Summer holidays with three young children is certainly
helping Ethan's Aspergers to blossom!
We had a family day out to York on Saturday. Blimey - it was
hard work! The blame can't all be heaped on Ethan and it wasn't all bad. But,
in my dreamy depictions of a happy, jolly, family outing on a sunny summer's
day, I'd underestimated what it meant to navigate crowded, unknown streets with
three children and a husband with Aspergers Syndrome. Even the British weather
let me down - August? It felt more like November.
The kids, of course, wanted to buy everything in every shop
we passed - which was, on average, one every two seconds. They also oscillated
between running off and wanting to be carried. Ethan, faced with the turmoil of
not knowing where things were or what direction we should be walking in,
battled all-consumingly with google maps - despite the fact we were surrounded by
people we could have asked (which is what I did, in the end).
Ethan spent most of the day walking a few paces ahead of us
- distancing himself from the chaos and the general mithering of the kids so
that I had to keep summoning him back, like a dog to heel. Eventually I got fed
up of being sole responsible parent. The children simultaneously talked,
nagged, moaned and requested carries from me whilst Ethan, in blissful
solitude, wandered ahead of us. I snapped and had it out with him - giving the
street performers a run for their money in terms of entertaining passers-by. I
should have put a hat out.
Ethan did try - as best he could. He obediently waited for
us and tried to walk to our rhythm when I shouted him back, he held Oliver when
I plonked him in his arms and he did his best, amid the noise and crowds and
over-stimulation, to interact with the kids and respond to some of their relentless
chatter and demands so that it didn't all fall to me. Always within a minute or
two though, his good intentions would dissolve as reality or, more accurately
his attempted escape from it, won out.
The kids, the crowds, the noise and the inability to get his
bearings, I knew would be difficult for him. The new realisation that the day
gave me was that he doesn't like ambling, wandering, pottering - whatever you
like to call it. The whole concept is stressful to him. He needs to know where
he's headed, to have a purpose to his journey. A hike in the countryside is
fine- he knows that the whole purpose of the journey is the journey. But ambling
in the shambles with no clearly defined purpose whilst having to avoid endless
people coming the other way, is a whole different matter! The highlight of the
day was when we were in the car - on a journey with a clearly defined purpose
(going home) eating Mcdonalds drive-thru in the happy knowledge that, in two
hours time, the kids would be in bed and we could crash in front of Saturday
night TV!
For anyone wondering how 'the project's' coming on, by the
way, we're down to floorboards and plaster in Ava's room. Ethan is working on
it from dawn til dusk- alone, unhindered
- and he couldn't be more content!
It's hard work Laura. We went to an air display last weekend (Mr H's choice), but only about 5 miles from home. he moaned because we had to park in a ploughed field, moaned because it was very crowded, moaned because the spitfire flypast didn't happen, moaned because the Lancaster bomber flypast was early, moaned because the queues for ice cream were too long, moaned because I left the bottle of water in the car. At his insistence we left early before the red arrows display, because he was sure we would be able to see it from our garden. Oh, and then he moaned because it was cloudy and we couldn't see the red arrows from home. Happy days!
ReplyDeleteHannah x
Meant to say, glad the project's going well, wish I could get Mr H involved in something like that.
ReplyDeleteH x