Big Daddy Autism

I’ve posted often about the bathroom and Griffin’s different obsessions with the loo through the years. He comes by his unhealthy interest in toilets and bowel movements naturally.  These have always been high on my list of quirks and personality oddities. Like father like son.

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A few days ago, Griffin came screaming out of his bathroom yelling;

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“OH NO!! IT FLOATS!! IT FLOATS!!”

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Having no idea what he was talking about, Mrs. Big Daddy went to his bathroom and saw that it was clogged and one of Griffin’s “special packages” was floating towards the top. Mrs. BD quickly plunged the mess and the problem away.  Story over. Or so you would think.

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Not for Griffin.  For the next hour or so, he refused to go anywhere near his bathroom and he was convinced we were going to have some sort of biblical flood.  The kid swims like a fish so I didn’t see what he was so worried about.

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Anyway, before I started building an ark and collecting pairs of animals to calm the kid down, the pizza delivery came and he moved on quite nicely.

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We all know Griffin loves traffic lights. Like Bogie and Bacall; Griffin and Traffic Lights are a match made in heaven.  Whilst stopped at one of his favorites, Griffin spotted one of those kids who hold signs directing people to “great” sales at nearby businesses.  Nowadays, this type of advertising has become an art form with the kids spinning signs, dancing and throwing the signs up in the air. It can be a bit amusing. But these signs did not amuse Griffin at all.

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The advertisement was for a large, upscale furniture store located on the corner of the intersection. The signs indicated that the store was going out of business and you can get as much as 70% off! This particular store has been having “going out of business” sales every year I have lived nearby. Twenty one years of going under and they are still in business. It’s a miracle. Not quite biblical; but close.

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This is the first year they used the human sign holders to advertise their decades long going out of busness sales. When he spotted them, Griffin became agitated and nervous. He kept asking if Harry’s (not the real name) was going out of business.  He was almost panicked and we couldn’t figure out why. He had never been in Harry’s. We had never purchased as much as a throw pillow from that overpriced establishment. Was he concerned for Harry’s family and well being? The employees being added to the employment rolls?

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Nope. Turns out, Griffin was worried if Harry’s went out of business, they would remove the traffic light we were under. This light (among around 47,000 others) is his “favorite.”  From a city planning point of view there is a semblance of reasonableness about this concern.  Less traffic = less need for a traffic light.  However, the WalMart, CVS, and Chevron station on the other three corners seemed to indicate that there would still be enough traffic to warrant a light. Did I mention that it is on an eight lane road that aways has more congestion than my nose during allergy season?  Finally, he has never, in his entire life, seen a traffic light come down once installed.

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By explaining that the advertising was deceptive and, even in the unlikely event Harry’s went the way of the Twinkie, his precious light would remain.  This sort of calmed him down and he is no longer in deathly fear that this particular traffic light will be put out of service.

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However, whenever we pass the sign holders, Griffin grumbles and glares at them.  I think, once, I saw him give one of them the evil stink eye. Needless to say, we will not be getting our new dining room table at Harry’s.

At 15, Griffin is finally developmentally to the point where he understands (sometimes) that there are consequences to his actions.  This basically means we can finally act like “real” parents and threaten him with stuff (like losing computer privileges) in response to temper tantrums or other inappropriate behavior.  We do not hold him to unrealistic standards and would never ground him for things he cannot control due to his autism.  However, there are some behaviors for which he has coping tools, strategies, and knows how to control. If he doesn’t use his tools, there are consequences.

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I’m certain that his “consequences” differ widely from most NT 15 year olds. Below is a partial list of his consequences, starting from least severe to harshest;

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*As noted above, losing computer privileges for a period of time. This one usually backfires, because when he can’t use the computer, he joins us and bombards us with questions about the weather and traffic lights. Like a prisoner being water-boarded, we quickly give in and he is back on the computer within minutes.

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*No watching the Weather Channel for a period of time.  He hates this one.  He needs to be informed, 24/7 of weather conditions all over the world. This is relatively effective some times.

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*Cancellation of his weekly elevator safari. Most weekends Mrs. Big Daddy takes him to a variety of shopping malls so he can see traffic lights and ride a few elevators.  This one works 90 – 95% of the time.  Only drawback – Mrs. BD actually likes an excuse to go to the mall each weekend.

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These are most of the regular and most used tools in our repertoire. But, like the end of WWII, sometimes you need to take out the big one.  No matter what time of year it is, if the conventional weaponry proves ineffective, we always have our game changer in our back pockets. Call it our Fat Boy, if you like.

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Santa Claus.

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Yup.  Even at 15, Griffin believes whole heartedly in Santa. Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny as well.  We use this to our advantage.  All I have to do is pick up the phone and say, “I’m calling Santa” and the boy almost always snaps to attention.  Griffin doesn’t really like gifts, but he is dreadfully afraid of being on the naughty list. Strange, since his dad never once made the “nice” list.

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Irrespective, I’m planning on using the Santa Claus Card as long as I can. Even when Griffin is older than Saint Nick himself.

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Big Daddy has flirted quite frequently with death.  Fortunately, much like all my flirting in high school and college, I have come away completely unsuccessful every time. Griffin has been fortunate that the only death of someone close to him was his great-grandmother several years back.  We told him she went to heaven. He thought we said New Haven.  On a daily basis, he checked the weather in Connecticut for years before we straightened that one out.

