Living With and Loving Your Autistic Baby.<\/em> How wonderful!\u00a0 Maybe I should.\u00a0 Chapter 1.\u00a0 Delight in his placid nature. 2.\u00a0 The Difference Between Stimulation and Overstimulation.\u00a0 3. I See a Line of Cars…4.\u00a0 Revelling in Routines.\u00a0 5.\u00a0 Sesame Street:\u00a0 Who Cares?\u00a0 6.\u00a0 Finding\u00a0 Other Special Needs Parents to Hang With.)<\/p>\nBeing too soft and well, clueless as Nat’s Mommy, I couldn’t even swaddle properly. It seemed weird to me.\u00a0 I didn’t like it.\u00a0 I wanted to feel him, not wrap him up.\u00a0 The blanket ends always came undone.\u00a0 Ned had to do it.\u00a0 He was a champion swaddler.\u00a0 He would wrap the boys into tight footballs and pass them to me like an eager quarterback.\u00a0 It was explained to us that the swaddling calmed the baby, made him feel better from the pressure; it was womb-like.\u00a0 That made sense to me. I imagine now that swaddling felt really good to Nat, if it’s true what they say about deep pressure being a relief to many with ASD.\u00a0 I think deep pressure is a relief to many of us.<\/p>\n
Over the years I forgot about the beneficial pressure from swaddling, and as Nat graduated from OT and Sensory Integration Therapy (more accurately, was kicked out for being too old or too aggressive), we forgot about deep pressure, and how well he responded to being held that way.<\/p>\n
As an adult, Nat is always on the go.\u00a0 He burns hot and fast.\u00a0 Sometimes that spills over into his emotional state.\u00a0 Lately we have seen the return of his anxiety, which does seem to be somewhat seasonally inspired.\u00a0 Autumn, even a gorgeous summery autumn like this one, sets him on edge.\u00a0 I am not surprised; it does that to me, too.\u00a0 The air and the light is too sharp, like glass.\u00a0 Everything has sped up:\u00a0 the pace, the change of leaf colors, the routines.\u00a0 It may be that Nat enjoys the routine of fall, but that it’s “too much joy,” something I’ve mentioned in earlier posts.\u00a0 Too much joy for Nat means it’s just too good to bear and it flips over into anxiety.<\/p>\n
I got the weekly call from Nat’s teacher and I was not surprised to hear that Nat’s been getting worked up about routines, particularly other people’s routines.\u00a0 He is a yenta of the first degree, his nose in everyone else’s business:\u00a0 “Mommy will get dressed;” “Daddy will take off his shoes;” “Ben will eat breakfast;” “Max will wake up” (good luck with that, my son)\u00a0 At school he watches and waits for everyone to do what they’re supposed to do.\u00a0 We are all slugs, laggards in Nat’s view.\u00a0 He’s fast and efficient; what’s wrong with the rest of us??<\/p>\n
I was interested to hear Will, Nat’s teacher, say that what he has found works to help Nat be less anxious is to be firm with him.\u00a0 Confident, not soft.\u00a0 Direct.\u00a0 Tell him it is not his business, that we are not talking about Eli or Sam right now.\u00a0 He only has to think about Nat, not Max, Ben, or Mommy.\u00a0 (And people say autistics don’t notice anyone but themselves!\u00a0 Hmph)<\/p>\n
I told Ned that we are going to have to try to be more consistent and firm with Nat, that it will alleviate his stress and calm him down, even though it seems counter-intuitive.<\/p>\n
But not to Ned.\u00a0 “It’s just like the swaddling,” he said.\u00a0 Ned knows — has always known — that Nat just needs to be reigned in, and held tight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nat was the first baby the family had seen in a decade or so, the first baby of all of my friends.\u00a0 I look back and even though I was 27, I was like a girl with that tot.\u00a0 I had no one to ask except my mom, who lived three hours away.\u00a0 So everything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-s3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1744,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}