Changing situations and autism

We have just had the school nurse now and it was an excellent meeting.  She made some very good suggestions and I thought I might share some of it with you.  Because I don’t know what you will find helpful with your child (and every child is different) you have to be willing to try different things to support them.

One of the suggestions that were made was a visual timetable with little pictures on it as to what time things will happen. Now for us, we don’t stick to times but the actual routine.  He doesn’t go to bed the same time every night.  He can take an inordinate length of time in the bathroom, or something will distract him.  So it’s not easy to keep timings.  And with both of us with health issues, we might take longer to be able to prepare stuff and that makes it much harder.  So we decided this wouldn’t actually be supportive for us.  

However, it may be something you think “Oh that might work with my child”  Do you know what?  If suggestions you think it will then go for it.  Sometimes we are just too caught up fighting the fires that we can’t problem solve to help our family.  Or you’re too tired, or whatever and you are struggling, sometimes it’s good to try some things that are suggested to you to see if they work when you’re in that place.  If you know it won’t work with your family then don’t do it.

One thing we discussed was when Johnathan starts that zoning in on having a meltdown, the nurse and he will sit down and create a list of things that will help him to calm down before the meltdown.  Because if we TELL him to do, say like, Oh, I don’t know, drumming, he will point blank refuse to do it.  So this would be something he has made and this then removes our telling him.

The other suggestion was to give him two different plans so that if this doesn’t happen then this will we j have struggled with meltdowns because he has convinced himself something will happen that he wants to do and ignore the fact it is only “‘probably NOT going to happen.

I really hope one of these suggestions help you..  I’ll let you know how it goes with Johnathan.  If you try any of these idea, please do say as sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and that’s ok too.