Skip to main content

Knowing Your Child's "Limits"

We recently took a trip to visit friends and family. Traveling in a car, train or plane for long lengths of time, visiting unfamiliar places and restaurants can be challenging for any small child, but it is sometimes extra hard when you have a child with special needs.  Kids and especially those with Autism like their routines.  Dominic has been really good lately when we have taken him out to restaurants, we are basically able to stay as long as we want and chat amongst ourselves, while he entertains himself.  Well, on my birthday we tried taking him to my favorite restaurant, a Chinese place that I grew up going to.  The minute Dominic got to the restaurant, we tried to get him to sit in the chair next to me, that lasted just a brief amount of time.  He then went over to sit next to my brother, which would have been fine, but he kept lying down on the seat and trying to go under the table.  I decided I needed to sit over on the other side of the table with Dominic and he was able to be more focused.  All was well, until a giant fly went zooming past him. That was the straw that broke the camel's back!  Dominic jumped up from the table and started walking out towards the front door.  I gently told him we needed to get back to the table, so I could finish eating.  The more I pushed him, the more he resisted.  If you told a typically developing child to get back to the table, they would probably squawk a little, but would eventually go back and finish eating.  With Dominic, he still struggles with the "why" questions.  I asked him a few times "why" he didn't want to go back to the table, but I already kind of knew why.  He is terrified of bugs.  He sees one or hears one and it really flips him out.  He has a genuine fear of them.  It hasn't always been like that, so I'm still trying to figure it out.  Since there were a few chairs near the front door and a large fish tank, I decided to just sit there with him until everyone else finished eating.  Dominic calmed down some and kept asking to sit in the car.  I told him the car was hot and we were going to have to wait.  He didn't like it, but he waited relatively patiently.  It bummed me out about 5% that I couldn't finish my birthday dinner, but I also understood that we had probably pushed Dominic to his "limit."  What fun would it have been for me to take him back to the table?  He would have been really upset.  After a while, everyone else finished and we all left the restaurant. Haven't we all seen kids crying or upset at the store or at a restaurant and wondered what was going on?  Most likely, a kid had been pushed and gone beyond their "limits."  Don't we as adults get a bit cranky if we are pushed past ours?  It was fine that I couldn't finish my dinner the night of my birthday.  It made super delicious leftovers the next day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Those "Steps" to Independence Can Be Hard

We are heading towards 600 orders for Dominic's business. Since our long-term goal for Baked Goods By Dominic is having a "brick-and-mortar" and hire those with disabilities, it is essential and imperative that I continue to teach him all parts of the business. Since I prompted Dominic for so many years for speech, he has become "prompt dependent." What that essentially means is that he will look at me for a prompt, like, "what do you do next?" I do that one a lot. Dominic has been going to a private speech therapist for over ten years and she reminds me often that Dominic usually will know the answer, if I am patient and wait for him. That has been a very hard habit to break! Dominic has an incredible memory, so I put it to the test this morning. I didn't write out the steps, I wanted to see how much he could do completely on his own. We have a customer picking up his order today, but the only thing that had been done is putting the cookies into t...
1 comment
Read more

Why We Pursued Guardianship of our Son with Autism

Last Thursday morning, my husband, Dominic and I went to our county's Probate Court and had Dominic's Guardianship Hearing. My husband and I are Co-Guardians, and we were granted "Partial Guardianship," which means Dominic can make some of his own decisions (future educational and vocational placement options, what to wear and how he wants to spend his free time), but my husband and I will make his medical, health care, legal, contractual and major financial decisions. The subject of Guardianship in the disability "world" has been and continues to be a controversial and divisive topic.  I was a panelist for an Autism Conference this past summer and presented on what it's like to have a child with Autism. Towards the end of my presentation, I mentioned that Dominic had just turned 18 and that we were going through the Guardianship process. When the attendees could ask questions, the first person that went up to the microphone started telling me that I was...
Post a Comment
Read more

Presume Competence

Since we have traveled outside of the United States since Dominic was very small, we have had to get him a Children's Passport every five years. Since his current one expires in February of 2024 and he is now 19, we had to apply for an Adult Passport. I don't know why my husband and I picked Dominic's first day of school and Michigan State University moving in their students, but the appointment was yesterady at 3 p.m. We had gathered all of the documents needed and then went into a special room in the East Lansing Post Office just for Passports. The three of us sat down and the clerk asked Dominic his age. He said, "19." Since we were also getting his picture taken for the Passport, he went into a separate room, where she took a picture of him and then let him look at it to make sure he liked it (it will be his picture for the next 10 years)!  He said he did, so he sat back down with us. The clerk filled out a bit more of the paperwork and then she let Dominic s...
Post a Comment
Read more