I have written about my son’s seeming inability to follow basic instruction before but today it came to a head when instead of going straight into school as I instructed him, as I do every single school day; he veered off after I pulled away in the car and he walked inbetween the school buses and almost got hit by the disabled lift on the school bus as it was being lowered, thankfully the school staff and bus drivers were sharp in noticing him walking underneath the wheelchair lift!
For the foreseeable future, we have no option but to walk him to the school door, we can’t take the risk of him getting hurt or others getting hurt because of his actions. I started dropping him off in the drop-off/pick up lane half way through through his first grade year, trying to give him a little freedom and trust as all his classmates were being dropped off by their parents, I wanted to make him feel the same as the other kids, trying to not isolate him from his peers but sadly today proves that we can not allow him these freedoms as he puts himself and others in danger! I hate to admit it but my wife was correct; she said that he couldn’t be trusted to make his way into school on his own, I disagreed saying he will never develop any independence if we don’t allow him any freedoms, maybe it’s too early?
The scariest thing about it is that he doesn’t even recognise the danger, when quizzed about it he just says, “the bus driver saw me”; when we say to him “but, what if the driver didn’t see you?”, “but, they did see me” is his automatic answer. We have the same problem with roads, parking lots and trips to the store, he’ll wander straight out into oncoming traffic if we don’t catch him, in the store he’ll aimlessly wander in front of people’s carts, it’s pure luck that he has not been hit by a car in the parking lot or cart in the store, but one day his luck will run out!
Even more bizarre is that it’s hit or miss; he’ll stop at the side of the road half a dozen times and we think he’s finally getting it then he’ll wander straight out into the road without paying attention, luckily this has only happened in our apartment complex where the traffic is very light! This makes me think that it’s more that he simply doesn’t want to do as instructed, a form of rebellion or simple stubbornness!
We understand that Autistic children have problems with multiple instructions, and we have been deliberately giving one instruction, for example, “unbuckle your seat belt”, “open the door”, “”get out the car, “close the door” and “walk straight into school”. Even simplified instruction like that doesn’t always get through first time, we sometimes have to say the instruction two or three times, we are at a lost at how to combat this, we’ve tried suggestions from therapists, school teachers and his psychologist with varying amounts of success but often it doesn’t work for long, it’s like he gets bored of earning time or points towards treats and rewards.
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