We went to a wedding. Actually, we observed my cousin's wedding from our car. We were assured that child care would be provided and that the fact that Wyatt has autism would be no problem.
We drove up to a little tucked away country club garden, beautiful in the late afternoon light. Since it was a Bhuddist-Jewish wedding, it was kind of colorful, with exquisite paper lanterns and men in orange robes or yalmukes, and ladies in their finest. Soothing, yet hip music was playing in the backround. Of course, Wyatt started screaming immediately, so we rolled up the windows so no one could hear him. He wanted out of the car so he could terrorize those lanterns.
We parked the car and Marc came back with the distressing news that the child care was not in a separate area, but rather just at a small table off to the side right where they were just about to have the ceremony. The staff was a lady in a very fancy purple dress and two 12 yr old girls. The childs' supper was Dominoes pizza, and Wyatt doesn't like pizza. He was hungry. I should have brought him some snacks, but we were rushed to get ready and we were late getting there. It was about an hour long drive.
So we left. I hope my family will understand that I didn't want to ruin their wedding. There was no way Wyatt could have been managed and contained at that wedding. And I was not about to run around after Wyatt sweating and aplogizing and having people give me horrified looks. It was simply not an appropriate setting for Wyatt.
Still, I did get to hover near the celebration and see the festivities. I felt like a ghost. A ghost wearing pantyhose, which I haven't worn for YEARS, and brand-new fancy shoes for the occasion. I do hope my family appreciates that I at least made the effort.
You did the right thing
You did the right thing Nicole =) We dont go to weddings or God forbid a funeral, THAT would
be interesting. We dont go to restaurants. Our lives are very different than "normal" people.
Your family will understand =)
Sorry Cindy, I beg to
Sorry Cindy, I beg to disagree... at little. Of course, I agree that under the circumstances as she found them, she did the right thing; but I don't get the impression that Nicole will be satisfied with sitting out on the fringes of every family occasion for the next 20 years and never going out to a restaurant again either... and I have every faith that Wyatt can learn (eventually) to go out and not make an embarrassing scene. He does, however, need to be taught very specifically how to do this, Of course, some of the teaching will be done through ABA in the sheltered environment of home; however, in order to learn how to deal with the stress, unfortunately, he also has to be "exposed" to some public places and events from time to time. Certainly, start small and try to control as many variables as you can, but four and a half is certainly too young to be giving up hope of eventually leading a normal life. They always say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but it is also true that the journey can't begin unless we risk taking those first steps first.
I forgot the Wyatt is more
I forgot the Wyatt is more high functioning. My son is very hyper and severly autistic with severe
retardation. Sorry, I agree.
No need to be sorry, Cindy.
No need to be sorry, Cindy. You also make a good point. I'm an "extremist optimist" - so, my natural tendency is to keep pushing and teaching - nomatter what. Sometimes my pushing has triggered horrendous meltdowns in my son and there are still plenty of times when I wish I could just back off a little. On the positive side - after puberty, my son actually became pretty adept at telling me exactly where to go and how to stop organizing his life for him (and yes, I've cleaned up the language a lot).
So, between the two of us, I think we can give Nicole a good "middle ground" picture - i.e. not to give up too soon and not to push too hard either. I think we actually make a pretty good team, and Nicole - you know you are a very good judge of when to push and when to back off. You did do the right thing this time.
P.S. - Just because Marcel has more challenges, I wouldn't give up on teaching him how to sit in a restaurant, attend weddings, etc. either. He probably needs a different approach and might take a lot longer for him to respond, but I think he could learn it. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with teaching children on the lower functioning end of the spectrum, so I can't make any firm suggestions. I know you have a lot of good ideas (for example, I love the idea you had about the voice recorder.)
Deciding what issues to work on and what not to comes down to family priorities, too. I don't get the impression that missing out of such events and restaurants is as distressing to you as it is to Nicole. It seems to really upset her when Wyatt is left out at day camp and such and I think she feels somewhat "guilty" when she also has to pull him from an activity and keep him on the sidelines. So, I may be wrong, but I think she is trying to find a way of working the whole issue out.
