I Ruin Pants.

Many children with autism display obsessive-compulsive tendencies, some to a greater degree than others.  These behaviors and tendencies may range from wanting to wear the same type of outfit or clothing every day, to needing to look up information about trains or cars or vacuum cleaners.  What happens when these behaviors are blocked and the child is not allowed satisfy their compulsions?  Frustration occurs.  Anger occurs.  Screaming, yelling, kicking, hitting,  tantrums, self-harm...I have seen it all.

Each child with autism is different.  They display traits that are similar but in different ways, and they don't all do the same things.  For my son, clothing is important.  It's important in the sense that he is very uncomfortable in long pants, especially rough materials like denim or anything with a tight waistband.  He would, if we allowed him, wear shorts year round, rain or sun, snow or sleet.  The temperature appears to make no difference to him.

Tomorrow it's supposed to get very cold here.  Logan's teacher, and myself, both talked with him and explained that tomorrow, he would have to wear long pants.  My big mistake was leaving a pile of laundry on the table!  We came home from school before leaving again to pick up my oldest daughter, and during the short time we were home,  he found a pair of scissors and a pair of cargo pants (one of the few pairs of long pants he owns) and proceeded to cut a hole in them!

He immediately told me what he had done.  He said, "I ruin pants."  He thought if he cut a hole in them, then he wouldn't have to wear them.  Knowing that he might have to wear those pants the next day upset him so much, that not only did he cut a hole in them, he began keening and hitting things (including himself) for the duration of the afternoon.  It's still going on as we speak.  Even after I removed all the laundry and told him the pants were gone, he was still upset.

This is an unvarnished truth about autism.  This is one of the not very pleasant facts of this life...that your child will ask you, over and over and over again to the point of exhaustion, for something he is fixated on. He will get angry and loud and destructive if his compulsions are frustrated.  And it will take him hours to calm down.

What does a parent do when their autistic child acts like this?  I don't know what other parents do.  I know what I used to do.  I used to get really angry. I used to yell at my kid.  I used to cry.  Now I just wait it out because if having Logan has taught me anything, it's that every trial is temporary, and this one, too, shall pass.  The other thing I do is just stick to my plan.  I move on to the next thing I was going to do.  It doesn't matter if he's screaming or not.  It doesn't matter if he's angry.  It's like shopping for groceries in a hurricane, people.  The wind may rage and the rain may pour but I'll be damned if I get cheated out of my trip to the store.