, for an adventure. My daughter is a baby and doesn't care as long as she has her bottle, but Nate? He has some leeway... but not always.
I've been doing tons of research on how to entice him to sit and read with me, or to sit and work on his writing. They send these things home from school weekly - a reading package, or a writing package - and I feel like a failure every time I send it back to school without having read a page of a book with him, or gotten him to try writing even one letter.
I had a friend tell me, "remember, he's been at school all day where he's expected to take time out of playing to do those things. That's part of his routine there. You can't expect him to come home and have to add those to his 'fun' routine at home, too."
I know I can't EXPECT him to. Hell, what kid ever likes doing homework? I had the same thoughts back when I was in school. But when your kid isn't in any sort of therapy, be it ABA, speech, occupational, what have you - how else are you supposed to continue supporting them in their growth and management of their behaviours? I can't leave the learning and changing of my son to his school. That's simply a) not fair, and b) kinda sad. I want to be a part of shaping his brain development and knowledge too, you know?
So I started looking into activities that were like games, or playtime, to help him. Ways to playfully teach him how to manage his emotions and behaviours. Ways to work on adapting to subtle changes in routine. But how do I do that when these activities would require changing his routine!? How do I do that when my son is the LEAST likely kid to sit down and actively participate in an activity? Sure, he'll watch. Or he'll wander around and occasionally pop over. But getting him to sit down and participate in one thing at a time? Nope.
We tried dying Easter Eggs at Easter. I bought fun dinosaur kits, bright coloured dyes, I had everything set up to make it as fun and intriguing for him as possible, in the hopes he'd sit long enough to watch the egg change colour, then decorate it into a dinosaur. I even bought stickers, because he loves sticking them everywhere. It was a no-go. While he loved the "dying the eggs" part, he was still impatient and having behaviours when I told him he couldn't spill the container of dye everywhere.
I get it, he's a toddler/kid. And he DOES still behave like any typical toddler/kid does. But it kills me to see my neurotypical step-son so invested in these things, while I can't get Nate to sit still for 5 seconds and enjoy.
They say (just like with any kid) to find something your kid loves, and adapt activities to THAT specific theme/object. I've tried that too. In an effort to make bedtime happier, I bought him a Wild Kratts bed set. That made him happy for about 4 days. Now it's just his bedding and he doesn't care.
He loves sensory items, so I had the idea to create sensory activities that were completely edible (because everything goes in his mouth). Instead, when I didn't yell at him to get his hands out of his mouth while playing, he decided it would just be snack time, and ate an entire Jell-o sensory bin.
He shows interest in my crafting for this business. So I try to let him participate. He gets frustrated after 5 seconds of waiting for something and runs off.
At the end of all this, I feel frustrated, overstimulated, and like a failure. I'm exhausted from trying the new things, having them last for 2 seconds, and then are forgotten about. I feel so exhausted, that we just revert back to normal routine - a favourite show on TV and Nate having free reign of his toys.
Keep in mind, one common trait of ASD kids is that they have a hard time with imaginative play. They take everything very literally. So if you hold a toy cupcake up, and pretend to eat it and play "coffee shop," this doesn't go over very well. He gets frustrated as to why he can't actually eat it, and doesn't understand that we are pretending. I've found that this also severely cuts into the playtime I could have with Nate.
Instead, we sit and play very literal games with literal toys. A ball down a ramp. Marbles down a marble run. The same, predictable (albeit exciting for him) outcome every.single.time.
Now, I'm not ranting about this to imply that I am annoyed by my son, or angry at how he plays differently than other kids. I also don't even hate that I don't have to pretend to be Elsa unless my step-son is here. I simply wish I had the key to his brain, to see what he would be truly invested in, and capitalize on that.
But instead, I am stuck.
I am sitting here writing a blog post while Nate is at school, doing something I won't hear about when he comes home. Sure, I get updates from his teacher, but those are mostly behavioural updates. Not the, "oh my gosh - Nate played with blocks today and actually stacked them into the shape of a castle," or something like that.
So again - I am stuck. I am stuck in a never ending loop of wanting to change our routine, to have some fun, to encourage Nate's learning and watch him flourish - but not knowing how.
Things don't seem to get better, but they don't seem to get worse. They just.... remain. The same as every day.
Do any of you have this issue? How are you handling it? How do you feel?
XO The Spectrum Mom
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