Our Grandson, aged five, is high functioning autistic. Among the many things that make up his persona is an obsession with repetitive order. His cup must be red, there must be four sandwiches, Tuesday is porridge day ..... these and many other things are set in stone and woe betide us if we get it wrong! ...... meltdown, food on floor, drink up wall .... you get the picture.
The same applies to his play. There must always be two dice, his train set must be set up exactly the same every time, and the carriages must always be in a certain order, there have to be an exact number of counters in his tipping-point game ..... so on and so forth. The list is long and the banana-skins waiting to slip us up are many ....
We began, a few months ago, to gently challenge some of this and we did it by introducing the idea that there is a whole bunch of pesky fairies that love to be naughty by messing with things. We've managed to get to a point where, if we DO get things 'wrong' our grandson will actually find it amusing rather than have a meltdown because .... the drink fairy did it, or the sandwich fairy, or the train fairy.
He won't necessarily eat, or drink or play .... until it's put right, but at least we CAN put it right now where previously we'd likely have meltdown and would not be able to, or allowed to, fix things.
Thought I'd share it, because it' shows that you CAN break through if you can find the right key!
