Thursday, 03 February 2011

• It's Hard to Teach Your Autistic Child Responsibility

  

  It’s not easy to teach an autistic child responsibility.  At least, it’s not easy to teach my autistic child.  My son does what he wants, when he wants.  This past weekend, my husband and me had to keep a constant eye on him.  He was determined to be in everything.  He was pulling things out of the closet, and pulling the movies out of the cabinet.

  We don’t mind him pulling one or two movies out in order to watch.  What we don’t like is when he pulls them all out and has them scattered around him.  When we caught him doing that this past weekend, we made him put them back.  The first attempt wasn’t neat.  My husband got down on the floor with him, and pulled them back out.  Then he put a couple back in, neatly, and made our son do the rest.  Dean wasn’t happy about doing it, but he did.

   

  It would have been quicker if we did it, but that would not have taught our son anything.  Correction, it would have taught him that he could make a mess and mom or dad will clean it up.  The hall closet was another story.  He is not allowed to be in there.  But, that didn’t stop him.  He was determined to get things off of the shelf.  He brought over anything he could use to stand on.  We would catch him, take it away, and tell him no.  No lesson was learned.  He continued to do whatever he could to get in there.  However, we have not given up.  He is not allowed in there, and one of these days he will understand that.  We might have to resort to taking something of his away whenever he gets in there.  He’ll understand that.

  It’s not easy to teach responsibility.  Giving in can seem like the easiest, and less stressful, way to deal with some things.  However, I have learned that giving in can make things worse.  If my son doesn’t have boundaries, he goes wild.  If he is not responsible for the messes he creates, he won’t stop.  If he doesn’t learn how to clean up after himself, I will be cleaning up after him all of his life.  If not me, someone else.

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