Where Are the Everyday Experts?

I know other families whose kids have autism. Yes, sometimes more than one child in the family with autism, and I really don’t know how they keep it together. I have to admit I think we’re doing a fairly terrible job a lot of the time with just one.

photo courtesy of r0Kk (flickr.com)

We haven’t done ABA with Alex (long story and not interesting, so I’m not going to go into it). I used to feel bad; then I recalled children I know who have had years of ABA and whose behavior is not so very different from Alex’s. And if you look online there is plenty of criticism about ABA being too rigid or too target-specific rather than behavior general. (Of course there is good ABA, too.) But still. If Alex had had years of ABA would he be functioning at a higher level?

Alex’s school has always applauded his progress and talked about his love of books and general smarts. At home, we see a different Alex. One who loves books, yes, but who strews toys and chatters and screeches and demands to have the TV on almost constantly and walks around in his underwear and soaks the bathroom floor during his baths, which amount to half-hour stim sessions masquering as personal hygiene.

Clearly I’m doing everything wrong.

I’d say the biggest thing that’s occurred to me recently is that Alex is 11. But his behavior lags by several years. We’re used to that. But next year he’ll be 12, and the year after that, 13, and so on and so on. And one day he’ll be in his late teens, and how rough it will be on everyone if his behavior continues at the same preschool/kindergarten level it is now.

If there were an autism expert out there, I think he or she would have some handy list of things you can do to change your environment and address some specific behaviors of autism that can be modified to make everyone a little happier. Since I’ve never met anyone like that, here I am, inventing that wheel on my own.

Even now I think of things we have to do, rather than things that Alex has to do. In the next few days, I’ll post my list of Top Ten Things to do to Improve Your Life with Autism. Some things are projects for me; others are going to be behaviors Alex will have to learn to modify. I’ll start with …

CLUTTER.

I’d say the Number One thing making our life difficult is too much stuff. Our apartment is generally a little over-full, and Alex has too many toys.