routine?

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ok i know this is probably a stupid post, but here goes, how important is routine?
my son has never really had a fixed routine, (not quite my style), and i wonder if it was a good thing because he never got stuck on a specific routine as seems to be the case with many kids on the spectrum.
i was wondering if it taught him to be more flexible?
i am relatively new to this dx so i don't know a lot, and i don't want to totally screw him up or stress him out or anything.
thanks

Well, teaching him to be a little bit flexible can help for life skills, but from my experience, ruining routine can really stress AS people out. You need to be gentle.

Ya, I mean I was never riggid with my routines, granted I certainly need structure in my day, i hate unknown and routine takes unknown away so I know what to expect and theirfore much less stressed. I was diagnosed with autism at a time when not as much was known about it. My parents inadvertantly did some right things and one thing they did was to lead a home life that was sometimes ordered and sometimes shook up. My dad is very aspie, tho un DX'ed, so he had alot of structure (always go to the mall on saturdays, always stay home on sundays, always work on the weekdays, always in bed at 11pm, always dinner at 4pm ect) but of course things came up, life happens and you cant be riggid all the time, years of this conditioned me to accept minor changes, they happen its called life. However a major change (such as new job for instance a year and a half ago) really screwed me up for a while. Routine can be good for us, but be sure to condition him to accept changes to routine to help him prepair and deal with whatever life may throw at him.

i've never been big on routine....i actually prefer to be spontaneous. before aspergers was ever a word that had bben uttered in our house, i always had a hard time understanding why son and hubby preferred a routine. yes, sometimes they can cope when i come up with an idea out of the blue. but coping doesn't mean that they are comfortable. we've found that keeping things consistent reduces the anxiety levels in the house

We've always been a very unscheduled family and I *thought* that our son was ok with that until I tried to introduce more routine. He responded so well. He actully does best on a scedule, but that isn't always practical.

We still don't have a routine that is set in stone, but I have found out that if I get him about an hours warning before we do something it almost eliminates the meltdowns when we are shopping. For bigger things like parties or me going to work he needs to know a day or so in advance.

My son is 10 and homeschooled so we have a pretty loose schedule and he is OK with that as long as he knows in general what is going to happen that day. He needs to be reminded several times because it seems he is always surprised when I say "Ok lets go" his reply is always "Go where??"

He is OK with changes as long as he knows about them ahead of time. The only time when a routine is really important to him is at bedtime. He has always had major problems falling asleep and he finally has his own routine that he does pretty much every night and he does this on his own. He has the occasional difficult night but his sleeping has improved 100% because of this. He needs that structure and routine to relax.

Yesterday I made the mistake of switching off the TV with only three minutes remaining in an episode of Family Guy. Paid for it with son's complete screaming meltdown and at least a quarter of an hour trying to calm him down. Need I add that he hates any sort of change in routine - unless he himself initiates it, of course.

This is a great topic.

My feeling is that their routine (when they are little) should be NO ROUTINE. Before we even knew that my son was on the spectrum, we could tell that he would get stuck in a routine -- only driving a certain way to grandma's house, for example. When we noticed that he could tell us what direction we should be going to grandma's, and got a little perturbed that we didn't go exactly that way, we purposely went as many different ways as we could. We went to random restaurants to eat on a consistent basis, we took random drives for entertainment, we read random books, etc.

I do think this was helpful, in that I think the lack of routine helped our son not have that particular issue later on. Changes in routine are commonplace in this world, and so our son learned more flexibility at an early age, and doesn't have to fight that issue now.

I agree that there are some routines that you want to promote, but those are routines that any parent would want to promote with any child, i.e. doing the homework as soon as you get home from school, hanging up your coat, brushing your teeth, etc. I also have had to prepare my son ahead of time for changes in the school routine, but we haven't had meltdown situations since he was about five or six years old.

Everyone's advice on this subject so far has been really good and helpful, I think.

Kris

I'm with Kris. No rigid routines on this end. Although, we always end up doing the same things in the same way. I've started making lists for my son and I and I've already stopped. It's hard for me to be consistent with anything. I'm working on it.

He needs to brush his teeth more regularly, go to bed earlier, and complete homework every night (some nights we don't). I want to enforce the concept of time so that he follows some time schedule. He has NO concept of time.

He loves to immerse himself in his interest for the week or day, invent (destroy the house) play imaginatively, watch a video or putter around the house and, honestly, I don't feel right imposing a strict routine because he has to conform in school all day and I know this must take a lot out of him. We go to the library, video store, McDonalds one day a week--rest of week days we stay home. Weekends-- it's bookstore, library, video store (blockbuster is like our home away from home), special interest quest (hardware store or computer store or Target or Walmart, art store....depends), swim indoors, science museum, park, movies. I guess we do have routines--not set in stone, but it's the same old same old. when we go to these places, he has a set pattern of things he does in the same way each time.

I guess I should change things a bit--I don't think he'd mind. But, if he gets his mind stuck on something, it's stuck. It's hard to divert his attention elsewhere. I dread when he introduces a thing, because I know it's his new "thing" and he'll keep at it until I can't stand to hear another word. He'll sleep with it, carry it everywhere he goes---sigh.

Is this rigid enough?

Contrarian Me, I'm really scattered but absolutely need routine. If I don't have it, I'm depressive, unfocused and forgetful. My son acts like an ADDer in the worst possible way if we don't have routine. When he was little, I had to draw picture cartoon books for simple tasks (eating at the table) then gradually made social stories and schedules. We depend on them.
Yes, we change the routine but it doesn't negate that we live inside the structure of such schedules. We teach him flexibility like any other academic subject.