Nicole, I catch the hint that you don't think that this could work for Wyatt. Maybe not. All I can say is that it is what did work with my son and I don't really have anything different to suggest. What my son needed to help himself control his own meltdowns was to relax. To do this, he needed to learn three basic skills:
(a) to identify his own sensory issues and avoid those things that really set his senses on edge and how to utilize technologies to help him in this area (e.g. noise cancelling headphones);
(b) to know in advance what was most likely to happen, so that he could "plan" to stay calm when the "expected" did happen. If "waiting" was an expected thing followed by another expected thing, he had very little trouble waiting. (this is where the social stories helped the most)
(c) to know how to relax by using relaxation techniques like deep breathing, visualization, and Tai Chi (controlled rhythmic motion rather than stimming).
When we got all of this in place (and it took some time, hard work, and lots of disasters) - my son's meltdowns almost completely disappeared and everything got easier. Admittedly, my son was never quite as hyper as Wyatt and was not self-injurious or super physically agressive during a tantrum. He would mostly scream and cry and lie on his back and kick into the air, so you do have some additional concerns in these areas that I did not have to contend with. One thing I did notice with my son is that it was often "darkest before a dawn." In other words, the tantrums would usually get worse just before a big breakthrough would occur. Maybe this is something you can look forward to - a big breakthrough might be on the horizon.
Unfortunately, I always come off "sounding" harsher and more judgmental than I really am. I keep trying to sound more casual and relaxed, but somehow my writing doesn't seem to get interpreted that way very often. Sorry, I'll keep trying to adjust what I write to be more clear.
Don't be sorry, Cindy. I
Don't be sorry, Cindy. I think Wyatt is somewhere in between for Perz's and your suggestions.
That is a worry I have,
That is a worry I have, about who Michael will behave at events like this. Heather wanted him at her Baby Shower (even though I did not get to go) I was so worried about him disrupting things. I also always worry that it will make me look bad if I do not come, or if I always come to things without Michael.
Michael has a problem with birthday parties. He does not understand the concept that sometimes one kid will get something but not him. Or he wants the cake asap and does not understand having to wait.
I think you can be very sure
I think you can be very sure that neither Wyatt nor Michael will misbehave like this at events for the rest of their lives. Given their apparent levels of functioning, their abilities to understand what is expected of them will almost certainly inprove as they get older. I would spend less time worrying about it, and a little more time preparing them to go.
This is where those social stories or scripts that I keep talking about come into play. They can be used like instruction sheets that help to elimiante the "surprises" that many people with autism find so stressful. They act somewhat like security blankets. If waiting is going to be involved, write the waiting part right into the script as one step and the "end of waiting" as the next step. E.G., if you can set something up with the hostess, use phrases such as, "I will wait quietly while Mrs. X gives Y and Z (other children) a piece of cake." Mrs. X will then give me a piece of cake, too." Instead of being something "indefinite," waiting can then be processed as something that leads logically to the next step in a chain of "now expected" events.
Instead of having to cope with the quesiton of "what do I do when the unexpected happens" or issuing more indefinite instructions like "wait" or "just don't do that," social stories provide the child with positive instruction about what to do when the expected happens. As the child gets older, inserting "if" statements gets more common and the stories get more flexible and help the child adapt to sudden changes in plan and to learn about cause and effect.
Both the stories and the situations should be kept reasonably short and simple to start with, but they can eventually be adapted to cover more complex situations. To work well, though, the technique needs to be practiced to get the child used to the idea of referring to a list.
As a personal bonus, I also found that I tended to ask more specific questions of people as I was making up the lists ahead of time - so I went into situations myself knowing better what to expect. It also found it easier to explain to hosts in advance that I was asking the question to help keep my son calmer than to explain after the fact why he had melted down or why we had left early or decided not to come at all. I know it seems really cumbersone, but believe me, more advance prep and less surprises always equalled fewer tantrums and meltdowns for me and well as for my son.
I dug out one of my old books on the topic, which also stress how to plan to "fill in" waiting times with quiet activities that the child enjoys. They suggest also teaching the child to play appropriately with quiet toys (like coloring books, etc. within a limited area so that they tend to do this in public places as well. When we went to Disneyland, and I was asking my son to stand in line at the rides, I found looking for "hidden Mickeys" was a neat activity that kept him occupied for a long time. Various "people watching" games could also be adapted to fit other line-up situations. I also found that teaching him to estimate or count the number of people ahead of him in the line was really helpful. He soon learned that when there we no more people standing in front of him, his turn would be next.