Last week this is what J told his Dad whilst they were playing.
We explained a couple of months ago to J that he has something called Aspergers which sometimes people call Autism. He’d heard us talking and he is aware that he’s a little bit different to some other children and started asking questions. So we thought we’d try explaining things to him ……… a little afterall he’s only 4.5 years old, (“I’m nearly 5″ I can hear him saying! LOL), so we didn’t want to overload him with information that he doesn’t need to know just yet. We’ve tried explaining that everyone is different, some people look different and some people are just wired differently, (that was an interesting chat, he pointed out that we don’t have wires in our brains LOL), so they think differently or act a little different to other people.
Anyway, I had a mixture of feelings as I listened to J and his Dad, I was enjoying watching them play when J quite randomly, (as he does quite often) changed the subject and said to his Dad, “I don’t want Aspergers anymore Dad, I just want to be normal!” My initial reaction was heartbreak. Then as I listened to more of the conversation I felt extremely proud of my hubby as he tried explaining to J that no-one is normal and that everyone is different and has different abilities and weaknesses. J responded with “I don’t want to be different anymore!” Bless him, cue tears prickling my eyes. Dad then went on to explain once again how everyone was different and he was perfect just the way he is……..
J then came back with “But I just want to be normal, I don’t want to be different ‘cus I keep having sillies, (tantrums and meltdowns) and then I lose things” AHA! So this was a reaction to the new rules in our house, when J is aggressive and hurts someone he goes straight to a red traffic light and loses one of his “privileges” (such as computer games, tv and so on), when he has a tantrum for whatever reason and shouts and screams at us, (and others) in a negative way he goes to amber and gets a warning that he has to try to change his behaviour. It’s taken alot of effort from all of us, our days would be forever peaceful if we just gave in or let him play on the computer all the time, wouldn’t they? And they’ve meant alot of new changes for J. Anyway with the new knowledge that we had hubby took a slightly different approach explaining once again that everyone was different but we had to work really hard at the things we were each good at and extra hard at improving some of the things we weren’t so good at so that we didn’t lose things and instead got extra rewards. They spent a little while longer chatting about it until finally J changed the subject again, I think some of what hubby was saying to him went in….. I hope so.
