Owen woke in a pretty good mood but interested in his day ahead. Breaks are hard. Any and all breaks are hard for any and all reasons. Routine is life. I told him I was not sure what we were doing today. He started repeating about not having music therapy and riding the bus to school but he was still going to have his vision therapy. He wanted to go see his grandma today but I also want to be careful with what days he does things so he doesn’t think that he can do those exact same things every time. It’s all part of that routine that we have to keep changing so that it doesn’t become routine. Even though routine helps the process, life is anything but routine, and I need him to understand that we can’t always do the exact same things on the exact same days. He wanted to go to breakfast with his grandma and then over to her house but he had an appointment for tomorrow and I thought that might be a better day for him to go to breakfast. As the morning went on, it was supposed to get prettier in the afternoon and my mom and I thought about taking him to the park. I explained to Owen that we were going to go to grandma‘s house and then she was going to take us to the park after we ate lunch. He wanted to play on her computer and her tablet. His computer is still broken and so he is missing his computer. He kept repeating black computer and not the fact that we were going to the park. The whole way to grandma‘s house. I repeated the steps. When we got to Grandma‘s house he wanted me to go bye-bye like I do on Saturdays. Instead, we all went inside for a couple of minutes, and then we went to get lunch. He was not happy that he was not able to direct her to where he thought we were going to go. They go driving on Saturdays and he tells her what he wants to see. Even though he knew what we were doing today and we had gone over the steps numerous times this was still extremely difficult for him to process. We got our food and we were able to go back to my mom‘s house but instead of eating with them, I took my lunch to go so that he could have some time with his grandma. These are the emotional days, these are the hard days. How do you explain to someone that their expectations of a day are not what the day is going to be? Even though I explained it all to him, it was still not what he thought it was going to be. Once he got back to my mom‘s house he was much calmer and ate his lunch. I came back to pick him up to go to his vision therapy and by that time, he was ready to go. It still took me thirty minutes to convince him to leave. Even though he wants to do something he can’t always process the steps to do something. He wanted to go to vision therapy, but it was still hard for him to leave my mom‘s house. When we got to his appointment, he did fine. It was still difficult for him to process everything, the expectations of what he wants to do and what happened are really hard. He has a set agenda he wants, and if that’s not how the day goes it quickly escalates and can turn into meltdowns. After his vision therapy appointment, we came home and I asked him what he wanted for dinner and I gave him several choices. He went with his own selection of waffles. I try to get him involved in the decision-making of what he wants to eat because that helps the process. Constantly cycling through foods and giving more choices is what helps Owen not get stuck on one particular food. I also make him try bites of everything because you never know when he’s going to like some and that keeps him growing in his food choices as well. It’s all part of the expectations of what he wants to eat but including other foods is what helps propel his eating habits. He fell asleep hardly saying anything else about the days ahead, but he knows that he has a therapy appointment tomorrow he’s requesting to go to dinner with Grandma. I don’t know that we will go to dinner and this will probably throw him off too. I’m hoping for a good night's sleep, and a great day tomorrow. I never imagined something like turning left when my son wants me to turn right, would cause meltdowns that would last the day. Trying to find ways to keep him calm and keep him moving forward is the goal. I’m thankful for his growth and I’m thankful for the love and support of his grandma in our days. Find your motivation, know that you are strong, and go after your dreams. Smiles to all and donut daze!
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