Autism and the Art of Defenestration

Defenestrate (dēˈfenəˌstrāt/) v. To throw out a window

I love this word.  I believe I use it more often than the general population does.  I teach middle school, and in my work setting, it's a remarkably handy word.

"Put the cell phone away, or I will be forced to defenestrate it." 
"Huh?"

And then I explain.  Defenestrate provides its own teachable moment.  The word comes from fenêtre, which is the French word for window.  The Latin prefix "de" means "out of."  This beautiful little word allows me to teach vocabulary--covering affixes and the origin of the English language, beginning with the ancients and up through the Norman Invasion--all while threatening my students in a memorable way.

Can you use it in a sentence?

The boy defenestrated his shoes. 

Here's where I'm going with this:  Have you ever seen a shoe on the side of the road and wondered how it got there?  Well, wonder no more.  It was my kid.  Mystery solved.

This is a new thing.  It started a couple of weeks ago, as he rode home in Grandma's car.  He took off his shoes and socks and threw them out the window.  She didn't notice.  Fortunately, my husband was following them in his car, and pulled over to get the shoes.  We had a good laugh about it and remarked how lucky we were that my husband saw what happened and was able to rescue the shoes!

Alas, our luck changed.  The other day, we met at Dairy Queen after work.  The boy was in raptures over his little cup of ice cream.  I had more errands to run, so my husband took him home.  When I got home, I found my frantic husband tearing the car apart while the boy stood barefoot in the driveway.

Lonely shoe seeks mate.

He'd done it again. 

"Can you go look?" my husband asked.  No problem!  I didn't mind.  I had an audiobook in the car, anyway.

I started back down the road, retracing the route my husband had taken.  I drove slowly and scanned the road for the shoes.  My eyes were zipping back and forth so quickly, I felt like one of those Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.  (The old ones, not the updated ones.)

It is 6.7 miles from my house to the Dairy Queen--6.7 miles of winding mountain roads with no shoulder, let alone a sidewalk.  But I did not give up hope.  Three miles in, and I saw one sneaker in the middle of the road!  Success!  I had to drive down the road a bit to find a spot to pull over.  I ran back up the road, waited for a car to pass, and then snatched up the sneaker.  I figured the other one was probably close by, so I paced up and down the road and checked the bushes and the ditches for the shoe.  It occurred to me that I should have changed into running shoes myself, instead of hiking along in my work heels.  Several motorists stopped to see if I was all right.  See, unless you're in workout gear, you do not just walk this road.

On my way back to the car, I spotted his sock.  Yes!  How did I know it was his sock?  Mother's intuition.  Plus, it was still warm.  I swear I was like an outback animal tracker.

I continued down the road, where I saw another sock...and yes, it was his.  Excellent.  I was making progress, and I'd only been gone for an hour.  Two socks, one shoe.  Back in the car, continued down the road.  What are those lights?  Uh, oh.  Police.  Apparently, there was a fender bender at the intersection where we'd turned right after we'd left Dairy Queen.  I hoped to God it wasn't caused by a flying shoe...

I banged a U-ey (that's Jersey-speak for a slightly illegal U-turn) and headed back from whence I had come, still searching the road, when my Cylon-sensors picked up on something familiar.  I pulled over.  It wasn't black like the shoe, but yellow--my husband's golf hat.  He didn't even realize it was missing.  

Two socks, one shoe, one hat.

Text from my husband:  "Give up and come home.  He's melting down."

Sigh.

I crept home, hoping to find that other shoe, but...nothing.  I was so disappointed.  I felt defeated by this sneaker.  That was a week ago, and I'm still looking.  This shit has gotten personal.  I'm obsessed with finding this effin' shoe.  It will be my downfall.  I'm Captain Ahab and this damned sneaker is my Moby Dick.  Even my 11 year-old has tried to get me to give up.

"Mom, it's been a week.  It's rained four times and the mowers went by.  Let it go.  The shoe is gone."

I guess you've got to be pretty effed up when a sixth grader becomes your voice of reason.  Maybe one last search.

Thus, I give up my spear!

Dys-funk-tional Play

I'm in a funk.  I'm trying not to wallow, but I just might have to marinate here for a bit.

