Change

One of the things that a child with Aspergers has increasingly difficulty with managing or even understanding is change. Noah is a creature of habit, a term that his preschool director Mrs. B once gave him and has stuck in my head ever since. Going through transitional periods we as parents have to prep him for change tell him what to expect, when to expect it and remind him of it several times over. As I go through a period in my life where I am surrounded by my environment and everything I have known before maternity leave changing but me I have to remind myself of this as well. However seeing how Noah deals with change and how I deal with change it turns a new light onto me in trying to understand how change makes Noah feel.

He is often confused or angered by change. More than often his emotional state turns into a temper tantrum of resistance almost as if his anger is going to stop or prevent the things around him from changing. This temper is more than often hard to break him free of for a period of time. I can understand his anger. He doesnt like change and develops a highly stressed emotion when he cant control it- he likes things how they are. Now, most of us do not act out this way we rather internalize our feelings about change around us a little better than him. But, in reality how does it really affect those around us? I have noticed for one that I have become rather grumpy this past week and enter what I call survival mode. Trying to find a way to make my world better while those around me are changing. Most of us just find a way to step back and absorb what is going on. We all handle it differently.

Challenging myself this week in trying to understand Noah and how he thinks and feels has really enlightened me into seeing things in his perspective as an effort to find a way to develop actions or steps that he can practice to soften his symptoms of Aspergers. The ability for him to see the big picture from the changes that he will face in life already faces a huge impairment just from the way that he thinks overall. Training him to understand everything has a consequence to an action whether it is good or bad will be a long process but I know in my heart that he will persevere and find his own way to handle change, just as many of us have grown to do in our own lives.