Daring a grocery trip with a profoundly autistic son
A mom must become a “special forces counter-insurgency specialist” to attempt some errands.
By Leanne Morphet
It's been about two and a half months since I dared venture to go into the store with ZMan. Yesterday, he asked so nicely to go, so I once again channeled my inner Brené Brown, chose to live bravely, and did a trip at 5:05 (yes, the start of after work rush hour) to Wally's World.
So what necessitates these feelings of not wanting to bring my beautiful boy into a store? My child exhibits aberrant and challenging behaviors that seem to come out of nowhere, frequently manifesting themselves at stores, culminating in various forms of (usually mild) property damage.
The current terminology we use to label the most prominent of these challenging behaviors is "dumping." Zach is not throwing with force, nor trying to break these items that he "dumps." The objects of these behaviors range in shape, size and form from paper bags (the most innocuous of things to dump) to eggs (who can forget the Great Tops Christmas Eve Egg Break of 2018) to a one-time encounter (thankfully) of a shelf of ceramic mugs at Michaels.
When I am on one of these trips with Zach — I am nothing short of a special forces counter-insurgency specialist, coming up with a comprehensive plan to simultaneously defeat and contain the behaviors and address its root causes.
This means I have had to cultivate a strategy to include determining if he is about to have an episode, informing those around me what is happening, handling any needed compensation for any irrevocable property damage, and, of course, all while having to dynamically develop a clear exit strategy. A true balancing act when contemplated solo — as I now do as a single parent.
We enter the store, I then consider every environmental factor we encounter filtered through what I understand of his specific sensory profile of what may cause him distress or undue attention, which seems to help, but certainly not always predict when he is ready to strike, and always ready for me to counter strike if he should decide or react to these things.
This is no time for Leanne to be doing the family grocery shopping — one distraction of a special on Baby Bella Mushrooms for Momma and *BAM*, Zach could be found throwing a cantaloupe (midfield if we were out at the stadium) clearly into the cruciferous vegetable section of the produce aisle.
The stunned look of our senior citizen shoppers as a bag of oyster crackers is turned into large pieces of fun shaped baked flour confetti in just an instant has sworn me off eye contact of all sorts because the last thing I need to be is distracted by another person's reactions when having to make sure the shrapnel of these episodes is contained and that Zach is safe.
Oh there is so much more to share but I will leave you with this feel-good moment: as I left the store with ZMan pushing the cart to our very sexy minivan — I did the quarterback's touchdown dance in the parking lot and high-fived my boy.
We had left the building and no, nosiree-bob, security was not called. #Victory #HellYeahAutism.
Leanne Boulware Morphet is an autism mom and advocate living in Central New York, and can be found occasionally recording her escapades at indomitablespiritgoddess.blogspot.com.
