Parties

We’ve been to a fair amount of parties in Aiden’s day.  It usually goes okay if Aiden finds someone to run around with or if he has a phone or tablet to use during the party.  But since we haven’t had any huge problems occur in that area lately, it gets easier to take it for granted and think that he’s just fine with everything that’s going on around him but that’s not true and he reminded me of that recently. We were at a more formal party this time so he had no toys and no electronics to keep him content. Thankfully he did have his little cousin there to help keep him entertained but throughout the time we were there he kept asking me when we were going to leave.  When could he get back on his Chromebook? When could he back at home? I answered him with “I don’t know”, “later”, “in a little while”, etc.  These are not concrete answers and so they were difficult for him to understand and accept.  I know that but didn’t think of it at the time.  This went on all night.  From the outside it looked like he was fine. 

He said his hellos to everyone, he played with his cousin, he even danced on the dance floor for awhile, but really he wasn’t okay on the inside and my vague abstract responses to his questions were only worsening the sensory overload he was most likely experiencing. Unfortunately this wasn’t apparent to me until later that night after we got back home.  After he was comfortably settled in. After he was happily back on his Chromebook. Then about 30 minutes later he came to me crying.  I asked him what was wrong, I thought he was feeling sick (that’s usually the only time he really cries just out of the blue) but that wasn’t it.  I kept asking him what was wrong but he doesn’t always speak in complete sentences and when he’s upset, even just simple words are difficult for him to get out. So it took me a minute to figure out why he was crying but I eventually realized that it was because of the fact that I didn’t give him any concrete answers at the party as to when we would go home. He didn’t understand what I was telling him at the time but he did very much sense my frustration at him for asking me over and over again. It took him the whole ride home, getting comfortably settled in doing what he really enjoys, plus an extra 30 minutes to process what he had been experiencing and feeling at the party and then tried his hardest to explain it to me.  I still don’t even know if he’s done. He could bring it back up to me again tomorrow.  

I always think that once he’s really mastered language/speaking that things like this will be easier to handle. Maybe not his sensory input, but at least being able to talk about it.  So I told him that next time we would bring a little notebook this way if he had a question we can write it down, along with my answer, so that he could refer back to it when he’s starting to get anxious again. This way he’ll have a physical reminder that he can actually “see” and “touch”.  And I will continue to work on making my responses more concrete. Ah, the journey continues...