It's the weekend.  It's time to do stuff with our kids.  All the good moms on Facebook are posting pictures of the cookies they're baking, projects they're crafting, or at the very least, the messes their kids are making as they play.  And hence, my funk.

My kid doesn't play.

Our house looks like a kindergarten.  Or an OT room.  We have colorful bins of differently themed toys.  We have blocks and books and flash cards and Handy Manny tools.  We have dolls and clothes and bottles and diapers.  We have doctor's kits and games and every damn developmental piece of wood that Melissa and Doug ever created.  We even have a bin devoted to different types of plastic airplanes.

The boy wants none of it.

All he wants to do is carry his Phineas and Ferb figures around the house and script about not breaking toys--right before he pulls them apart.  Then he brings me the pieces to pop into place.  Sometimes they won't pop into place and I have to hide them in a coffee cup until I can glue them back together.  And sometimes having to wait for the glue to dry is more than he can bear and he has a meltdown.  I've learned to keep back-ups.

I'm about to glue my fingers together.

This isn't playing.

His therapist is working on functional play.  We have a wooden train set, and it's like a chore for him to set that up.  He'll paint for about two minutes.  Play-doh goes almost directly in his mouth and gets put away.  Last year, he showed a fleeting interest in the dollhouse at school, so I got him one from eBay.  He doesn't touch it.

This morning I tried to incorporate his obsession into real play.  I took out the Legos and suggested we build a house for Perry.  He said yes, but as soon as we started, he yelled, "No more!" and started throwing the bricks back in the bin.  Then he asked for a movie.

I can't let eating, breaking toys, and watching videos be the only thing he does at home.  But I also don't want to fight with him all the time.  It's Saturday.  I spend all week teaching other people's kids and now I want to play with my own.

(Sigh.)  Maybe Big Bro will let me shoot zombies with him on his Playstation.

My Kid Sucks At Puzzles...and other spectrumy things he doesn't like.

We've all heard the saying, "If you've met one child with autism...you've met one child with autism."  Still, it seems there are some common threads that bind our kids together, and it's so great to find another parent to whom you can say, "Your kid, too?!"  But there are some pieces that don't fit for us.

Puzzles.  My boy shows no interest.  He was all right with the wooden puzzles with individual pieces, but once those pieces had to fit with one another, he gave up.  Big Bro was a fan of those floor puzzles, so we have a lot.  I've tried to engage him--especially with the alphabet puzzle--because I want to provide some kind of structured activity at home, but he balks.  He barely looks at them, and then tries to mash the pieces to make them fit.

At one point, I actually said, "Dude!  Aren't you supposed to be good at this?"  Then I laughed and scolded myself, and poured a glass of wine.
 
I find it amusing that the puzzle piece is supposed to be the symbol of autism, and my kid hates them.  If I had to develop our own personalized symbol of autism awareness, it would be a decapitated Disney figure, but perhaps that's too macabre for the general public.  I doubt people would buy car magnets or get tattoos of something that looks like the work of Sid from Toy Story.

He's not that into trains.  He shows a mild interest.  He likes to watch the Thomas the Tank Engine video while jumping on a trampoline and shouting the names of all the trains, but that's about it.  He has a little wooden train set his therapist tries to get him to build for some functional play, but it's not a passion.

$6 ticket. He lasted 10 minutes. That's 60 cents/minute of fun!

There's a model train museum about 30 minutes from our house, and I'll take him from time to time.  Sometimes we'll stay for 10 minutes, sometimes longer.  The "museum" is in a little strip mall, and the owner has set up a really lovely display.  He also has religious showcases and anything else that strikes his fancy.  What I find hilarious about the whole situation is that this man, who is very nice, has absolutely no idea that he has built Autism Graceland.  When I take the boy in there, the only other people I see are other moms and other flapping boys.  And the owner tries very hard to encourage the kids to look at his display of bicentennial memorabilia, and seems a little confused by the jumping and humming and flapping.  He never says a word about it, though.  He's good people.

The boy doesn't like Legos, either.  I wish he did.  I wish he showed an interest in something other than breaking my house.

