I woke up to the boys fighting this morning. Emmett was freaking out because he needs everything in his life to match and when it doesn’t, he panics and melts down.
This mornings disaster was caused because Elliott had been playing the Xbox for about an hour, while Emmett had only played for about half that amount of time. That was simply the way it worked out.
Emmett began to get really upset because the times didn’t match. He wanted to play the exact number of minutes needed to match Elliott’s time but that wasn’t possible at the time. This led to a pretty shitty start to the day a massive meltdown.
All of Emmett’s life, he’s had to have things match. Christmas presents, pizza slices, how much drink is poured into a glass. It’s a really big deal for him and if things don’t match, it’s like his life is thrown into chaos.
This is relatively common amongst kids with Autism but I’m wondering how many of you out there have faced this struggle? What kids of things have needed to match and how have you managed this?
My son doesn’t necessarily need things to match but a lot of what he does is associated with numbers or quantity. For example: for breakfast every morning he’ll have a bowl of his current favourite cereal (which changes every few months) and 4 pieces of toast. But if he has 4 weetbix, then it’s only 2 pieces of toast. And he never changes from that. If he has nuggets he has to have 6 and if you give him 7 – he probably won’t eat any!! It’s a funny and quirky trait but something I’m very much used to. He’s like this with a lot of other things too. Like, his bed time is 9pm and he wouldn’t ever consider going to bed a minute before!! We leave for school at the same time every day (I work at his school) and on the day I don’t work I can go later – but he’ll be in the car waiting because that’s when he leaves!!! We as parents are used to it and it seems you might have it a bit tougher than me. I’m in automatic mode – I just know what he does. It’s much harder ‘out there’ in the world who don’t understand these seemingly small things which are huge for our kids.
I can totally relate to that. Gavin does something similar to your son and it’s usually focused around food. I agree it’s totally automatic and we just sorta do the best we can…
My son doesn’t necessarily need things to match but a lot of what he does is associated with numbers or quantity. For example: for breakfast every morning he’ll have a bowl of his current favourite cereal (which changes every few months) and 4 pieces of toast. But if he has 4 weetbix, then it’s only 2 pieces of toast. And he never changes from that. If he has nuggets he has to have 6 and if you give him 7 – he probably won’t eat any!! It’s a funny and quirky trait but something I’m very much used to. He’s like this with a lot of other things too. Like, his bed time is 9pm and he wouldn’t ever consider going to bed a minute before!! We leave for school at the same time every day (I work at his school) and on the day I don’t work I can go later – but he’ll be in the car waiting because that’s when he leaves!!! We as parents are used to it and it seems you might have it a bit tougher than me. I’m in automatic mode – I just know what he does. It’s much harder ‘out there’ in the world who don’t understand these seemingly small things which are huge for our kids.
I can totally relate to that. Gavin does something similar to your son and it’s usually focused around food. I agree it’s totally automatic and we just sorta do the best we can…