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Griffin is now 15 and he kinda sort of understands the concept of death. It comes up in conversation occasionally.  Basically, he will ask if he will die if he engages in certain activities like jogging or playing with his iTouch after 9:00 PM.  A few months back he expressed concern about who would take him to ride elevators after his mommy died. I volunteered, but he matter-of-factly told me I would already be dead a long long time before mommy. Cold. But true. I hope.

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We diffused that situation by having his sister agree to take him to the mall after we pass. Not much of a sacrifice by Lil Sis since her favorite place on earth is the mall.  We also eased his obsession with his own death by assuring him he will live to age 93.  Seemed arbitrary to me, but he bought it.  Until last week.

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Monday morning we received a phone call from Ms. N (his liaison / aide / lifesaver/ guardian angel / bodyguard) at school. Ms. N informed us that Griffin was refusing to go to science class today and was being quite insistent about it. When she says “quite insistent” it usually means throwing a temper tantrum that would make the Incredible Hulk jealous.

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Turns out, the reason Griff did not want to go to science class was because the teacher was doing an experiment where he would be mixing baking soda and vinegar to see what kind of reaction occurs.  Griffin was convinced that witnessing this experiment would cause certain and immediate death to him. From the way he was carrying on, it was as though he was being forced to bear witness to the denotation of an atomic bomb at close range with only a pair of cheap sunglasses to protect him.

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He knows if we have to come to school to pick him up early for tantrums or similar behaviors there are consequences.  We told Ms. N to remind him of that.  The rest of the school day passed and we didn’t receive another call from Ms. N.  Either he got over his fear and went to science class or he used one of his permitted passes to go to the resource center – a quiet room where he can chill and listen to music.  Either way, he made it through the day.

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At the end of the day, when he came bopping out of school with his usual ear to ear smile, I asked how he did in science.  He replied, as if nothing had happened earlier;

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“Great!! I did not die!!”

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I beamed with pride at my brave (but clearly delusional) boy.

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As I write this, Hurricane Isaac has passed us.  Luckily, we only got hit with the tropical storm winds and rains associated with the outer bands of the tremendous storm that is presently bearing down on the Panhandle of Florida and, ugh, New Orleans.  By the time you read this, I hope the storm has moved over these areas with very little carnage.   Although the storm itself caused very little property damage in our slice of heaven down here in the tropics, we certainly had our share of drama inside Casa de Big Daddy.

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As I’ve mentioned on this blog and in my books ad nauseam, Griffin is obsessed with the weather and terrified of thunderstorms.  That is why he was eerily silent in the week the storm looked to be approaching us.  He also handled our usually wet summer and the early onset of the aforementioned tropical wind and rains over the weekend fairly well.

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Mind you, when I say “fairly well” I mean;

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*Long periods locked in his room with the Weather Channel blaring on his TV and computer and Jimmy Neutron episodes playing on an endless loop on his iTouch,

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*Relatively few (yet manageable) tantrums,

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*With triple head-phoned protection.  (iTouch earbuds covered by Kermit the Frog kiddie headphones, with construction grade Jackhammer ear protection over the contraption.)

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But then it happened.  Last night, around 8:30 PM, after being battered by rain, wind, lighting, and thunder for a day and half, the lights flickered twice and the cable went out for about a half a minute.  Calm and sort-of peaceful Griffin snapped! Like the Hulk, the monster was released and we were treated to hours of the most intense tantruming the boy has given us in over a decade.

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Many parents of kids on the spectrum can probably relate.  When I looked in his eyes, I could not see my boy any longer.  All I saw was a raging 15 year old 170 pound man / boy terrified, crying, screaming, flailing, stomping, rocking and begging for us to go to a hotel.   We’ve survived these before but this was a big one.  Like FEMA and the American Red Cross, we have an emergency protocol we put in place for these types of Griffin Disasters.

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Category One:  We try to get his anti-anxiety meds in him.

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Category Two:  We spend an hour or so trying reason and calming techniques.

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Category Three:  When both those fail, we resort to negative consequences such as telling him he can’t watch TV or surf the web.  If those don’t work, then we pretty much need to find a way to ride it out.  We thought of going to an emergency shelter without him, but decided that would be unfair to the cats and neighbors.

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Category Four: Like Hurricane Andrew 20 years ago, this tantrum made it to a Cat 4. This is when we bring out the last resort.  We ignore him.  We try to pretend that a huge human being is not running around our comfortably lit and air-conditioned house as though his hair was on fire and the Navy Seals 6 Team was storming the exits ready to take him out like a terrorist.

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This, my friends is even harder than it sounds.  Forgetting, for a moment the damage to all our ears and the occassional pinching of our torsos, when you need to go to the refrigerator or bathroom there would be a huge lump of crying autistic boy to be jumped over or maneuvered around.  Whenever there was a moment or two of eerie silence, you’d look up and the boy would be lurking around the corner waiting for anyone to make eye contact with him again so he can descend into madness with an audience.  He quickly turned on his sister – barraging her with a hurricane facts and pleas for her to take him to a hotel.  After patiently and calmly reminding him that she was only 12 and had neither a credit card nor driver’s license about 600 times, Lil Sis too moved into Cat 4 –Ignore Mode.

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Finally, as the real Isaac still raged outside, about 4 or 5 hours into his tantrum, Griffin fell asleep.  This morning he woke up, all smiles as if nothing happened.  That is life with Griffin.  Beautiful tropical weather most of the year with the occasional monster storm thrown in to remind us of what our lives really are.   A roller coaster in the dark.

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