“Grandma,” he said as he walked up to me holding his tablet. I could see where this was going with him. I said, “good morning Owen” and before I could get anything else out he said, “I’m fine how are you tablet tablet.” I moved forward. It’s hard for him to process everything and it’s hard for me to process everything thing he is processing. Breakfast seemed long. He ate from the minute he got up. It’s unbelievable how much he has grown. He was ready to go see his grandma. I’m still not sure why he wanted to go on Friday besides to see Mickey Mouse. I played it cool this morning and put my blue jeans on but I got a pair of shorts for him and didn’t even ask him, just helped him with them, and that was that. We got out the door with hardly a question. I’m going to slowly try to wear dresses when we go out and see how he takes it. The emotions are hard for him. We got outside and I’m trying to remind him to do his seatbelt. He got in the car and we had a seatbelt victory. I helped stretch it out for him so he didn’t have to worry about it retracting and then he was able to get it in the slot. He always talks about seatbelts but struggles with the motions to do it. We got to his grandma’s and he was ready for “mommy go bye-bye.” I reminded him numerous times that he wouldn’t be going on Saturday because he was going today. When I went to pick him up he started talking about going to Grandma's on Saturday. I told him that we could do other things tomorrow but he went to grandma’s today. He asked to go bowling tomorrow and I said we could so we will see how it goes. Both to and from grandma's house I went different ways. I want him to understand that we don’t always have to do exactly the same things and go the same way. He was not pleased with either choice I made, but I talked to him about why I was doing what I was doing. Autism is this much about how I handle it as it is about Owen having it. Learning to process and change directions is as much about how I expressed it to him and what I do as it is about how Owen perceives it. It’s a process and it’s emotional. He started playing a game on his tablet, and he had to win in order to get the gold bars to move forward. Instead of playing the game, he wanted to purchase extra gold bars. He wanted to buy the gold bars, but I kept telling him no that he needed to play the game. This led to him having a meltdown over the fact that I wouldn’t tell him the password to purchase the gold bars. When he plays a game, he will go through some of the objectives, but then he generally closes out the screen and starts over when he doesn’t see the same positions that he wants to see. He wanted to purchase the gold bars so that he could continue to lose the game and open it back in the same position. I told him that I wasn’t going to spend five dollars every time he wanted to close out of all the screens and lose when the objective was to win. I don’t know how to explain this any differently to him, except to tell him that we are not buying gold bars. I had to delete the app for him to move forward. I understand he wants to see certain screens, but we can’t continue to spend money on something that he’s just going to watch for one moment and then close out the screen. The rest of the night we spent talking about the difference between going to grandma's on Saturday and going bowling. We shall see what happens tomorrow but I’m thankful for the victories we had today and I’m praying for more tomorrow. Find what makes you dream the big dream and know that you can accomplish anything if you set your mind to it. Smiles to all and donut daze!
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