Right Now!, originally uploaded by cheryl.
It's something you should know about Sawyer. If he wants something, he's going to keep coming back to it over and over again. The boy understands that you're telling him no, of course. He's just refusing to hear you. And he will attempt to wear you down, time after time after time, until you finally give in.
It's simply his way.
If he thinks he wants something in the pantry, he will walk into the kitchen every few minutes and rattle the (locked) pantry door knob. Surely someone will have gotten into it at some point and maybe, just maybe, forgotten to lock it back.
And the refrigerator, well it's usually not locked. Eventually, if he looks often enough, he's going to find an opened can of Mountain Dew sitting on the top shelf (and he will absolutely climb the shelves to get it down). And sneaky little thing will creep back into the sun room and drink every last drop before you've even noticed it's gone.
Persistence is just one of his things.
Yesterday at the park, he desperately wanted someone else's Gatorade bottle.It's not uncommon. One of the biggest challenges for me, taking all three boys places, is keeping tabs on all of them and making sure they behave.
With Connor, that means playing nice and not talking an adult's ear off, which he is quite likely to do. With Xander, it's not wandering off too far in his search of letters on signs or not stealing another child's bike (or ride along toy). And with Sawyer, it's keeping him away from other people's food and drinks.
Yesterday he wanted that Gatorade. He made three passes at it, always with me close on his heels, before the other parent said something to him. I don't remember the exact words, something to the effect of he should know better than that and he would smack that hand if he kept reaching for it.
I didn't like it.
It shouldn't have mattered, of course. It was a perfectly reasonable request. My son is old enough to know better. He does, in fact, know that he's not supposed to take other people's things. Or at least that he will not be allowed to do so. We work hard with him on concepts like sharing and keeping our hands to ourselves. We work on things like that all the time.
And if the other parent had said that to Connor, I wouldn't have given it another thought. I might not have liked the tone, but it probably wouldn't have bothered me. Maybe because I knew my typical five-year old did know better, and would not have been doing something like that anyway.
But it wasn't Connor. It was one of my four-year olds. With autism. Who is stubbornly persistent about anything he wants. And he wanted that Gatorade.
As I was right behind him anyway, I simply redirected him back to the swings. And I looked at that other parent for a moment after I did so, deciding. The tone had bothered me, especially directed at someone else's child.
Finally, I simply told him.
My son has autism. Though I hope he knows better than to take someone else's drink, he is not going to understand words or threats like those. That's why you see me following him around, why I have been one step behind him just close enough to keep his hands away from your son's drink this whole time. I know better, and I try to teach him to know better, but sometimes I simply have to redirect him to something else. All he sees is there is a drink sitting on that table, that no one else is drinking, and that he wants to drink. That's how autism works sometimes.
The parent didn't say anything else. And the next time Sawyer made a pass around the table, the drink was no longer sitting on the table. Even when Sawyer looked around (he knew it was there somewhere), the parent didn't say anything to him, just kind of smiled at him and continued talking to other people in their group.
And that, I suppose is enough.
I hate feeling the need to explain to everyone, even complete strangers, that my children have autism. That sometimes their behaviors are not simply poor manners. I hate the label, the stereotype and so many of the perceptions that go with it. But at the same time, I also know that if someone doesn't explain it, they might not ever understand it.
And maybe, just maybe, next time that parent will see that a persistent little boy may not necessarily be a bad little boy. At the very least, perhaps it will make that parent stop and think before using that kind of tone with someone else's child.