Praising the EXTRA - ordinary

I think that the comment made in The Australian Autism Handbook is true.

“Most parents only celebrate when their child achieves the extraordinary.

For us, achieving the ordinary IS extraordinary and we get to celebrate everyday! -Barbara Morrow, mother of Alistar.”

We get so wrapped up in the things our child can’t do that we sometimes miss the moment they do something they ordinarily wouldn’t, because we think it’s normal.

I have talked about how I challenge Zac. Sometimes I do it at the wrong times, with the wrong behaviours, but I do it because there are things he needs to learn. Valuable lessons that will help him integrate with mainstream society. Don’t get me wrong, he will still be different, but I want him to know rules exist, even if he can’t abide by them or chooses not too, which we know acutely he will do.

Temple Grandin talks a lot in her seminars and books about the impact her mothers structure and routine had on her growing up. She also talks about the unrelenting persistence of her mother to “teach” important life lessons like using your manners, important behaviours in the 50’s.

In one video (available on youtube: http://youtu.be/2wt1IY3ffoU at about 18 mins), Temple talks about how it’s difficult to differentiate between a sensory processing problem and a behavioural problem, but bad behaviours should not be tolerated. Temple had to use her manners, eat with a fork, go to church; all expected behaviours of a child in the 50’s. I imagine that her mother was not one to give in to tantrums and “I don’t wanna’s”.

Raising an autistic child is demanding enough, but identifying these sensory processing issues can be really hard and it can be easy to blame one over the other.

There are things that Zac does which seems more like “laziness” than sensory problems, which leads me to the reason for this post; he achieves because we have pushed him to. We identify when it’s behavioural rather than sensory and challenge him to do greater things, which leads to him achieving what’s considered normal.

Back in October, he rode his bike. The one his grandparents brought him for Christmas in 2010. I envisaged it sitting in the shed rusting to nothing. It’s even “Toy Story” themed, so that he would hopefully obsess over it. No, it just sat in the garage.

I had it in my head he would never ride it. Riding a bike is difficult to learn for any kid, but for a kid like Zac, with little or no co-ordination and an adversity to multitasking, it was easier to settle on defeat without even trying.

But even with all these obstacles in the way, I believe that an autistic child, indeed all children, need to be challenged. Zac needed to learn how to ride a bike no matter how long it took.

I will let the video speak for itself (sorry that its sideways).

The other milestone he has reached is swimming. He had a significant adversity to the water, no matter how much we tried to coax him in. Swimming and water safety is one thing I think all children should know and given Zac’s tendency to wander, the concern is he would wander to the nearby creek or dam and drown. A sad reality many families face.

Last summer, the pool was off limits. Thinking back, the combination of the size and sound of a large indoor pool may have caused a sensory overload, but we discovered our local pool, which is much much smaller and nowhere near as busy.

After a few visits with our friends and their kids, Zac quickly got used to the water, however wouldn’t put his face or head under the water. He did a Vicswim program over the school holidays and when we went away for the long weekend, he was like a duck to water. He loves it!

There’s a time and place for challenging behaviours and some of your child’s automatic responses to difficult situations. Zac’s automatic response to almost everything is either “No” or “I can’t”. Both of these, I challenge. Sometimes he has to see there is no danger in doing something or that he will in fact enjoy it. Getting dressed on his own is something that still elicits an “I can’t”, but he forgets we know he “can” and we just endure the tantrum until he’s finished, its just one of those things. Similarly when at the pool with our friend he wouldn’t put his ears in the water. The sensory overload is that the sound of water in his ears is heightened and the fear water will somehow get inside his head is very real. When he got water in his ear by accident he was quite shocked and said, “Oh no, it’s OK.”

These have been milestones that all kids tend to reach at some point, but they don’t come to my boy naturally so these things are extraordinary for him. The praise that these milestones illicit make us look like OTT parents, but we don’t care one iota, perhaps those that do should look at themselves and how they praise their own kids.

Your kid can do extra-ordinary things, don't let your or others narrowmindedness rob your kid or greatness.