I must say that I do not compare healthy children and children with autism spectrum disorder in any way. Health is always much better for parents, for the child himself, for society, but if he already has and he has features he is still loved and looking for advantages and enjoy life. I’m talking about my child, that even if the child has a problem can be found in this positive aspects.
So, if the family grows autistic, then:
- It saves electricity. If the street is dark, the light can only be lit in those rooms where someone is, in the rest she turns it off. When the time comes to sleep, the lights turn off everywhere.
- Order. Alice always sees the dirt on the floor and requires to remove it. Now she already helps me sweep the floor (the sound of the vacuum cleaner unnerves her), in the future I plan to shift this responsibility to her shoulders. She is able to wipe your Desk, before bed always (without reminders) removes the toys in place. Helps to make the bed. Assistant in this sense it is excellent. If, for example, the eldest 17-year-old son can throw his socks anywhere, the daughter always puts them strictly in the washing machine.
- Orderliness. Thanks to my daughter, I became more organized. I learned to plan the day, follow the schedule and it turned out that it is very convenient. People spend money on training to learn how to set goals, plan time, we learned this thanks to Alice. In order to teach her something new, it is necessary to correctly set a goal, assess the available resources, think through an action plan and control points to assess the result. This works on any activity.
- Early rise at the same time. I do not start the alarm, Alice in 90% of cases wakes up to 7 am, I, respectively, too. There are exacerbations when she does not sleep all night long (I wrote about this here), but every year they are less and less and in General the regime is observed. Interestingly, if I Wake up with Alice, I feel rested and full of energy, and if she spent the night at grandma’s (it really was a long time ago, because we changed the place of residence and it is written here), then to Wake up to an alarm clock very hard, I want back to bed and sleep until lunch.
- Not pulling in his mouth little things. She never pulled small objects into her mouth, even when she was very small or teething. At one time she loved to play with coins, she stuffed them into the folds of the sofa and got high, but never pulled in her mouth. The head is a separate issue, she doesn’t like touching hair, face, head.
- She’s easy to please. She does not ask for toys in the store, does not buy bright advertising, she follows her inner interests. Any puzzle leads her to delight. Recently, she still loved to paint, so now it is possible to please more and coloring.
- If it is taught something, it will follow it perfectly. It is worth spending 10 days to convey to her the idea that this shelf (for example, where knives are stored) can not be opened and she will not open it, neither when parents are around, nor when they are not, but really want to. She doesn’t want to. Yes, there are skills that need to be constantly maintained, for example, speech, it is constantly necessary to encourage, provoke the utterance of words. As soon as we stop doing it she stops talking and stops using it, but with simple household skills learning works with a Bang.
That’s what the list was. Love your children, in any child you can find his strengths, even if someone from the outside they seem a mere trifle, for someone they are a huge achievement.