You know, I used to hear these stories of kids on the spectrum who obsessed over a certain toy or puzzle or collection or, I dunno, a pair of socks, and were absorbed for hours.  Understandably, their parents were concerned.  But I can't help feeling a teensy bit jealous.  My son has nothing that keeps him occupied for five minutes, let alone an hour or so.  I can barely imagine what it would be like to have time to pee by myself.

 


He doesn't line up his toys.  Like ever.

Autism Dress Code

Many kids have "lovies" they get attached to.  Whether blankets or stuffed animals, they are prized possessions to our kids and therefore, prized possessions to the parents.  We know all hell would break loose if something were to happen to them.  The house is burning down!  Grab the kid and blankie and go!  When my older son was two, he loved his Elphie.  Elphie was a stuffed elephant with matted fur and hardly any trunk because the kid loved to chew on it.  Elphie was also absolutely rank because I was never allowed to wash it, but my son didn't mind.  He slept with Elphie on his face.  He adored Elphie.  So when Elphie went missing on Christmas morning, I actually prayed to God.  Please, God.  I would trade all of the presents just to get Elphie back.  Help me find Elphie, God.  We found him in the Christmas tree on New Year's Day.  But for that week between Christmas and New Year, my son did not sleep.

This effin' thing is in sorry shape.

That was Big Bro.  My ASD kid is a little different.  He obsesses on clothes.  A few years ago, he took a liking to a couple of his brother's Phineas and Ferb shirts and made them his own.  They were so big, he'd wear them like dresses.  He'd wear one and carry the other around like a security blanket.  I'd have to wait until he got in the tub to wash them.  Then the boy caught on to my scheme and decided he didn't need to take baths anymore.  Then he'd want to wear them to school.  I had a dirty, smelly kid in some dirty, smelly shirts, but his teacher was kind enough not to judge.

Every once in a while, the shirt obsession rears its stinky head, and I'm back to the cycle of laundry and deceit.  

Sometimes, the boy will obsess on something and make other people follow his dress code.  This responsibility usually falls to Big Bro.

     "Wear green shirt from Grandma!" the boy demands.

     "But I don't have a green shirt from Grandma.  Grandma bought me a red one," Big Bro patiently explains.

     "Green shirt from grandma!  GREEN SHIRT FROM GRANDMA!" the boy shrieks, drags Big Bro into his bedroom, and presents him with a t-shirt.  It seems Grandma gave the boy two green shirts and Big Bro will have to wear one, even if it's three sizes too small and makes him look like a Hooters chick.

Sometimes the boy will insist that they wear certain hats.  These hats are almost always a) out of season and b) embarrassing for Big Bro.  

     Oh, we're going shopping for Easter outfits?  Let's wear Santa hats! Oh, you don't want to wear a Santa hat?  Then I'll just throw a snot-flying tantrum.

And he does.  The boy pitches the biggest fit at the worst possible time, and I end up telling his brother, "Oh, for the love of God!  Will you just wear the Santa hat already?  Please!  Do you want to listen to this all the way to the mall?!"

I'm not even going to get into the time the boy tried to make his brother wear Mickey ears to baseball practice.  

I know.  I make it work.

Then there was the time with the effin' bike helmets.  One morning, I was rushing around, trying to get ready for work.  I knew I was going to be observed that day, so I wanted to get my power-teacher look just right.  My hair wasn't cooperating.

I heard a knock at my bedroom door.  I opened it to find the boy standing there, butt naked except for his bike helmet.  He held my helmet out to me.

     "Mommy, put helmet on, please."

     "Honey, Mommy can't right now.  I'm getting ready to---"

     "PUT HELMET ON, PLEASE!"  he wailed.  

A pair of dress shoes appeared behind the boy.  I looked up to see my husband, all suited up for work, wearing a bike helmet and a look of total resignation.

     "Just put on the fucking helmet," he whispered.  

So I did.  And you know what?  We went about our morning routine--all of us wearing bike helmets.  My husband bumped his head on the cabinets while making breakfast--"Good thing I was wearing this helmet!"--and the boy had to wear a button-down shirt because he wouldn't remove the helmet so we could pull a shirt over his head.  But it was all right.  I left for work in a good mood with a happy, well-protected family.  

And my observation went well, despite the helmet hair.