Floortime

It’s 5 or so in the morning right now, and Alex has gotten me up with the sound of soft clattering in the living room. He’s digging through a box of plastic animals. Sometimes he wants to set them all up in rows, but often he just wants to dump them out on the floor to know they’re there. It works out good for me, too, as nothing wakes you up like driving the snout of a hard plastic big into the bottom of your foot at 5 in the morning.

Three lions ranging in length from two inches to six; an elephant and a turtle about the same size; three pigs, including one that oinks and whose eyes flash bright blue when you press the button on his belly; an inch-eye chicken; a two-inch-tall tabby cat; two cows; and the five-inch plastic Charlie Brown (probably what I’d play with if I got down there, and though I realize Charlie Brown isn’t an animal, he sounds the same hitting a hardwood floor).

Alex dumps these out at the north end of our coffee table. Sometimes he sets them up in rows, sorted by type and never ever just by color. Sometimes he walks around with them and trembles on the edge of real imaginative play. Mostly, however, he dumps them across the floor just to know they’re there. I get as keyed up as the next guy over material security and God knows I woke up many a morning a lifetime ago excited to mess around with some enticing new hunk of plastic. But I never needed my crap right in the center of the family’s living room.

We make him pick them up, of course, and he’s actually pretty okay about it, once you get him primed like a pump. A pointer works well, too, a little tap and point on the toy itself, and on his shoulder if he seems to be sitting and drifting (concentration is a thing with Alex these days, his teacher has noted). Once you get Alex going, clatter clatter clatter, into the box they go. And the second our backs are turned, out they come again. I know having everything out and often lined up is how autistic process information. I also know what a plastic snout feels like on the bottom of my bare foot.

“We need to trim the toys,” says Jill.

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Tips for organizing your autistic child’s toys.