Waterworld
March 19, 2009 by Jeff Stimpson
Filed under Health
We get Alex up for school at 6:15. I do this four days a week, and Jill sleeps in a bit before she has to rise to get Ned ready for school. So I’m alone with Alex.
I have stuff to do for my day, plus make sure he gets dressed and brushes his teeth and gets his stuff together. (First I have to make sure he stays awake, as he’s often up in the middle of the night, and 0615 comes early.) One thing I like to do is empty the clean dishwasher so Jill doesn’t have to do it.
So I’m just about done with the previous night’s dinner plates and the spoons when I notice that I haven’t heard anything from Alex for a few moments. “Alex?” Nothing. “ALEX?!” Nothing. I hear water running from the bathroom.
I go in. There is Alex. The toilet is overflowing. There’s almost an inch of water on the floor.
He says nothing. He isn’t giggling. He looks at me.
His toilet training – and believe me I know how lucky we are – went splendidly from the moment Jill took it upon herself to decide, “Now’s the time!” Someone has also taught Alex to use toilet paper. A lot of it.
“Jill, get up! I need a hand this morning!!”
She got Alex dressed and stuff while I mopped. And mopped, all the time wishing he could’ve called out for me, or bragged about it (who hasn’t wondered how a toilet would react if you put almost a whole roll of paper down it?), or even just giggled.
Punishment?
“For a first time offense, I would react by having Alex assist in the clean up,” offered fellow LinkedIn autism poster Jennifer Merritt. “Perhaps explaining more about what toilets are used for, and why it is important that we don’t stuff them. If your son is interested, provide an anatomy lesson of toilets, identifying the key parts of the toilet and the functions they provide. Perhaps one solution would be to limit the amount of toilet paper available to the child, and also showing him how much is the correct amount. Being curious is natural, all kids put one thing or another down the toilet just to see what happens. If it were to happen on multiple occasions, then perhaps a punishment would be in order, but I would not worry to much about it for the first offense. Correct, instruct, and be done with it.”
My thoughts exactly. He learned to handle a mop, and we got our bathroom floor clean. Floods haven’t been repeated, and in fact lately Alex shows more drive than Ned when it comes to helping with other chores, like setting the table and putting groceries away.
I’ve found the autism groups of LinkedIn great places to ask advice and find help. My LinkedIn autism groups – and there are many others – include Autism Awareness, Autism Advocacy, Autism Speaks, Autism Help, and Linked to Autism. Jennifer has also started another cool one: Cookbook 4 Autism Speaks.
Our Alex did this too. But he did it at school. He actually has always disappeared into the little stalls in the classroom to turn on the water and flush the toilet to provide a little white noise to dampen the sound of the other kids when it was just too much. Lately though his fixation is the toilet and plumbing. Our local (middle of nowhere!) library had quite a few books on plumbing and toilets-how stuff and homes work, even in the kids section. Of course, now the teachers find him in the stall at school with the tank lid off- identifying the functional parts. There is even a virtual flushing toilet, to show the mechanism, online… Thankfully though, we only had the paper-towels (almost a whole roll!) in toilet happen once-and at school they did the same thing- Alex had to clean it up…Fingers crossed that Alex(ours) just maintains an interest and doesn’t start trying other household objects!