When dealing with a child on the autism spectrum schedules and routines are important, even critical in some households. When we stray from our normal routines, my children get upset and often act out. But when they know what to expect, the day does much easier.
Establish the routines early
Everyone has their own routines in our house. This is great because everyone knows what is expected of them and each person’s routine works around the other to avoid conflicts. We know what chores the kids, and we the parents, have, and it makes sure everything is done.
We recommend established routines to parents with kids in general, but especially when their kids are on the spectrum. The kids love knowing what to expect. They find it calming. Our eldest may ask us a dozen times on Tuesdays about going out to eat, and when we tell him we are…he smiles so big. He knows we are, but he loves that reassurance.
It takes a little work and adjustment to set up the routines and schedules, but once it is done harmony can be achieved in the home.
When you know change is coming…
We have found that if we know something in our schedule or routine is going to change that it is best to let our kids know in advance. They do much better with accepting changes if they know in advance and it is not sprung on them at the last minute.
What’s even better is having a treat or doing something better than what you normally do. So for instance if for some reason we cannot go out to dinner on Tuesday, like we normally do, then we tell our sons that we will not be able to go to dinner on Tuesday because there is an activity for school that evening, however we can have pizza that night and go out on Thursday instead.
Unexpected changes…
My oldest son knows our routine and if we change it, he gets upset and every little thing seems to make it worse, even if he could normally handle it.
For example, garbage collection is on Tuesdays for our house. Our eldest takes the cans to the street in the morning, and brings them back when he gets home from school. Well, one week our garbage collector missed our street. When my son came home from school he went to pick up the garbage cans from the curb and realized they were still full. He simply couldn’t deal with this. A full blown meltdown commenced.
Who would have thought that this would have been such an issue? So we quickly moved into the managing unforeseen change mode. We worked on breathing exercises, reminding him of the routines that were still in place, etc. Unfortunately it was all for naught.
Our last resort when he is overwhelmed is redirection. We went with that, and luckily it worked. Tuesday night is also family dinner out, and we were able to distract him with that family dinner at his favorite restaurant. It was a challenge, but we were able to get him into the car and by the time dinner was over, he was back to his normal self.
Now, I was able to contact the trash collection services and get them to pick up our garbage the next day. Even though the garbage was collected the very next day, he worried about the garbage being picked up on time for about a month.
Handling that change
Since we can’t foresee every possible change coming our way…we look for ways to minimize the impact of that change. We found that addressing it early on is much better than later, hoping the kids won’t notice – because trust me…they’ll notice.
When we run into a problem, we handle it like we did above:
First, work to resolve the issue if possible. We called the garbage collection to see if we could get it picked up that day, and when not, got it for the next day. We made sure our son knew we had called them and that they were coming. Just like we let our kids know when there is an upcoming change, we let them know we’re working on fixing the existing issue too.
Second, we worked on self-calming. For our eldest, that is his breathing exercises and/or jumping on our trampoline. When the weather changes our plans, its often bad since we usually can’t use our trampoline either. Other people might have sensory toys, a weighted blanket, etc. Use what you know works.
Third, minor redirections. This can be seeing he our son wants to watch YouTube, getting a snack, etc. These are normal things he does, but we can easily redirect him to.
Finally, no matter what, get back on schedule as quick as you can. We’ve taken baths earlier than normal, or taken the kids out to eat a little early in some cases. Why, because we were working on getting them back on their schedule. With the garbage pickup issue, dinner was about 30 minutes early that day. It allowed our son to get back into the routine of things.
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