Managing Autism - A Personal View

Yes, we survived, and yes, the day was a success.

As Elissa indicated in our previous post, the preparation for the Birthday Party was nothing short of ‘professional’.  We had worked for days with Jack on social behaviours and the natural consequences of any choices he might make (and thanks Bonnie for your suggestions - we added these on the morning of the event just for good measure)!

The Party was scheduled to run for around 3 hours and initially we were prepared to exit at whatever point necessary - even before the party got underway if we needed to!  But Jack handled himself and the environment superbly. 

Taking the safest option, I stayed right by Jack’s side for much of the Birthday Party.  I was constantly planning one step ahead and analysing any potential threats to his state of mind but remarkably he remained calm and clear headed for most of the time.

We actually made it through the full length of the Party - about 10 minutes before the end (naturally at a time of changeover when many of the other children’s parents began arriving to pick them up) his ‘eyes rolled back’ and the behaviour started to become somewhat impulsive but we swiftly made the move towards the door and managed a graceful exit before things got out of control.

During our usual ’post-event debrief’, Elissa and I discussed just how ‘on the ball’ you need to be with a child such as Jack.  There is no room for letting your guard down, and you can’t afford not to prepare yourself well in advance.  But when you can walk away from an occasion such as the ‘Birthday Party’ and feel as proud as I did of how he handled himself, it is definitely worth all the hard work.

Steve

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 4:30 am and is filed under Dad's View, Personal Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.