Cw Yelling - Tumblr Posts

This made me cry... I wish my parents were that sensitive to my need for consistency and stability as a child. When I was 8, my family replaced our living room sofa. A fairly normal occurrence for families in my area. Even though I anticipated it for weeks, when it came time to replace it, I screamed and cried and begged and reasoned and came up with every excuse we needed to keep it. Besides having a different pattern, texture, color, resistance, width, and height, the new sofa was also going to come with new rules like “no jumping” and “no feet on it” which was hell to me because jumping and nestling myself in its corners were my main sensations of safety away from my hyper-critical helicopter parents. My parents tried to placate me in other ways but didn’t understand me and just screamed at me and yelled that the sofa is not alive and that I need to get over myself and eventually had to take me outside away from the house to load the old sofa in the truck to take it to the dump. Tbh that experience was legitimately traumatizing for me. I actually cry thinking about that sofa and how specifically comforting it was. This post gave me an understanding of why.

My child is autistic. He doesn’t do well with change. Even little things that would be meaningless to most people.

For example, his hairbrush was getting old and worn. He had chewed the end of it. The cats had chewed some bristles. It was dirty and dusty. But I didn’t say anything. Because it’s his hairbrush.

Finally, he said he thinks it’s time for a new brush. Ok, I say, we’ll put it on the shopping list, and get one next time we’re in town.

So we go to town and we go to the store. There are many hairbrushes to choose from. He picks one and they even have it in his favorite color. We buy it, take it home, and remove the packaging.

I go to put it on the shelf where the old hairbrush is. Can we throw out the old one, I ask.

That’s when he stops. That’s when he freezes and gets a momentary look of panic on his face. Throw out the old one? That hadn’t occurred to him.

Because here’s the thing. Hair brushing is a part of his morning routine. And not just hair brushing, but hair brushing with that particular brush. To most people, the act of hair brushing is the routine, but not the brush itself. The objects are interchangeable. But not to my child. Not to someone with autism. The brush itself is just as important as the act of brushing.

So I take a breath. I put the old brush down. Think about it, I say. Let me know tomorrow what you want to do with this brush.

He decides. He realizes keeping an old hairbrush is not necessary. But it’s still important to him. So he asks if I can cut off one bristle. To keep. As a memory of the old hairbrush.

I don’t laugh. I don’t tell him it’s silly. I respect his need. I cut off the bristle. He puts it in his treasure box, along side some smooth rocks, beads, sparkly decals, a Santa Claus charm from a classmate, a few other things meaningful to him.

He throws the old hairbrush away himself. He is able to move on, and accept the change.