Separation

I have never been a parent who has been able to see Jonathon as being separate from his autism. I guess because his autism is so pronounced. In the past few years he has been able to communicate more and more in his own genuine language, without movie talk, to let his needs be known, but other than that it is generally movie talk. Seeing the autism specialists may be helping me to "see" the Jonathon that is under the autism.

Since our visit to the autism specialists and our new way of communicating with Jonathon I'm starting to see that we can possibly make a significant improvement in how he interacts with us. It is definitely hard. Mainly because we have all been so rote in how we communicate with him and he with us. We now have to retrain ourselves and him. I know it will be worth it in the long run. It's just hard to break old habits.

I've noticed that if I don't catch (redirect) him  on his first "attempt" to converse (him using echolalia) he tends to get aggravated and thinks that I am ignoring him. For example he might say a line from a movie; if I don't intercept that thought with something else of significant "value" such as "Jonathon, I am trying to decide what to make for dinner tonight. I'm thinking about cooking a roast or chicken." That is a comment that is "current" to what we are doing and it has value compared to "I like your shirt." The shirt comment is a lame attempt at me trying to turn him "off" from his movie talk and he recognizes it as me avoiding his thoughts.

It's been a couple of weeks since our visit with the specialists. It's easy to fall back into our old habits. I find it the most difficult to stay on our new communication style when we are out in public. Mainly because my thoughts are directed at trying to get errands done and I tend to do the "uh huh, yes, no" type of answers. Outings are the worst time for me to revert back to old ways! Outings are when Jonathon's anxiety increases and we have more behaviors. I need to think about and figure out a way to make our outings more successful. I may either have to take someone else with me to help keep him "current" or I cut our trips down to just a couple of errands and the focus is on him and not the errand.

Boy this is a lot of work!