Inertia

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How does inertia affect you or your kid? Mine seems to obsessively fall back on established routines and interests, I think in part, because he can't decide or doesn't know what else to do or how to do it. How do you break that cycle to introduce new things? Is inertia related to restricted interests?

i hadn't really thought of things that way..........all of my aspies will fall back on old routines when under stress.

Good question. Z tends to fall into the "I don't want to talk about It" format. Gets very adamant if pushed to hard. Right now it is I don't want to go to school. No reason given just a very firm, loud 'I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!". We do after firsts affirming that if we don't know what the problem is he will have to go to school until we can figure out what the problem is. It seems helping him stick to routine helps.

[quote=
Corsarzs - I hope Z isn't having bullying problems at school. The social stuff is always the cause of M's resistance to go.

How is Z with transitions, especially unexpected ones? Does he meltdown? Tell me about his interests - are they extremely restricted and all-consuming? Does he need help with combating boredom?[/quote]

Goku, just finished talking with Z, right now he says he doesn't know why he didn't want to go to school, claims there hasn't been any bullying at school. We have been very fortunate with his classmates, they actually seem to like him and look out for him.
they have been with [most of them] since pre school and actually brag to us about progress Z has made. The place I suspect bullying is the school bus. Z says no and I haven't been able to pin S down yet. She says no just one brat of a girl in the neighborhood. My kids are not allowed to play with her anyway.

Unexpected transitions are unsettling to Z. Yes meltdowns do occur, ie when I had to take Cor to the hospital a couple of weeks ago. To be honest we had mutual and almost simultaneous meltdowns , and I'm officially NT. He does feed off of the emotions of those close to him and often magnifies those emotions. Cor suffers from Clinical Depression and diring her bad times Z is much more apt to erupt. He even mirrors S's moods and God help me, she is starting to go through puberty. Of course he will follow my moods to but, since I'm almost perfect, that's OK.

His interests are multitude but boil down to one thing. Learning. Start with animals and work through the alphabet, if he can learn about it by talking, reading, watching, or doing he will. Often to the exclusion of other things that need to be done, like eating meals. He retains almost everything and will spit it out at appropriate and inappropriate moments. He will hyperfocus on a topic or turn around and chatter constantly about it totally unmindful that he is interrupting or intruding where he has no business. Yet getting him to write or do a report is a major challenge. He is a 63 lb package of contradictions and, frankly I love every minute of it, especially when it discomfits some " I know everything" adult .

I'm thinking about teaching him to count cards and taking him to the casinos when he is old enough.

He does withdraw, sometimes will respond to gentle careing discussion andd cuddling, or other times to "Sorry, fit time is over, go to your room and take 30 minutes to calm down and control" [we don't use time out]. Calm and control is time where he has to focus on the problem and the solution.

Hope this answers some of your questions.

breaking a routine is not good....hand-flapping, pacing, loud & agitated talking~it runs the gamut. if i *have* to make them change a routine, it only works if their mood is good~and even then i'm not guaranteed that the change will be greeted well.
sometimes it's just easier to let them do their routines than to fight the battle to break them.......in my house, i'm fortunate that the routines are not destructive, harmful, or overly obsessive. most of my aspies' routines fall under the realm of having to do certain things in certain orders or having to drive in a certain direction.

Because we have had interupted work schedules, moving across the country and trouble with schools, we have had to deal with routine-disruption. I think my son has learned to adjust fairly well, considering. It still is a silent trigger at school. But at home we have created useful tag words for them. I still write schedules that predict something new.
We use old, familiar labels for new activities. Instead of saying, "let's go for a drive", "we're driving to Starbuck's on the other side of town" or some such excuse.

The best thing for interests and expanding daily activities for us is writing them down as a plan. Doing something new is right after breakfast (or whatever daily activity). When Pop was really young, I drew pictures of the car and the family smiling.

Pop has the dual problem of having routines and getting bored by them. Writing them down just helps him organize his expectations.

I think we're pretty lucky in the whole realm of getting stuck on routine. DS does get a little stuck on routine, but we were lucky to recognize his lack of flexibility long before we realized he had an ASD and we constantly stretched his comfort level with changes in routine, and he does really well now. We keep a calendar up so that he can see ahead of time what days he goes to preschool, which helps. We also do lots of preparation when the routine is going to change. For example, before we took a family vacation, we spent lots of time talking about how some days there wouldn't be rest time, and how meal times and bedtimes would be at different times...and it all went remarkable well.

We tried, for awhile, using a written to hopefully ease transitions, but they actually created more of a problem with flexibility. If he missed something on the schedule because he refused to participate with the group and they finished before he was ready to join in, he had a HUGE meltdown. If we go back to a schedule like that, we'll be sure to have a post it to stick on that addresses a change in plans.

Thanks Goku, still not up to par. Waiting on test results and next doctor's appt. We think this and SOL review, always a problem this time of year, he knows the material why waste time reviewing it, are why Z is having such a roller coaster ride right now.

Back to preparing for changes. Sometimes we write down pending changes, mostly on the calender, but we bring them up often in conversations, often. On proposed changes to family routines it's more like, "remember we might go fishing this Saturday if we can." We have learned to not make a definitive statement if other forces may influence an activity. Never promise a child something unless you are 100% sure it is going to happen. With Aspies prepare them even for possdible changes, even to proposed changes. Does that even make sence? I know what I'm saying, do you?

The good thing is that even with this confusing process Z has become moderately more flexible.

Thanks shauna and Corsarzs. We didn't do any rigid schedules or calendars when M was younger and he experienced lots of changes as we used to travel with Dad on business. He still was somehow easier to redirect. Maybe it was because his interests were more concrete than they are today and we could easily take them with us if we had to do something. Now that he's a teen, toys are out and friends are in. It definitely gets more complex when your obsession is dependent on someone else.

He generally does ok with typical changes, it's not that. The problems occurs when he is on the phone or is expecting a call from his friend (which is always), then all bets are off and a meltdown can happen if he has to stop to do homework or go to sleep or has to fill his time with something else if he can't get his friend on the phone. I really hate having to limit his phone time since his friend is equally interested but that's pretty much all he wants to do. He tends to plan the next call before he even gets off the last one with a specific time like 7:24 and then becomes anxious, restless and starts pacing when the time is near or God forbid, past. He's devastated if the phone doesn't ring at the exact time he planned. And finding something to occupy his time when not on the phone is a tortured experience.

There are rules: he can call max 3 times, no calls before 11AM or after 8:30PM and we're working on max 4 hours total. This one is the hardest. Four hours is not enough for him. At the moment it's more like 6-8 hours a day. Is this crazy or is it just me? I really wouldn't care if he spent all day on the phone except that he's not getting off approprately when transitions are necessary. What to do?

P.S. we never make arbitrary rules without his cooperation and consent so these rules were established with his imput and agreed upon with a handshake.

P.S.S. a cell phone is not an option.