Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The pleasures of meeting up with other ASD parents

The Hubby, being on the Spectrum and all that, has slowly let drip bits of info from the Aspie teen social night that I obviously didn't cover in my direct questions.
*pause to roll eyes and snort*
Yeah, anyways, apparently he got talking with the other parents and wow!
Yes, all of their kids fight with their bedding in their sleep til it's in a ball.
Yes, all of their kids have messy rooms.
Yes, all of their kids sleep in their clothes.
Yes, all of their kids sleep curled tightly in the fetal position.
Yes, all of their kids  do not make their beds or tidy their rooms...
Whoa!!!!
None of the Aspie kids clean their rooms, make their own beds or even change their bed linen.
Even though they all have OCD they cannot cope with breaking off their train of thought/routine or incorporating a plan of action into their activities that involves something as mundane as tidying/cleaning.
And none of their parents do it for them, either, unless it's to rake out the smelly bed linen and throw a clean set of sheets on the bed.
From a distance.
Wearing a Hazmat suit.
And having the full Silkwood anti-nuclear shower afterwards.
One mum, an old friend, joked how she almost goes A over T just walking through her son's room with all the power cords and stuff everywhere while another assured Hubby that her daughter's bed was a mess inside 5 mins of her making it and yet another laughed as she told how she learnt to never, ever, ever disturb the things in her daughter and son's rooms, that cleanliness was not worth the increased anxiety - for both her kids and herself.
So, not only do we no longer feel pressured to either tidy the room or somehow get Aspie teen to clean up/make his bed/wear pajamas (without copping a full-on meltdown) but Aspie teen is now happily grinning like the Cheshire Cat saying,
"I'm normal for once!!!!"
Photobucket

3 comments:

Fi said...

wait..........you're telling me the messiness gets WORSE!? Nooooooooo..............!

Mary O. Paddock said...

We didn't know until Daniel finally got his own room at seventeen that he was a neat freak (his neurotypical brother is not). However he does still sleep in his clothes.

River said...

My younger two kids have rooms like that, heck the whole house is like that, but neither of them is on the spectrum.
So what exactly is normal?