My son cannot physically make himself hurry

Post Reply New Topic

Seems rude to me to walk into a support group where people are discussing how the brain dysfunction they were born with makes processing so difficult it often causes them overwhelming anxiety, causing them to be unintentionally late - and telling them all they're rude and selfish for being who they are.

Maybe people like you are rude when you clench your tight little sphincters and start complaining the second the clock ticks past the minute. Take a chill pill before that high blood pressure pops an aneurysm. Go ahead, Speed Racer. Leave without me. Please.

The first time I went to the Autistic Adults Association monthly meeting in my country I was so afraid that I procrastinated and arrived 20 minutes before the end of the meeting. The director was very wise in his reaction. He said: "Welcome to our meeting, Greentea. We don't mind what time you arrive, you're always welcome to join in. But we can't promise we'll stay over for people who arrived later." Indeed, after 20 minutes I was having such a good time and the meeting ended. So next time I'll be on time. That was wise of him.

You get ready early when people have to be somewhere at a certain time like to a movie. My husband does that for me. Only time he doesn't have to do it is if we are going somewhere where we don't need to be there at a certain time like going grocery shopping. How hard is it to get ready early? I've seen people here claiming they get up an hour and a half before work because that's how long it takes them to get ready. I like to get up an hour before work so I am not rushing. Sure I can wake up and throw on some random clothes and then I am out the door if I slept in. I have had to skip brushing my teeth and breakfast when I slept in before when I lived in Montana. If I had pop tarts, I would just grab one as I go out the door.

And just so you know, when people keep me waiting and I need to be somewhere, I get anxiety and it can lead me to a meltdown when the person is going too slow and I feel they are torturing me. That's another reason why I hate people and would rather be alone so no one is bugging me and causing me friction. So that's why my husband and I have a solution. I tell him the time we have to be somewhere by and tell him when we would have to leave so he can get ready sooner and be ready by that time. He always puts his shoes on like ten minutes before we have to go and he goes making sure he has his wallet and keys and knows where they are. My ex on the other hand refused to get ready early because he take too long getting his shoes on and his coat and grabbing things he wants to bring with and not knowing where he put his things. I tell him to get ready and he wouldn't and then when it be time to go, he still wouldn't be ready. He just wouldn't do any solutions for your own needs and I don't think he cared about my anxiety. Well that's how he lost me, one of the reasons why.

I usually get everything ready the night before I go to work, otherwise by the time the morning comes I might be very slow to recall what I need to take with me. Same for going on journeys, I try to get it as close as possible to just getting up, picking up the bag and going. Though I can get myself in a tizzy about whether or not I've identified all the things I need to do, even when there's hours to spare. Perfectionism and poor organisational skills don't go well together.

I hate it when I'm ready early but daren't do anything with the extra time in case I get absorbed in the task and end up being late.

The problem of meeting a deadline when somebody else has to be taken along is a very common one even with neurotypicals. Some folks just don't seem able to stick to agreed times for being ready. I knew of a guy whose girlfriend always ended up late due to taking too long to get ready. He thought he'd fix things by telling her a white lie - that they had to leave by 7.30 when the real deadline was 8.00........she came downstairs around 7.50, then when he told her they had a few minutes extra time, she suddenly remembered something "urgent," disappeared upstairs again, and didn't come back till 8.20 I guess he should have kept the lie going till they were well on their way. But the trouble is, the trick would only work once.

Another method of giving the tardy one a gentle push is to go out of the door, leave it open, walk a few paces down the street, and then stop and wait. This might serve as a hint, and the other person might even think that you've gone. Sometimes it seems to improve the response time, though it's not much use if the other person is in the bathroom - though if the house gets burgled it might correct things next time.

One thing I've observed is that people don't like being kept hanging about, so while A is waiting for B, A will find something to do, then when B is ready they have to wait for A to finish what they're doing, so B starts doing something else, and the whole process goes into a loop. Drives me nuts when I get stuck in that.

This may be why I can't tolerate pressure. I do things at a leisurely pace, which works pretty well for me. I even speak slowly. At work, I accomplish far more than people who make a show of always being busy. But, try to make me do things in a hurry and I go crazy. You do not want to be around me when I've been pressured. I don't want to be around myself, either, but I have no choice.