Sometimes, when you live with autism in your house, it's just such a part of things that you don't notice sometimes. Life with autism is just life to you, and you go on about your day without thinking about how autism affects that day.
Oh and it does. It affects everything from how you grocery shop (and when) to how you prepare meals and how you plan your day because autism likes to know exactly how the day is going to go.
Sometimes autism can be stressful. Any parent of an autistic child will understand the story I'm about to tell. It was a story that started out stressful but ended with me and the kids laughing and also with having a really nice moment in the grocery store.
Picture this, if you will. It's Christmas break and the kids are all off of school. It's also payday, which means I have to go grocery shopping. Normally grocery shopping is something I reserve for while the older children are all at school, or for the weekend, when I take one kid as a helper and leave the rest at home with Dad. One kid is a lot easier to handle in the store than four. But since it was payday and that happened to fall on a Tuesday, I had to take them all.
This particular shopping trip was made all the more stressful by our daughter Olivia, who is 13 and has autism. Any parent with a kid on the spectrum will get this. Our kids have so few things they can eat because of all the sensory stuff that they deal with. So, with the few foods they do eat, we cling to those like a life raft in a storm. There are always those familiar, comfortable things they'll eat and you know that as long as those things are in the house, there is something the kid will eat. Is it always a healthy something? Oh God no! But it's something!
Occasionally an autistic child, for no reason that they can explain, will 'go off' a certain food. They'll literally eat the same thing every day for two years and then all of a sudden, poof, they don't want it anymore. It's like you're trying to feed them earthworms all of a sudden!
Well, Olivia didn't just go off one food. It was several things. Suddenly she didn't want pasta anymore, or honey bunches of oats cereal, or Greek yogurt. The Greek yogurt was the most distressing. It's one of the few sources of protein she'll eat because she doesn't really eat meat. She eats cheese but only when she's at school, I can't get her to eat it at home.
So, since we were all at the store together, I was trying to quiz her about things she would eat. This is stressful for her, in addition to being in a loud and colorful grocery store full of all kinds of sensory overload. She did eventually decide to have toaster strudel again, which she'd stopped eating several months before. But I was dying to get her to have Greek yogurt again. So we went over to the rather extensive yogurt selection. As I was quizzing her, there was a young stockman nearby working at the shelves.
It turns out Olivia hadn't completely gone off the yogurt, the flavor I'd bought was what was causing problems. I had accidentally bought the kind with fruit on the bottom. *facepalm* Doh!! Of course, Olivia has trouble communicating that, so instead of telling me, Mom, you bought the wrong flavor, she went into meltdown mode every time the subject of the yogurt came up at home.
So as we're working out which flavor to get, the young stockman asked if he could do anything to help. For some reason, and I still don't know what made me say it, I replied, "No thank you, we're just having an autism moment here, but we're all good." I went absolutely red in the face after I said it. I mean, what in God's name caused that to just fall out of my mouth?
However, the stockman looked at me and said, "I have autism too. I understand." He then proceeded to show me different flavors, checked the ones in my cart to make sure the expiration dates were correct (he'd been throwing out old product) and recommended flavors he likes. After we finished I made sure to thank him profusely and we went on our way.
My face was still rather red but the kids and I were laughing and joking as we finished up our shopping. Suddenly I was very glad I mentioned autism, and that that young man was able to help us. Stocking shelves is a good job for someone on the spectrum. With their attention to detail you can bet that not one out of date yogurt will get missed on that shelf! And it was just really great to talk to someone else who understood what I was dealing with at that moment, because he lives it himself.
Obviously, since my husband is on the spectrum too, I have him to talk to about it. It helps with Olivia. Since she is also my step-daughter, so I didn't birth her or have the opportunity to help raise her till they immigrated here nearly 3 years ago. So he helps me learn, not only about Olivia as a person, but about her from the point of view of being on the spectrum. As a neurotypical, I need that help desperately.
But when my husband isn't there and we're out in the world, it can feel like a lonely place. I know there are a lot of families out there dealing with autism, but they aren't always obvious and I don't know any that live locally to me. People in the world that don't have direct experience with autism just don't understand. So it's nice to accidentally run into someone who does.
I've not posted about autism much on this blog. I suppose I should start a separate blog for it, my husband has encouraged me to do so. Perhaps I will :)
Thanks for listening,
Dawn
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