I have a friend that I recently met through another mutual friend. She has a child, older than Logan, who is also autistic. Her mother explained the challenges she and her husband face raising this child...most of it sounded very familiar. One of the things that came up was the fact that she can't hang pictures on the wall or put a freestanding lamp in a room. I said, "Yeah, us too." Reason being, dear readers...our children will knock them off the walls or pull them over.
Now, I'm sure that someday, someone who does not have an autistic child or who doesn't believe in autism (these are probably the same people who don't believe in the Holocaust, either), will say, "Just tell them not to do it. You need to discipline them." Heh. Heh heh heh. Heh.
It's not that simple, really. Autistic children are sometimes very single-minded. They do fixate on objects or ideas...see the entry titled "Autism Brings a Friend". There are OCD behaviors that couple with autism, there are anxiety disorders, there are a number of things. When Logan's autism emerged, he started climbing onto the kitchen counter and playing in the kitchen sink. It didn't matter how many times we pulled him out of there...it could be fifty, one hundred times...he would go right back in there. And no, spanking him did not work and neither did taking away privileges or favorite toys. Spanking an autistic child is like turning up the volume on an already blaring radio...it's counter-productive and it doesn't accomplish anything except create more of the same behavior or something worse. Autistic children do understand privileges...after a lot of repetition. And Logan didn't have a favorite toy..other than water.
So why is hanging a picture on a wall or having a lamp in the room such a big deal? I'm sure there are many reasons but one of the major ones is visual stimulation. I talked before about "stimming"...how autistic children stimulate themselves through their five senses. One girl made a lot of nonsense noises because, it was found out later, she had no way of blocking the ambient noise in her environment. It all came into her all at once...and making a lot of loud noise herself gave her one noise to concentrate on. When an autistic child sees too many things at once...pictures all over the wall, for instance...it's more than they can handle. There are too many things to look at all at the same time, especially if these are pictures of a person, making an expression. (The same girl communicated that she never looked anyone in the face because staring at someone's face was like looking at a thousand faces at once...she was that observant of the changes in facial expression and emotion.) As far as a lamp...who knows? If the child is used to the room looking a certain way, and suddenly, something new is introduced...like a lamp, which, by its nature, commands attention (it's freestanding and gives off light, usually tall and has a wide top)...then perhaps that's why a child would react with agitation and want to knock it down...they are trying to remove the thing that is bothering them. I have said before...autistic children always do things for a reason. There is a reason behind the odd behaviors, the strange noises, the aggression and the stimming. Logan is my personal puzzle. I will spend a lifetime unlocking all of his reasons...but each time I do...I find a new epiphany and I learn a little more.
Meanwhile...yes...sometimes, we will try to sneak a picture or a lamp into the landscape. If he doesn't notice, or it doesn't bother him...we'll do it again. Perhaps by the time our last child goes off to college, the house might look normal? Baby steps, Bob...baby steps....
