My Favorite Hurricane
We
now enter the day after Hurricane Sandy’s visit: Schools are closed again, hundreds
of trees are down and thousands are without power within our city. But inside my house is a different type of hurricane;
he climbs, wanders, and gets into anything that isn’t locked up or tied down…I
have an Autistic Hurricane and his name is Blue Eyes!
(He was giggling and flapping his ears when I tried to take this picture)
My
boys as you know both fall on the spectrum, but on different areas. Green Eyes has speech delays and behavioral
issues, but has mostly been a hyper bouncy ball with being stuck at home during
this storm. Blue Eyes is severe,
non-verbal with aggressive behavior issues; he doesn’t take to schedule changes
very well. Needless to say he gets
thrown off course when there’s no school for more than two days in a row. Yesterday wasn’t too bad, he actually was
really good and played nicely with his little brother. Around 9:30pm everyone was sound asleep and
the house was silent except for the wind gusting outside…I always try to enjoy
this point of the evening whenever possible (this house is rarely quiet with my boys!) So after an hour or so of peaceful bliss I
began our lock down for the night. Some
of you may call me crazy but as I’ve said before, life with autism is anything
but normal, especially with Blue Eyes.
Being as he is a climber and loves to wander we have to go through a
nightly process all our own. It goes a
little something like this:
1) every kitchen cabinet door has either a
key lock or is tied to prevent him from opening anything,
2) our kitchen chairs must be carried down to
the basement and the basement door has a key lock(avoids him dragging chairs
through the kitchen to climb to higher cabinets)
3) Our oven door has a
locking mechanism so it can’t be opened(with no chairs, one night we caught him using the door
of our old oven to climb onto the counter!)
5) we have
straps to lock our fridge and freezer but he has tried to pull them off as you can see the scratches made from pulling on the locks.
and lastly 6) Lock
the front door which we have a double key lock…this means we not only use a key
to get in but a key to lock it from inside too!
Unfortunately he had one elopement a few years back, and even though he
was back within two hours safely with us unharmed (he went for a walk around
the neighborhood at 5am, the most horrifying two hours of my life!) we had this
lock put on our door that very same day.
This is done every night to ensure not only avoidance of a mess in the
morning but to ensure he is safe from elopement or injury. We also have our child “LoJacked”, yes I’m serious. He wears a bracelet with
a monitor so if he ever got away from us again (heaven forbid) we can locate
him quickly. Every month we have to change his bracelet and battery too.
So
yes I sometimes feel like I live in “Fort Knox”, but I don’t mind if it
protects my autistic angel/hurricane from any harm or creating a disaster for
us. Of course every day he tries to
think of ways to get around our hurricane preparations. Last night I awoke to him dragging my coffee
table into the kitchen. And so the adventures
continue…catch you next time! If you
have a question, comment, or suggestion, please feel free to drop me a line
below or you can contact me by email.
Thanks for stopping by to visit!
Yours
Truly,
Heather Joy
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