Schedules

I'm about to say something that most of the autism world will consider sacrilege.

You don't need rigid schedules.  Okay, not all of our children are the same so there may be some who need rigid schedules.  But before you allow all the experts force you into such a thing, learn and watch your child.

Yup.  The only rigid schedule in my house is bedtime.  Well, that and lunch time.  But lunch time was set by 7 years of school and my son's body.  I follow that schedule for those reasons, not because his mind needs it.  Bedtime is set in concrete in order to help my son do what he needs so that he's ready to go to sleep.  There are specific things I say at different times that let him know that bedtime is coming.  He knows the words.  His reactions let me know if this is going to be a hard night or an easy night.  Most nights are easy.  (And please don't let that jinx us.)  The reason this is a hard line is because my son is super hyper most of the time and needs help remembering that he needs to settle down for the night.  Each child is different.

If you think about it, you know exactly what I'm saying.  Rigid schedules work in a school environment where teachers are making a lot of rapid changes.  And honestly, they aren't needed there.  What is need is clear communication. 

That's all.  Clear communication.  That's what those strips of PECS pictures actually provide once a child knows what the picture stands for.  Until then those strips of pictures are pretty worthless, unless you are actively teaching your child what those symbols stand for. 

When my Munchkin was a toddler we, and his teachers, took efforts to make sure that he didn't "lock" himself into a schedule.  This was done by varying his activities, when they were done, and how they were done.  Instead my son learned to adapt with a few tools to aide him.  In later years he had a teacher that obsessed on the schedule issue which resulted in a lot of adaptation issues for my son.  It affected every single area of his life and was causing him to have severe rigidity issues.  I was not happy.

Any of our children can be taught to adapt but it will take time and effort on the part of everyone in the child's life.  The longer they've been kept to a rigid schedule, the longer it may take to break the pattern.  Maybe.  Some children adapt really quickly.  Remember our children are trapped, not stupid.

Now that doesn't mean that my son is completely free of the autism "rigidity" when it comes to changes.  He needs to sit at the same seat when at home for meals.  He claims specific things as his whether they are or not.  He claims the entire back seat of the van as his and won't sit anywhere else without massive fights.  And he isn't too keen on sharing the back seat when necessary, even if he likes you.  Sometimes, he has problems with new environments.  But honestly, now that I've spent more time around "typical" kids, I can see that they have these issues as well.

But he doesn't require schedules.  Instead, I clearly communicate what we are going to do before we go to do it.  For example, if we are running errands for the day I tell him what stores we are going to.  All of them.  And then I verbally remind him of what we have left when we finish each store.  If you aren't sure about your child's receptive language skills, you can use pictures for this.  We did until my son more than proved that he understood.

If there is a new experience, I clearly tell him that we are going somewhere new and that I think he will like it.  Or if it may have issues, I tell him what the issues may be and what things I have with us to help him overcome them, if he wants to.  There are successes and failures.  One of our most recent failures meant I had to make sure he knew, every time we pulled in the parking lot at Aldi, that we weren't going to Shakalaka.  Now I don't have to say it, but I'm not sure I'm allowed into the thrift store next door again yet. :-)

But our days aren't scheduled from minute to minute, hour to hour.

When it's time to work on school things, I tell him that we are working on them.  We work until I can see that he's no longer able to process new material on that subject.  Then we take a break.  I change up subjects and how they are taught to keep him from getting bored.  We use a whole variety of materials.

But underneath it all, I make sure to clearly, simply communicate what is happening. 

There are reasons that schedules work.  But the core of the reasons is that they communicate.  They communicate hard things, they communicate easy things, they communicate comforting things.  But if used rigidly without a thorough understanding that their purpose is communication, they can lock our children in boxes that are very hard to break.  Those boxes make it very hard for our children to "fit in" and deal with the rest of the world.  And that isn't a help for them.

So before you set rigid schedules with your child, work on simple communication.  Any form of communication that works for you and your child, but communication.  Trust me, no matter how trapped they are, they are trying to find a way to communicate.